Millwright District Council on behalf of Local 1425 v. Copper Cliff Mechanical Contractors Ltd.

[1987] OLRB Rep. November 1357

0979-87-G Millwright District Council on behalf of Local 1425, Applicant v. Copper Cliff Mechanical Contractors Ltd., Respondent v. Ironworkers District Council; International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Ironworkers, Local 786, Interveners

BEFORE: N. B. Satterfield, Vice-Chair, and Board Members I. Davidson and B. L. Armstrong.

DECISION OF THE BOARD; November 16, 1987

1. The name of the respondent appearing in the style of cause of this application has been amended to read: "Copper Cliff Mechanical Contractors Ltd.".

2. The applicant Millwright District Council on behalf of Local 1425 ("the Millwrights") has referred a grievance in the construction industry to the Board for final and binding arbitration pursuant to section 124 of the Labour Relations Act. An interim decision on a procedural dispute issued July 27, 1987. The instant decision deals with the important issue of whether the Board should decide in a proceeding under section 124, the correctness of a work assignment to members f a trade union other than the trade union which is one of the parties to the grievance, when it is alleged the assignment has been made pursuant to a collective agreement other than the one under which the grievance arose. It deals as well with the related question of whether the other trade anion should be made a party to the referral for the limited purpose of deciding the correctness of the assignment.

3. The Millwrights and the respondent, Copper Cliff Mechanical Contractors Ltd., ("the Company"), are bound to the provincial agreement between the Association of Millwrighting Con­tractors of Ontario, Inc. and the Millwright District Council of Ontario effective from June 23rd, 1986 to April 30th, 1988, ("the Millwrights Agreement"). The Company and the Ironworkers Dis­trict Council ("the Ironworkers Council") and the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Ironworkers, Local 786 ("Ironworkers Local 786"), are bound to the provincial agreement between the Ontario Erectors Association, Incorporated, the Ontario Erectors Associ­ation and the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Ironworkers and the Ironworkers District Council of Ontario ("the Ironworkers Agreement"). The Board will refer to the Ironworkers Council and Ironworkers, Local 786 as "the Ironworkers" when the text requires that they be referred to collectively. The Ironworkers are seeking status in this proceeding for the purpose of pursuing the claim that the grievance is really a dispute over the assignment of work to members of the Ironworkers.

4. The Board issued a decision July 27, 1987, to defer hearing of the referral for the rea­sons given in the decision. The Millwrights had been opposed to the Board doing so on the grounds summarized at paragraphs 4 and 5 of the decision which state as follows:

5. At the hearing, counsel for the Millwrights informed the Board that it was content to have the Ironworkers made a party to the proceedings under section 124 of the Act and was prepared to have the Board hear and decide the conflicting claims of the two trade unions that the company should perform the work under the terms of their respective collective agreements. The reason why the applicant is prepared to proceed in this manner is because it wants a determination of the issue and is concerned that a deferral to either a complaint made under section 91 of the Act or to the Plan [for the Settlement of Jurisdictional Disputes in the Construction Industry] would result in the issue not being adjudicated at all. There are two reasons why the applicant holds that view. First, since the job is almost completed, the applicant believes that the dispute would not be adjudicated under the Plan. Second, if a complaint is made under section 91 of the Act, and even if the Board found that there was a dispute about a work assignment, it likely would find also that it was deprived of jurisdiction to entertain the complaint by operation of section 91(14) of the Act. That section deprives the Board of jurisdiction where the collective agree­ments binding upon the employer and trade union parties to the complaint contain provisions requiring the reference of differences between them arising out of work assignments to a tribu­nal mutually selected by them of any differences as to work assignment that can be resolved under the collective agreement.

6. Counsel for the Millwrights submits that the Board previously has signified that it would be prepared to give an intervener status in a section 124 proceeding for the limited purpose of par­ticipating in the argument concerning the assignment of work and the jurisdiction of the inter­vening trade union with respect to the assignment of work. Counsel further contends that the same panel of the Board was prepared to entertain submissions from the intervening trade union, as well as the applicant and the respondent to the referral, on the propriety of the employer having assigned the work under provisions of the collective agreement binding upon the employer and the applicant trade union instead of the intervening trade union's collective agreement. Counsel referred the Board to the unreported decisions of the Board, differently constituted, in Lackie Industrial Contractors Limited, issued August 26th, 1985 ("Lackie No. 1"), application for reconsideration refused in a decision which issued November 29, 1985 ("Lackie No. 2").

Because of the position taken by counsel for the Millwrights, the Board heard the full submissions from counsel for all three parties and then ruled that it would defer hearing the grievance referred to it in order to allow the Company a specified period of time to apply to the Plan for the Settle­ment of Jurisdictional Disputes in the Construction Industry ("the Plan") for a resolution of the assignment of the work at issue in the grievance. The Board reserved its decision on whether it would adopt the procedure referred to in Lackie No. 1, supra, and entertain submissions on the proper assignment of the work at issue in the context of this proceeding under section 124 of the Act.

5. The Company did apply to the Plan within the period allowed by the Board. Subse­quently, and before the Board had issued any decision on whether it would adopt the procedure referred to in Lackie No. 1, supra, the solicitors for the Millwrights advised the Board by letter dated September 18, 1987, that the dispute would not be adjudicated under the Plan because the work in dispute had been completed. The last paragraph of the letter states:

It has now become clear, as it was in the Lackie case (a case dealing with the same collective agreements as in the present case), that the only forum remaining in which the Applicant may seek adjudication of the issues raised by its grievance is before the Board. Therefore, the Appli­cant hereby requests that the Board reconvene in order to determine the subject grievance.

Accordingly, the Board must decide whether it should adopt the procedure referred to in Lackie No. 1 and deal with the work assignment dispute in the context of this section 124 proceeding and make the Ironworkers parties to the proceeding for the purpose of participating in the submissions on that dispute.

6. While the Millwrights and Ironworkers disagreed on whether the Board should defer deciding the grievance referred to it pending a reference of the work assignment dispute to the Plan or to section 91 of the Labour Relations Act, Ironworkers' counsel agreed with Millwrights' counsel that, should the dispute not be resolved by the Plan or pursuant to section 91 of the Act, the Board herein should decide in this proceeding under section 124 of the Act whether the work should have been assigned under the Millwrights agreement rather than under the Ironworkers agreement. Counsel for both of those parties read Lackie No. 1 as saying that, where the underlying cause of the grievance is a dispute over a work assignment, the Board would decide the correct­ness of the work assignment in the proceeding under section 124 based on the evidence and representations of the direct parties to the referral, that is, the applicant and the respondent, and of the trade union to whose members the work had been assigned.

7. The Lackie case involved the same two trades as in the instant case, but in reversed roles. A sister local of the Ironworkers Local 786 was the applicant. The Millwrights union was the party seeking to intervene in the section 124 proceeding and was the union whose members had oeen assigned the work at issue. It would appear that the Board gave the Millwrights status for the limited purpose of arguing its claim that the grievance was rooted in a work assignment dispute. The respondent Lackie had raised the same issue as a defense to the grievance. The Board adjourned the section 124 proceedings for two weeks in order to allow a complaint to be filed ander section 91 of the Labour Relations Act or for the dispute to be referred to some other juris­diction dispute settlement tribunal. It is reasonable to assume from the decision, as the Millwrights and Ironworkers maintain, that the Board's reference to another tribunal was a reference to the Plan. The section 124 proceedings were to be resumed if proceedings under section 91 or the Plan were not commenced within the two week period allowed, or if they were commenced and not adjudicated. Having stated that position, the Board went on at paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 of the deci­sion to comment as follows:

8. In indicating its concern that the jurisdictional issue be adjudicated, the Board noted that the Board's policy of deferring to a jurisdictional tribunal in section 124 grievances to arbitration has its roots in a notion that where there are competing jurisdictional trade claims between con­struction trade unions, the Board under section 124 would not adjudicate the jurisdictional dis­pute in the absence of one of the affected trade unions. Accordingly, the Board normally defers to a complaint under section 91 which procedure allows for the participation of all interested par­ties. This ensures a complete and fair adjudication of the jurisdictional issue.

9. In the present case, however, we are concerned that such an adjudication may not occur. In the event that there is no such adjudication, it is our view that the proper way to proceed in these matters would be to allow the Millwrights' District Council to have status in these pro­ceedings for the limited purpose of participating in the argument concerning the assignment of work and the jurisdiction of the Millwrights' Council with respect to such an assignment.

10. The representation by the respondent in these proceedings that the issue between the parties is properly a jurisdictional dispute, in the context of a section 124 grievance, is in effect a form of defence to the grievance. That is to say that when an employer raises the jurisdictional issue, the employer is saying in effect the reason the work was not assigned as claimed by the grievor is that it was properly assigned to another trade union and therefore the grievance should not suc­ceed. In order to deal with such a defence to a grievance it is clear that this Board must either adjudicate the matter itself or defer to an adjudication by some other tribunal or in some other proceedings. It is our view, however, that if the respondent or the Millwrights' District Council do not avail themselves with that, then we would be prepared to entertain submissions on the proper assignment in the context of these proceedings.

11. Counsel for both trade unions view the Board in Lackie No. 1 as saying that, in the event that the work assignment dispute is not adjudicated either by the Board under section 91 of the Act or by another tribunal, the Board would hear and decide, in the context of the section 124 proceeding, whether the union raising the jurisdictional dispute defense, in other words, the one whose members have been assigned the work, had a valid claim to the work under its collective agreement. The Board would achieve this by allowing that trade union status in the grievance proceeding for that limited purpose. Counsel for the Ironworkers in the instant proceedings, argues that the procedure proposed in Lackie No.1 is a practical one because it would avoid letting any­one of the parties interested in a work assignment dispute frustrate getting the dispute before a tri­bunal which would decide the issue. He argues further that the procedure proposed by the Board in Lackie No. 1 is a logical extension of an arbitrator's powers as defined by arbitrators, including this Board when it has sat as an arbitrator, and the courts, in a series of awards and judgements which he cited to the Board in the hearing. Therefore, he joins counsel for the Millwrights in urg­ing the Board to adopt the same approach in the instant referral should the dispute not be adjudi­cated either by the Plan or under section 91. The concern of the Board in Lackie No. 1 and of the Millwrights and Ironworkers herein, that the work assignment dispute might not be adjudicated under section 91 of the Act arises from the conditions in the Millwrights and Ironworkers collective agreements which provide for such disputes to be referred to the Plan for resolution. The Board has previously found the same or similar language to trigger subsection 14 of section 91. That provi­sion of the Act deprives the Board of jurisdiction to entertain a complaint under subsection 1 of section 91 even where all of the requisite conditions are present for a complaint to be made under that section. See, for example, the Board's decision in Stoney Creek Mechanical Limited, [1982] OLRB Rep. Dec. 1917, the decisions referred to therein at paragraphs 15 and 17 and the Board's decision in Electrical Power Systems Construction Association, [1987] OLRB Rep. Apr. 487.

12. It is not entirely clear to the Board herein, what was meant to be the extent of the inquiry by the Board in Lackie No. 1 into the propriety of the work assignment which was raised as a defense to the grievance. On the one hand, paragraph 3, the penultimate paragraph of the deci­sion, can be read as limiting the inquiry to one of whether the collective agreement binding upon the Millwrights, the intervening trade union and the one to whose members the work had been assigned by Lackie, required Lackie to make that assignment as it and the Millwrights were claim­ing. On the other hand, the reference in the last sentence of paragraph 4, the final paragraph of the decision, to the Board being "...prepared to entertain submissions on the proper assignment in the context of these proceedings.", arguably could mean that the Board intended to inquire into which of the two trade unions, the Ironworkers or the Millwrights, had the better claim to the work. That would be the purpose of an inquiry under section 91(1) of the Act if the dispute could be enter­tained by the Board under that section. Whichever type of inquiry the Board was contemplating in Lackie No. 1, the Board herein is not satisfied on several grounds that it should engage in any inquiry under this section 124 proceeding which would require that the Ironworkers be made a party to the proceeding even if the Board had the consent of the Company, the Millwrights and the Ironworkers.

13. First, if the Board in Lackie No. 1 was contemplating making the Millwrights a party to that proceeding solely for the purpose of enquiring into whether the Millwright agreement had required Lackie to assign the disputed work to the Millwrights, the Board herein is not convinced that the application of that approach to this case would resolve either the grievance or the work assignment dispute. Since the dispute has arisen at all, it is to be presumed that both unions believe that their collective agreements cover the work. Even if the Ironworkers agreement does contain language which would support a conclusion that the Company was obligated to assign the work to members of the Ironworkers, that would not preclude the possibility that the Company had the same obligation with respect to the Millwrights under the Millwrights agreement. This is not an uncommon circumstance for a contractor who has collective agreements with more than one build­ing trade union. It results from the fact that the constitutions, and, therefore, very often the collec­tive agreements of the building trade unions express rather sweeping work jurisdiction claims which sometimes partially overlap. When that occurs, until one of the trade unions establishes the better claim for the work, the employer is at risk of being in violation of one of its collective agree­ments regardless of which union's members get the work which both claim. This would appear to be the position that the Company is in with the Millwrights and the Ironworkers. Therefore, if the Company was obliged by the Ironworkers agreement to assign the work to its members, it would not be a complete defence to the Millwrights' grievance because the obligation, by itself, would be irrelevant to the issue of whether the Company has the same obligation under the Millwrights agreement and, therefore, was in violation of the agreement when it failed to assign the work to members of the Millwrights. Nor would the existence of language in the Ironworkers agreement expressly claiming the work in dispute preserve that work for the members of the Ironworkers. That would be so whether or not the Millwrights agreement expressly claimed the work as well. Work jurisdiction claims in the construction industry are not resolved simply on what the constitutions and collective agreements of the disputing trade unions say or fail to say about the work at issue. While the presence of particular language in a constitution and collective agreement of a trade union may favour its claim over that of another trade union, work jurisdiction claims are usually settled after weighing a number of factors. Therefore, where a work assignment dispute underl­ies a grievance, making the trade union to whose members the work has been assigned a party to the arbitration would have no probative value respecting either the grievance or the competing claims for the work. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the Board in Lackie No. 1 intended to give the ironworkers in that case standing in the proceedings solely for the purpose of deciding whether its agreement required Lackie to assign the work to members of the Ironworkers, and the Board herein will not adopt such an approach.

14. The other grounds for declining to use this section 124 proceeding for anything other than the purpose of arbitrating the grievance between the Millwrights and the Company, relate to the proposition that the Board use the proceeding to decide which of the Millwrights or the Ironworkers has the better claim to the disputed work. In order to provide a context for discussing the Board's grounds for refusing to do as the Millwrights and the Ironworkers request, it is useful to examine what it is that makes a work assignment dispute a defense against a grievance. The idea that the existence of a prima facie work assignment dispute is a defense against a grievance is based on the premise that the trade union claiming damages because the work was not performed by its members, would be unable to prove a violation of its collective agreement if the work was properly assigned in the first instance. To raise such a defense is to contemplate that the work assignment dispute will be adjudicated by a competent tribunal. The Board proceeding under section 9 1(1) of the Act would be such a tribunal, as would the Plan in the instant case, or any tribunal which sat­isfied the requirements of section 91(14). For example, in the context of this dispute, if application to the Plan were to result in a determination that the Ironworkers had a better claim than the Mill­wrights to the work at issue in the grievance, a typical remedy would be a direction that the Company continue to assign the work to the Millwrights. In the face of such a direction, the Board sit­ting as an arbitrator pursuant to section 124 of the Act, is unlikely to make a finding that the Company violated the Millwrights agreement because the work was performed by the Ironwork­ers. Therefore, if the work assignment dispute is not adjudicated for any reason, the Ironworkers' and the Company's defense would collapse or be substantially undermined and the root cause of the grievance, the work assignment dispute, would be unresolved. That would appear to be why the Board in Lackie No. 1, was prepared to make the Millwrights a party to the Ironworkers griev­ance against Lackie and receive the submissions of all three parties on the proper assignment of the work in dispute. It anticipated that the work assignment dispute between the Ironworkers and the Millwrights might not be adjudicated in some other proceeding under the Act or by some other tri­bunal and did not want the dispute to be left in limbo.

15. The Board turns now to the second ground for declining to adjudicate the work assign­ment dispute between the Millwrights and the Ironworkers in this proceeding. They and the Com­pany, along with their respective bargaining agencies, are responsible for the dilemma which now confronts them. This is because of the terms of the collective agreements to which the Company, the Millwrights and the Ironworkers are bound. Section 91 of the Act gives the Board wide discre­tionary powers to entertain, determine and remedy work assignment disputes. But, as noted in paragraph 8 above, parties to collective agreements are free to include in their agreements provi­sions for referring such disputes to a tribunal other than the Board. If all parties to a work assign­ment dispute are bound by collective agreements which have opted for the same tribunal, section 91(14) of the Act deprives the Board of jurisdiction under section 91(1) to entertain the dispute. The bargaining agencies to the Millwrights agreement and the Ironworkers agreement have bar­gained and agreed to terms which make the Plan the tribunal for resolving work assignment dis­putes instead of the Board with all of its powers under section 91. Having done so, section 91(14) of the Act protects that arrangement from incursion by the Board. It clearly proscribes the Board's general jurisdiction under section 91(1) of the Act and it does so without giving the Board any powers to supervise the effectiveness of the process which the parties have selected. Nor does the Act impose any standards or empower the Board to impose any standards on the method adopted by the parties for resolving their work assignment disputes outside of the Act.

16. The dilemma which the parties have created is not new. The Plan in one form or another for many years has been the tribunal selected by building trade unions as an alternative mechanism to section 91 proceedings under the Act for resolving work assignment disputes. Under the Plan as presently formulated, disputes which are not settled by consultation between the dis­puting trade unions are adjudicated by an arbitrator. For a number of years prior to its present form, the Plan provided for disputes to be adjudicated by the Impartial Jurisdictional Disputes Board ("the IJDB"). Some flavour of that history can be found in the Board's decision in Dominion Bridge Company Ltd., [1982] OLRB Rep. May 667. The Board in that case found that it was deprived of jurisdiction under section 91(1) of the Act by operation of subsection 14 because all parties to the dispute were bound by collective agreements which provided for jurisdiction dis­putes to be adjudicated by the IJDB. Board members H.J.F. Ade and C. A. Ballentine had the following to say in a concurring opinion to the decision of the Board:

17. We have no choice but to agree with Vice-Chairman Ian Springate as the decision relates to the operation of section 91(14). However, our sympathies are with the applicant union as well as other unions and companies in the construction industry in Ontario, when they endeavour to obtain a just resolve to jurisdictional disputes through the procedure of the "Impartial Jurisdic­tional Disputes Board" (I.J.D.B.) in accordance with existing collective agreements, such as the case at hand.

18. We want to make it clear that we have no quarrel with the "Procedure Rules" of the "I.J.D.B.". Our concern is one that the "I.J.D.B." and its predecessor the "National Joint Board for the Settlement of Jurisdictional Disputes" has been in a state of flux and disarray for a decade or more.

19. This is not the first time a union has been before the Board with pleas of frustration over what it considers the non-function of the I.J.D.B. The Board dealt with a similar situation in 1979, in Ontario Hydro, [1979] OLRB Rep. Feb. 124. That case involved a local union of the same com­plainant International Union and a sister local of this complainant local union in the instant case, and it involved the same Electrical Power Systems Construction Association (EPSCA) col­lective agreement.

20. As the Board held in the Ontario Hydro case referred to above, where all the parties to the jurisdictional dispute proceeding before the Board are bound by a collective agreement contain­ing an operative provision referred to in section 91(14) of the Act, the Board does not have the jurisdiction to entertain the complaint.

21. If employers and trade unions in the construction industry in this province choose to continue to maintain collective agreements which require that they refer jurisdictional disputes to a tribu­nal which is not functioning in a satisfactory manner, that problem must be resolved by the parties, and not by the Board or the legislature. That is precisely what the majority of the Board told the parties in 1979 Ontario Hydra case when it stated:

"In our view, where the parties have mutually selected a tribunal as contemplated in section 81(14) (now 91(14)], they bear the responsibility for ensuring that they have entrusted their disputes to a viable entity. It is not the function of this Board to pass upon the constitution of the Plan and the ability of the 11DB to effectively perform the tasks which have been assigned to it by the parties."

6. The purpose of section 91(14) is, in our view, to permit the parties themselves to fashion a procedure for resolving their jurisdictional disputes internally, without government interven­tion. This purpose is reinforced by the Act, since it requires the parties to comply with any deci­sion issued by the tribunal selected by the parties. This objective is a laudable one which is con­sistent with our belief that the parties themselves know what is best for them in developing and maintaining good labour relations.

The parties herein, having created the very circumstances which may frustrate having their work assignment dispute adjudicated by either the Plan, the tribunal which they have selected in their collective agreements, or by the process under section 91 of the Act which was designed for such adjudications, now are asking the Board to accommodate them by adapting a procedure which is intended to deal with disputes between two parties of opposing interests under a collective agree­ment binding upon them. The adaptation would require making a party to those same proceedings ~s third party who is a stranger to that agreement and who usually will be allied in interest with one of the parties to the grievance. Bearing in mind that the purpose of section 91(14) of the Act, in the Board's view, is to leave it open to the parties to collective agreements to develop a procedure for resolving jurisdictional disputes amongst themselves without any form of government interven­tion, the fact that the parties have selected a procedure which they may find unsatisfactory at times, is no reason for the Board to compromise another procedure under the Act in order to alleviate the problem which the parties have created for themselves. They have the power to amend or suspend the arrangements by consent, subject to the normal constraints of the collective bargaining process.

14. That leads the Board to the third ground for declining to use this section 124 proceeding for the purpose of adjudicating the work assignment dispute, and it is that the Board would be unnecessarily and unreasonably encumbering the proceeding with parties who are strangers to the collective agreement under which the arbitration is taking place. The Ironworkers are just that. While there is little doubt that the Board has the discretion to make the Ironworkers a party to this section 124 proceeding, the Board has consistently declined to make a party to a section 124 pro­ceeding any party not having a direct, legal interest in the matter being arbitrated. In this respect, see the Boards decisions in Napev Construction Ltd., [1979] OLRB Rep. Sept. 886 and Williams Contracting Ltd., [1980] OLRB Rep. Jan. 121. Furthermore, in the Board's view, the rules of nat­ural justice would require that the Board serve notice of the proceeding on the parties to the Iron-workers agreement identified in paragraph 2 above. Thus there is potential for as many as three parties who are strangers to the collective agreement under which this proceeding arose being made parties to it. The Board in Williams, supra, had this to say at paragraph 12 about allowing strangers to the collective agreement at issue to intervene in section 124 proceedings:

15. We accept the respondent's contention that collective bargaining relationships in the con­struction industry are interrelated and that employers and trade unions will be interested in, and perhaps affected by, the negotiating or interpretation of collective agreements other than those to which they are immediate parties. However, we do not accept that such "third parties; are entitled, as of right, to intervene in proceedings under section 112a mow section 124], (see: Napev Construction Ltd., [1976] OLRB Rep. Mar. 109; application for judicial review dismissed sub nomine; Bricklayers, Masons, Independent Union of Canada, Local 1 v. Ontario Labour Relations Board - decision released May 18, 1977 - unreported) nor do we think the Board should readily exercise its discretion to add them, simply because they may have a commercial interest in the outcome of the proceeding. If strangers to the agreement were entitled to partici­pate, the speed and economy which [section 124] was designed to achieve would be seriously undermined, and the procedure needlessly complicated by the intervention of parties who are neither directly affected, nor bound by the legal result. Of course, nothing prevents an immedi­ate party to a collective agreement from adducing legally admissible evidence of other bargain­ing relationships where such evidence would be helpful in resolving an ambiguity in the collec­tive agreement in question. Moreover, the existence of an ongoing, quasi-contractual proceeding under [section 124] does not prevent a third party from asserting statutory rights available under other sections (for example, section 81 [now section 91] respecting jurisdictional disputes, section 135 [now section 150] respecting sectoral determinations). In appropriate cir­cumstances the Board may consolidate such proceedings with the [124] proceeding or adjourn the [124] proceeding until more general questions have been resolved. (See, for example: Napev Construction Ltd.. Board File No. 0534-79-M, decision released Sept. 17, 1979 - as yet unreport­ed.) In our view these avenues are sufficient to protect third party interests and it is unnecessary to encumber a [section 124] proceeding with numerous interveners in the same interest as the parties already before the Board. There may well be circumstances in which a [section 124] pro­ceeding raises questions of general interest to the industrial relations community and in those cases the Board might well wish to entertain amicus curiae submissions; however we are not sat­isfied that such circumstances exist in the present case. Accordingly, the Board is satisfied that it is unnecessary to adjourn to give notice to other parties and the Registrar is, therefore, directed to relist the matter for a continuation of the hearing on the merits.

While there may be circumstances where the Board would find it justified to encumber a section 124 proceeding with parties who are strangers to the collective agreement under which the griev­ance was being arbitrated, this referral is not one of them.

15. The fourth and final ground for declining to adjudicate the work assignment dispute in the context of this section 124 proceeding is that, in the Board's view, it is possible for a respondent to a section 124 proceeding to obtain a similar result without encumbering the process by add­ing parties who are strangers to the collective agreement. As the Board noted in Williams, supra, nothing prevents an immediate party to a collective agreement from adducing legally admissi­ble evidence of other bargaining relationships where such evidence would be helpful in resolving an ambiguity in the collective agreement in question." It is open to the Company to pursue that option.

16. For all these reasons, the Board will not make the Ironworkers a party to this section 124 proceeding for the purpose of adjudicating either the question of whether the Company was required by the Ironworkers agreement to assign to its members the work in dispute in the griev­ance, or the question of whether the Ironworkers or the Millwrights had the better claim to the work. In the result, the Registrar is directed to list this referral for hearing on its merits on the ear­liest available date.

17. This matter is referred to the Registrar