[1991] OLRB Rep. August 1005
0978-91-R Ontario Nurses' Association, Applicant v. Shelburne Residence, Respondent v. Service Employees International Union, Local 204 (affiliated with the A.F. of L., C.I.O., C.L.C.), Intervener
BEFORE: Louisa M. Davie, Vice-Chair, and Board Members W. H. Wightman and B. L. Armstrong.
APPEARANCES: Christopher Dassios and Dan Anderson for the applicant; Derrick Hoare and Lynda Coulter for the respondent; Mark Lewis for the intervener.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; August 12, 1991
1This is an application for certification which came on for hearing before this panel of the Board on Friday, August 2, 1991. The Board heard and considered the evidence and submissions of the parties at that time. At the conclusion of the submissions the Board rendered the following oral ruling. In so ruling the Board considered the decisions of the Board in The Ottawa Citizen, a Division of Southam Press Limited, [1969] OLRB Rep. March 1281; University of Guelph, [1975] OLRB Rep. April 327; Porcupine General Hospital, [1987] OLRB Rep. Feb. 423; Villa Centres Management Ltd., [1979] OLRB Rep. April 359 and The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, [1987] OLRB Rep. Feb. 278.
This is an application for certification in which the applicant Ontario Nurses Association ("ONA") seeks to be certified for what may be termed as its standard bargaining unit namely registered and graduate nurses employed in a nursing capacity by the respondent. The intervener Service Employees International Union Local 204 is the incumbent union which currently represents the employees whom the ONA seeks to represent, together with a number of other employees in what can be referred to as an "all employee" bargaining unit.
The only issue before the Board is whether the applicant ONA can, in effect, carve out it standard bargaining unit from the existing bargaining unit.
We have considered the evidence and the submissions of the parties. It is clear that section 6(3) of the Act gives the Board a discretion whether to permit a carve out of a craft or craft like unit where the group of employees is included in a bargaining unit represented by another bargaining agent at the time the application was made.
Notwithstanding the well-reasoned submissions to the contrary from counsel for the ONA, we are not prepared to exercise our discretion in favour of the ONA's request to carve out its traditional or standard unit.
We do not view the relatively short period of time which the 5EIU Local 204 has represented this unit, nor the fact that over that period of time the nurses have "lost" some ground in maintaining a wage differential between themselves and employees in less skilled classifications to be persuasive given the absence of any evidence that the incumbent union has failed to adequately represent the employees within the all employee unit together with the fact that the collective agreement discloses that the 5EIU Local 204 has over that same period of time obtained a forty-eight percent pay (48%) increase for the nurses.
There are no other extenuating factors which would cause this panel to depart from the Board's usual practice in displacement applications. In the result, in the circumstances of this case we find that the bargaining unit applied for is not an appropriate unit and dismiss this application.
2We note that earlier in these proceedings we had made the following evidentiary ruling:
For the reasons enunciated in the decisions of the Board in The University of Guelph, [1975] OLRB Rep. April 327 and The Ottawa Citizen, [1969] OLRB Rep. March 1281 we view the evidence of external comparisons of wages and benefits to the wages and benefits of the nurses in this unit not to be relevant to our determination in this matter. We therefore grant the intervener's motion not to admit this irrelevant evidence.