[1993] OLRB Rep. July 642
0940-93-R Service Employees Union, Local 210, Applicant v. Provincial Nursing Home Limited Partnership, Responding Party
BEFORE: S. Liang, Vice-Chair, and Board Members D. A. MacDonald and B. L. Armstrong.
APPEARANCES: David Cowling and Ed Ozimek for the responding party; no one appearing on behalf of the applicant.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; July 12, 1993
1The style of cause is hereby amended to reflect the correct name of the responding party: "Provincial Nursing Home Limited Partnership".
2This is an application for certification in which the parties, through a Labour Relations Officer, have resolved all issues prior to the hearing, save for the description of the bargaining unit. The unit proposed by the applicant is:
all employees of Provincial Nursing Home Limited Partnership in the Town of Seaforth regularly employed for not more than twenty-four (24) hours per week, save and except supervisors, persons above the rank of supervisor and registered nurses.
3The respondent proposes that the Board include the registered nurses in the unit. At the hearing of this matter on July 12, 1993, the applicant did not appear, apparently due to a death in the family of the applicant's representative. The applicant informed the Board of this by fax on the morning of the hearing, and did not request an adjournment. After hearing the evidence and submissions of the responding party, and reviewing the written submissions of the applicant, the Board gave the following oral ruling:
Having carefully considered the evidence and submissions of the responding party and the submissions of the applicant, which were sent to the Board by fax this morning, we are satisfied that the bargaining unit proposed by the applicant is appropriate.
The focus of the Board's determination is whether the unit applied for is an appropriate unit, though it may not be the most appropriate unit. In Hospital for Sick Children, [1985] OLRB Rep. Feb. 266, the Board posed the question as whether the unit which the union seeks to represent encompasses a group of employees with a sufficiently coherent community of interest that they can bargain together on a viable basis without at the same time causing serious labour relations problems for the employer.
We are satisfied that in the nursing home sector it is not uncommon for registered nurses ("RN's") to be excluded from all-employee or service units. The responding party acknowledges that the practice is at least mixed. In West Lincoln Multilevel Health Facility Inc., [1988] OLRB Rep. Nov. 1185, the Board found that the standard practice of the Board (this was a case involving a mixed retirement and nursing home) was to include RNA's with service bargaining units but not to include RN's. We have been given no decision concerning a nursing home where the Board has required the inclusion of RN's against the position of an applicant.
The parties have adopted this practice themselves in agreeing to a full-time unit a matter of months ago, which excluded RN's (see the Board's certificate in Board File No. 3099-92-R). The Board has, on many occasions, expressed the reasons for its strong policy in favour of part-time units which mirror full-time units. As stated in Geri-Care Nursing Home of Caressant Care Limited, [1986] OLRB Rep. Oct. 1338, to determine that one unit would be appropriate for part-time employees several months after the parties have agreed on a different unit for the full-time employees does not strike us as a course of action which would either facilitate organizing or contribute to effective labour relations.
Neither the Board's policy on mirror units, nor the practice with respect to RN's in nursing homes is carved in stone. However, the facts of this case are not so striking that they would cause us to depart from these and reject the unit proposed by the applicant.
We are satisfied that the unit is viable and would not in the circumstances of this case and against the backdrop of the Board's policies, the parties' agreement and the practices in the industry, cause serious labour relations problems.
Having regard to the agreements of the parties and the material before us, we find that:
all employees of Provincial Nursing Home Limited Partnership in the Town of Seaforth regularly employed for not more than twenty-four (24) hours per week, save and except supervisors, persons above the rank of supervisor and registered nurses, constitute a unit of employees of the responding party appropriate for collective bargaining.
The Board is satisfied on the basis of all the evidence before it, that more than fifty-five per cent of the employees of the responding party in the bargaining unit on June 8, 1993, the certification application date, had applied to become members of the applicant on or before that date.
A certificate will issue to the applicant.