Ontario Labour Relations Board
File No.: 3039-99-R
Universal Workers Union, L.I.U.N.A., Local 183, Applicant v. Coughlan Homes Inc. and Cougs Investments Ltd., Responding Parties.
BEFORE: David A. McKee, Vice-Chair.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; March 29, 2000
An issue has arisen in this application with regard to the status of the applicant as a trade union under section 1(1) and section 126. By a decision dated March 14, 2000 the Board ordered the applicant to produce certain documents. It has done so.
The applicant has not been found to be a trade union by the board before now. The applicant asserts that it is in fact the same organization as Labourers’ International Union of North America, Local 183 (a trade union which has been found to have status). It asserts that the style used by the applicant is nothing more than a change of name. On March 24, 2000 the applicant filed material on which it relies and which the Board ordered produced in its decision of March 14, 2000.
The responding party has not yet responded to these documents and the assertions of the applicant. It is directed to do so, or to indicate it does not wish to do so, on or before 5:00 p.m. April 6, 2000.
The Board has received a request for intervenor status from Minto Communities (Toronto) Inc. (“Minto”). Minto seeks intervenor status solely for the purpose of making submissions as to the status of the applicant. It asserts a right to do so on the basis that the applicant has filed an application for certification in respect of a bargaining unit of employees of Minto. The panel of the Board seized with that application will not deal with the status issue in that application prior to April 11, 2000, the date set for hearing in this matter. The applicant opposes such intervenor status. It goes further and states that it has or will deliver to counsel for Minto all the documents it has filed with the Board and will not rely on the provisions of section 113 of the Act.
Minto will not be given status in this application. We disagree with its assertion that this panel will or can “deal with an issue of great significance in the proceedings before Vice Chair Rowan”. This panel of the Board cannot determine anything in Board File 4025-98-R. Another panel is seized of that application. Even if the factual and legal questions raised by the issue are the same in both applications (a proposition that the applicant disputes) this panel simply cannot make any finding which is binding on another panel in the course of an on-going application. Given the undertakings of the applicant in this file, it appears to this panel that Minto will have the opportunity to make any and all arguments the other panel deems appropriate in the Minto application. Any decision in this file will not be relied on by the applicant as prima facie proof of anything in Board File 4025-99-R. Beyond that, this panel declines to offer advice or comment on what another panel of this Board might or should do in an application pending before it.
“David A. McKee”
for the Board