1008-00-U Local 375 of the United Brewers Warehousing Workers and the following individuals Tom Horsley, Karen Gores, Jim Hoffman, Dennis Porteous, Gerry Cook, Alan Eaglesham, Jim Elliot, Dave Anderson, Applicants v. United Brewers Warehousing Workers’ Provincial Board; United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Responding Parties; Brewers Retail Inc., Intervenor.
BEFORE: John Morgan Lewis, Vice-Chair.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; October 2, 2000
This is an application under section 96 of the Labour Relations Act, 1995 (the “Act”) in which the applicants allege that the responding party trade union (the “union”) violated section 74 of the Act.
Having reviewed the application, the Board is satisfied that the applicants have raised a prima facie case of a breach of the Act. Accordingly, the Registrar is directed to list this matter for consultation.
The Board is in receipt of correspondence from counsel for the applicants dated August 23, 2000 together with supplementary materials. Counsel for the applicant writes, in part, the following:
Further to our meeting with the Labour Relations Officer, Jim O’Donnell, further information relevant to this matter was divulged. I am providing it to you by way of supplementary material.
- Counsel for the union takes exception to the filing of the supplementary materials. On August 24, 2000, counsel for the union wrote to the Board setting out its position with respect to the supplementary materials. Part of that letter is set out as follows:
Further to correspondence received in our office today from the Complainants in the above-noted matter, it is our position that the submissions set out therein are not properly considered by the Board.
Specifically, the Complainants’ counsel identifies in his cover letter that the information provided was “divulged” at the Labour Relations Officer meeting. As the Board is well aware, and the jurisprudence in this area clearly establishes, Labour Relations Officers meetings are intended to be held on a strictly confidential basis and information disclosed therein cannot be used by either party. It is inappropriate to purport to rely upon information from a Labour Relations Officer’s meeting to further support a Complaint filed some time ago.
Conversations and information divulged during a Labour Relations Officer’s meeting are, subject to exceptional circumstances, privileged and cannot be relied upon by any party in subsequent litigation. In reading the cover letter from counsel for the applicants, it is not entirely clear that information contained in the supplementary materials were obtained from a Labour Relations Officer’s meeting or from some other source. As such, the Board is not in a position to rule on the admissibility of the information contained in the supplementary materials at this time. This issue is best dealt with by the panel hearing this matter.
This panel of the Board is not seized.
“John Morgan Lewis”
for the Board