Ontario Labour Relations Board
0587-00-R Ontario Public Service Employees Union, Applicant v. City of Hamilton/Region of Hamilton-Wentworth, Responding Party v. Canadian Union of Public Employees and its Local 5167, Intervenor v. Corporation of the Town of Ancaster, Intervenor.
BEFORE: Gail Misra, Vice-Chair.
APPEARANCES: Richard Blair, David Wright, Ed Ogibowski, Tracey Mussett and Mario Posteraro for the applicant; Walter Thornton, Karl Muller, Robert Menagh, and Brent Browett for the responding party; Mark Gallina, Nick Milanovic, Gus Oliveira and Michael Stokes for CUPE; no one appearing for the Corporation of the Town of Ancaster.
DECISION OF THE BOARD; May 25, 2001
1This is an application for certification filed by the applicant on May 23, 2000 in which the applicant was seeking to represent “all paramedic employees of the respondent in the Region of Hamilton-Wentworth, save and except supervisors and persons above the rank of supervisor”. The parties subsequently agreed that the bargaining unit description should refer to “all ambulance paramedics and/or ambulance attendants employed by the responding party”.
2In its response to the application for certification the responding party (the “City/Region”) claimed it was not the employer of any employee affected by the application, and asserted instead that the Corporation of the Town of Ancaster (“Ancaster”) was the employer of the affected employees.
3Ancaster filed an intervention in which it stated that the persons affected by the application for certification were not its employees. However, Ancaster did not attend at or participate in the hearing held to determine the matters in dispute in this application.
4The Canadian Union of Public Employees and its Local 5167 (“CUPE”) intervened claiming that it represents all employees employed by the City/Region in an “all employee” bargaining unit pursuant to its collective agreement. It therefore took the position that the application for certification was untimely as CUPE has a subsisting and valid collective agreement and the application for certification was not made in the open period.
5The parties agreed that there are three issues in dispute. The first is the question of who was the employer at the time that the application for certification was made on May 23, 2000. There is no dispute that after August 1, 2000 the City/Region became the employer of the affected group of employees when the City/Region took responsibility for the land ambulance service. The second issue regards the scope of the CUPE collective agreement with the City/Region, and whether it applies to the ambulance service employees. Finally, there is an issue of the validity of a voluntary recognition agreement that CUPE and the City/Region entered into on August 1, 2000, the day the City/Region officially took over the provision of land ambulance services.
6It was further agreed that the evidence led in this portion of the hearing would relate to the first two issues, and that the Board would rule with respect to those two issues.
7There were eight days of hearing in this matter, beginning in late July 2000, and ending on March 29, 2001. The Board heard from six witnesses and 25 exhibits were filed. All of the witnesses gave evidence to the best of their recollection, and to the extent that there were any differences in their respective versions of events, they were not material differences.
The Facts
8In 1999 the City of Hamilton (the “City”) and the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth (the “Region”) effected a reorganization of administrative services such that a number of employees of the Region became City employees. It appears that there was an amalgamation of sorts that occurred. Both the City and the Region were bound to two collective agreements each with CUPE for “inside” and “outside” workers. At some point the employer and CUPE agreed in essence to join each of their respective “inside” and “outside” collective agreements and to operate under the two City agreements, with some necessary modifications to accommodate Region variations, for each of the