Stephen Wahl

The applicant union referred a grievance to arbitration under section 112a of the Labour Relations Act, alleging the respondent employers failed to employ union members and hire through the union office.

The respondents submitted that the employer bargaining agency and the currently hired employees should receive notice of the proceedings.

The Board found that the employer bargaining agency was an interested party and that the employees were liable to be directly and adversely affected by the arbitration.

The Board directed that notice of the proceedings be given to both the employer bargaining agency and the affected employees.

The applicant union alleged that there was a transfer of a business from the predecessor company to the successor company under section 55 of the Labour Relations Act, or alternatively that they were related employers under section 1(4).

The predecessor company had ceased operations due to financial difficulties, and its key employees formed a new company, purchasing about two-thirds of the predecessor's equipment and operating from the same location.

The Board found that the transfer of assets, along with the continuation of the same management, location, and type of work, constituted a sale of part of the business under section 55.

The successor company was therefore bound by the predecessor's collective agreements.

The section 1(4) application was dismissed as unnecessary.

The applicant union referred a grievance to the Board under section 112a of the Labour Relations Act, alleging the respondent contractor violated a provincial agreement by contracting out work to a firm employing members of an intervening union.

The respondent and intervener argued the work fell within the residential sector, while the applicant claimed it was in the industrial, commercial, and institutional sector.

The Board determined that the sector issue under section 135 of the Act should be resolved prior to considering the merits of the grievance or the intervener's jurisdictional dispute complaint.

The applicant union referred a grievance to the Board under section 112a of the Labour Relations Act, alleging the respondent employer failed to apply the province-wide excavation collective agreement.

At the hearing, the employer raised a preliminary objection, arguing that it was bound by a different 'road builders' agreement and that other employers and unions bound by that agreement were entitled to notice of the proceedings because the Board's interpretation might affect them commercially.

The Board dismissed the preliminary objection, holding that strangers to a collective agreement are not entitled as of right to intervene in a section 112a proceeding, and declined to exercise its discretion to add them, as doing so would needlessly encumber the grievance process.