Law Times

Law Times • February 13, 2012 NEWS PAGE 5 Continued from page 1 agreements with the provincial government. Those agreements determine which jobs fall within which union and, ultimately, who may lose their job. In the past, OPSEU has ar- gued those jurisdictional bound- aries are inherently flawed. In its view, the provincial government should create more jobs within its boundaries instead of passing more of them to AMAPCEO. AMAPCEO, on the other hand, has argued that collective agree- ments with the provincial gov- ernment are the real problem and points to a recent secret deal between OPSEU and the prov- ince as an example. In that case, the Ontario La- bour Relations Board ruled the provincial government had in- tentionally misrepresented a contract settlement with its big- gest public-sector union in a "se- cret arrangement" that awarded employees an additional one- per-cent wage increase in a bid to keep labour costs down. OPSEU appeared before the board last summer, where a hear- ing on the matter showed an "ad- justment" to a scheduled wage increase of two per cent for this year that raised it by an addition- al one per cent in exchange for non-wage concessions among its 38,000 members. AMAPCEO ultimately re- lied on the public portion of that OPSEU arrangement in negotiating its own wage deal in 2009. AMAPCEO learned of the secret arrangement aſter the fact and is now accusing the government of bargaining in bad faith. It's looking to get the additional one-per-cent in- crease for its 12,000 members. If the government has to compensate AMAPCEO mem- bers, it could cost millions of dollars. The government is currently seeking judicial re- view of the ruling, according to Government Services Minister Harinder Takhar. But Takhar has said any talk of penalty or financial compen- sation will be a matter for future labour board proceedings. "We will continue to make strong ar- guments to the [board] to try to prevent that from happening," he said in a statement. Until then, Edward Wren, president of the Association of Law Officers of the Crown (ALOC) that represents the gov- ernment's non-criminal lawyers, says public employees will have to "wait and see what will hap- pen" in both the wage-increase and Novak matters. "This is definitely an issue for us and something that we are looking at very carefully along with, I imagine, every other bar- gaining unit," says Wren. "In our negotiations with the employer, we relied on the same information that AMAPCEO did, so it has raised similar con- cerns for us." In terms of the Novak matter, Wren adds that ALOC has also seen similar issues with job loss and the movement of bargaining units to different jurisdictional boundaries in the past but will determine what steps to take af- ter the labour board has reached its full decision in the wage-in- crease matter. OPSEU's Brian Gould, mean- while, says that while the history between the unions may compli- cate issues such as the wage in- crease and cases like Novak, it'll also serve to draw an important line between them. "In cases like [Novak], what typically happens is people are put into new posi- tions that may cost other em- ployees their jobs. If those origi- nal employees were AMAPCEO members, for example, the union would essentially be saying that they never wanted the new members and aren't required to represent them. "That's also a reason why we have the history that we do between us. We don't think it's right that they would do that to their members if that is in fact the case here." In the meantime, the la- bour board has ruled in favor of AMAPCEO in Novak aſter concluding it didn't violate the rules on fair representation by declining to represent the min- istry's new hires. The new hires include cur- rent ministry employees Richard Novak, Anne-Marie Long, John Ota, Tamaris Yakimishyn, Lori Hunt, and Valerie Tourikian. For its part, the ministry de- clined to comment on the cases directly but did acknowledge it had terminated the section where the original employees had worked. "In the spring of 2009, the facilities management branch of the Ministry of the At- torney General began a review of its operations, as the business requirements of the branch had changed substantially in previ- ous years," said spokesman Bren- dan Crawley in an e-mail. "In September 2010, the em- ployer informed AMAPCEO that the decision had been made to reorganize the work of the branch. As part of the reorga- nization, the accommodation services section was eliminated, and 10 facilities management co-ordinator positions were sur- plused. "Those employees, who were represented by AMAP- CEO, were informed of these decisions later that month, in September 2010. 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