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Labour Relations - Arbitration - Collective agreements - Disciplinary action - Whether Court of Appeal erred in considering that the facts found by the arbitrator, having regard to the provisions of the collective agreement and the Labour Code, R.S.Q., c. C-27, could reasonably have led to the conclusion he reached from the evidence when the arbitrator was bound by the terms of the collective agreement under s. 100.12(f) of the Code and could not have amended the decision of the employer.

The Respondent union grieved the dismissal of Mr. Huot, who had been employed at Pomatek Inc. since 1986 and was a union representative. He was dismissed as a result of a work stoppage that lasted about 30 minutes. Contrary to what Pomatek alleged in the letter given to Mr. Huot to justify the dismissal, the arbitrator found that the evidence did not establish that Mr. Huot had been the instigator of the work stoppage and the mobbing of a manager, and then the employee meeting in the cafeteria to formulate a grievance. However, the arbitrator found that Mr. Huot had committed a serious offence by twice refusing to comply with the employer’s request that he return to work. Nonetheless, given that the six other employees involved had received only disciplinary letters, the arbitrator found that the employer had not been consistent in the penalties imposed and that the dismissal of Mr. Huot was unreasonable and discriminatory. Accordingly, he substituted a three-month suspension without pay for the dismissal.

The Superior Court held that the arbitrator’s decision was not patently unreasonable and the application for judicial review should therefore not be allowed. The Court rejected Pomatek’s argument that under s. 100.12(f) of the Labour Code, the arbitrator could not amend the sanction imposed on Mr. Huot because art. 13.02 of the collective agreement provided for a specific sanction for participating in a work stoppage. In the view of the Superior Court, the wording of the provision ([translation] “the employer shall be entitled to dismiss or otherwise punish”) did not limit the punishment to a particular sanction. In fact, Pomatek had simply given the other employees involved a disciplinary letter. The Court of Appeal dismissed Pomatek’s application for leave to appeal because it did not raise a question of principle, a new issue or a question of law that had given rise to conflicting judicial precedents, as required by art. 26 para. 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, R.S.Q., c. C-25.

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