Case information

Labour relations — Petition for certification — First collective agreement — Wage increases — Financial difficulties of employer — Negotiations unsuccessful — Collective dismissal and contracting out — Arbitration — Grievance of union alleging unilateral change to conditions of employment, contrary to Quebec Labour Code — Whether arbitrator could rely on concept of reasonable employer in same circumstances in his analysis — Whether arbitrator could consider elements relating to negotiations in his analysis of reasonable employer in same circumstances — Labour Code, CQLR, c. C 27, s. 59.

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In June 2018, the respondent union contested the applicant employer’s decision to lay off all of its first aid employees through a grievance filed pursuant to s. 59 of the Labour Code, CQLR, c. C 27. At the time, no collective agreement bound the union and the employer. In dismissing the complaint, the arbitrator found that the employer had acted reasonably in dismissing all of the employees covered by the certification, in light of the union’s wage demands in the course of the negotiations and given that the employer’s decision would have been the same outside of a unionization process. The Superior Court, called upon to review the arbitration decision, found that it did not have grounds to intervene, having regard to the standard of reasonableness that applied in the circumstances. The Court of Appeal intervened to correct the initial decisions because in those decisions, the test set out by the Court in United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 503 v. Wal-Mart Canada Corp., 2014 SCC 45, was applied erroneously. In carrying out its own analysis of the test, the court noted that the employer had never laid off the employees in the past. The fact that it had dismissed the employees therefore violated their right to have their conditions of employment maintained.