Bargaining Unit Appropriateness Sample Clauses
Bargaining Unit Appropriateness. 11 HEU, BCGEU and IUOE submit the applications should be dismissed because the units applied for are contrary to established Board policy not to permit an increase in the number of bargaining agents who represent employees at a given site within a subsector. BCNU concedes its applications would require an exception to the Board's policy, but submits there are compelling circumstances for making an exception in this case. The respondent unions dispute that compelling circumstances exist for making an exception.
Bargaining Unit Appropriateness. 76 HEU, BCGEU and IUOE raise several bargaining unit appropriateness objections to BCNU's applications. The objections can be summarized as: (a) the applications are contrary to established Board policy discouraging proliferation of bargaining agents at single sites within the health sector, and no compelling circumstances exist to make an exception to this policy; (b) a unit consisting of a single classification (LPNs) is inappropriate; and (c) the unit is inappropriate due to functional integration between LPNs and care aides.
77 I will outline the parties' arguments on each of these issues and then address the issue of bargaining unit appropriateness in light of those arguments.
a) Contrary to Board policy 78 HEU notes that in 4020, the Board indicated that it would, in appropriate circumstances, permit partial raids in the health sector: In my view, the approach charted by Grouseview Home Care Inc., supra, and later decisions removes from the health sector the underlying rationale for the Board's usual policy regarding partial raids where an applicant union seeks to represent all employees of a single employer. The normal concerns for industrial instability do not arise. There will not be an increase in the number of bargaining agents conducting negotiations and there is no potential for an additional labour dispute. The newly-added union will become a member of the applicable association that will, in turn, negotiate with HEABC on behalf of all its member unions for a single collective agreement covering the entire bargaining unit. HEABC concurs with this assessment when it says that the substitution of one bargaining agent for another with a particular employer is not inherently destabilizing and does not raise appropriateness concerns (paras. 39-40) 79 HEU further notes that, in 4020, the Board found the raiding union therefore did not need to meet the Board's usual "compelling reasons" requirement for granting partial raid applications: Any "fragmentation" of the IUOE's existing unit results from the bargaining unit structure imposed by the Act, and will not cause proliferation of bargaining units in the workplace (para. 43) 80 However, HEU submits, here BCNU is not seeking to represent "all employees of a single employer", as described in 4020 (at para. 39). Nor, it submits, do BCNU's applications involve "the substitution of one bargaining agent for another with a particular employer", as was the case in 4020 (at para. 40). Here, if BCNU's applic...