Canadian Labour Reporter

1 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2014 APRIL 14, 2014 LABOUR BRIEFS B.C. Labour Relations Board rules on blacklisting / Employers slam made-in-Ontario pension plan. . . . . . . . . 2 COLLECTIVE AGREEMENTS • Good Samaritan Society, Edmonton. Six months for compassionate care . . . 3 • Hospitality Industrial Relations, province- wide, B.C. Family Day off . . . . . . . . . . 3 • Sherritt International, Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. $500 for health and wellness . . . . 4 • Tbaytel, Thunder Bay, Ont. English must be spoken at all times for safety . . . . . . 5 • Transport Thom Limitée, Gatineau, Que. $25 monthly union fee . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 • Le Réseau des Sports, Montréal. One paid day to appear in divorce court . . . . . . . . 6 ARBITRATION AWARDS • Officer fired for altering city letter. . . . . 6 • Curiosity kills therapist's career . . . . . . 8 ON LABOUR-REPORTER.COM Unionized workers at Kellogg's plant in Ontario approve a severance package and 600 workers strike at a Chinese shoe maker. Visit www.labour-reporter.com for daily news stories. Follow us on Twitter @labourreporter. And don't forget — all collective agreement summaries on labour-reporter.com now include links to the full agreement. UPCOMING ISSUES The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) recently filed a policy grievance against key provisions of the federal government's new Directive on Performance Management for public service employees. PIPSC — representing 17 unions — calls the directive hyperbolic and says it violates collective agreements. Find out more about the directive and what it means for public servants in the upcoming issue of CLR. | by SAbRINA NANJI | ABSENT PROOF OF a rampant substance abuse problem, an employer's plea to conduct random workplace drug and alcohol testing won't find a sympathet- ic ear from arbitrators. That was the message relayed in a recent ruling that pitted oil and energy giant Suncor against its union. Handed down at the end of March, an arbitration board sided with the lo- cal Unifor chapter, ruling Suncor Energy's plan to implement random testing at its plant in the Wood Buffalo region in Alberta was a breach of manage- ment rights. Not only would such testing infringe on the in- dividual privacy rights of employees holding safety- sensitive positions, as the union argued, but Suncor failed to draw a direct correlation between drug and al- cohol use and workplace incidents and accidents, the arbitration board ruled. While Unifor lauded the decision, president of the local 707A chapter Ro- land Lefort — who represents about 3,600 workers — said random testing is not a safety tool. "To me, (random testing) is like a scapegoat," Lefort said. "If you put a pro- gram in there and if the expectation of the program is it's going to be doing the work of protecting the workplace, then I think we miss the real opportunities to develop safety programs." Instead, the root of the problem must be pin-pointed, and both employees and employer should be educated and trained on the matter, while fine-tuning existing safety programs that deal with the con- cern directly. "We see random testing as alienating that workforce, rather than engaging it," Lefort added. Though it already has a comprehensive substance testing rubric in place (that includes sniffer dogs, pre- employment checks and post-incident and reason- able cause testing), Sun- cor argued more had to be done to alleviate its health and safety concerns. "Despite our comprehensive safety measures, we have pressing safety con- cerns with regard to alcohol and drugs," said Sneh Seetal, Suncor's manager of media relations. "In the last seven years, there have been three deaths at our site where alcohol and drugs were a factor. We believe one death is one too many." Random testing policies have been in the spotlight of late. Take the Irving Pulp and Paper mill case, which went all the Suncor fails to make case for random tests Oil giant didn't show relationship between substance abuse and risks: Arbitrator PM #40065782 Continued on page 7 "We see random testing as alienating that workforce, rather than engaging it." IN THIS ISSUE

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