During the last 90 days of every collective agreement in Ontario, the members working under that agreement have the right to change union representation. Tens of thousands of employees have voted to change unions over the years because they were not happy with their current union representation.

 

The reality is that no one would ever vote to change unions if they had to scrap their existing collective agreement and start all over again from scratch.

 

The Ontario Labour Relations Act provides a statutory freeze provision when a group of employees vote to change unions. That means that there can be no changes to the expired collective agreement until the new union and employer meet in bargaining.

 

This point of law is clearly demonstrated in two arbitration decisions

 

1. LIUNA and Healthcare and Office Professional Employees Union, HOPE, Local 220. The 500 members voted to leave LIUNA to join HOPE. (LINK)

 

As noted at the outset, most of the issues before the Board were relatively easy to resolve. While notionally a first collective agreement, HOPE is best characterized as a successor and benefits from the collective agreement foundation established over 3 collective agreements negotiated by LIUNA. In the Board’s view, it is neither an opportunity for HOPE to negotiate all new enhanced language nor for Chartwell to roll back the LIUNA foundational language. As a result, the Board has been guided, in most matters, by a concern to preserve the status quo, and / or the notion of modest improvements.

 

2. SEIU and Ontario Workers’ Union. The members of William Osler voted overwhelmingly to leave SEIU for OWU. (LINK)

 

After becoming bargaining agent, the Union became bound to the predecessor SEIU collective agreements . . . the collective agreements shall consist of: 1) The terms of the predecessor agreements as described above along with 2) the Award for the outstanding issues.