Employees wanted Family Day off but employer said they had enough holidays
This instalment of You Make the Call features a dispute between an employer and its union over paid holidays.
The collective agreement between Atlantic Packaging Products, a Toronto-based manufacturer of paper, plastic and other packaging materials, and its union, stipulated employees would receive paid holidays on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day and Thanksgiving Day. All hourly employees with at least two months’ service received a regular shift’s pay for each holiday and double pay for Christmas, New Year’s and Boxing Day. Employees received holiday pay on the condition they weren’t absent without “justifiable cause” on the day before and after the holiday.
Atlantic’s plant operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week and remained open every day except for Christmas, New Year’s and Boxing Day. On the other holidays, it operated as long as enough employees volunteered to work. These volunteers were given options to take time off afterwards.
In addition to the eight paid holidays, employees received two floating days off per year, for which they also received a day’s pay. To take a floating day, employees had to request it at least three days before the intended day off. The day was granted if it didn’t interfere with the department’s efficiency. The collective agreement also stipulated if employees didn’t request their floating days by Dec. 1, Atlantic would pay them for the unused time. However, this rarely happened and employees generally were able to take their floating days whenever they wanted.
Any issue addressed by both employment standards legislation and the collective agreement would be governed by the collective agreement if it provided a “greater benefit.”
In 2007, the Ontario government announced a new holiday in February, called Family Day. When Atlantic refused to give its employees the day off for Family Day, the union filed a grievance, claiming the collective agreement no longer provided a greater benefit since legislation now provided for nine public holidays while the agreement only had eight. It said the two floating days couldn’t be considered public holidays because they had different requirements. Employees had to request the floating days and the employer had the right to refuse the request. As a result, the union argued, a ninth holiday should be added to the collective agreement to bring it up to employment standards.
You Make the Call
Did Atlantic have to recognize the new February holiday and give employees a paid day off?
OR
Was the collective agreement’s holiday allotment legal and not requiring an amendment?
If you said the collective agreement’s holiday allotment was fine and Atlantic didn’t need to add Family Day, you’re right. The arbitration board acknowledged the floating days off had different characteristics than the regular holidays, but the differences made them “preferable” because employees didn’t have to work the day before and they had a choice of when to take them. Therefore, the floating days were more beneficial than statutory holidays and two of them were better than one regular public holiday in February. This made them a greater benefit than the statutory minimum.
“Effectively, the collective agreement provides for 10 paid days off, the eight holidays listed and the two floating holidays, while the (Employment Standards Act) provides for nine public holidays,” said the board. “Even if compensation were assessed separately from time off, as the union maintains should be done, the paid days off for holidays under the collective agreement are a greater benefit than the minimum standard.”
