Union wanted employee contact information to prepare for round of collective bargaining
This instalment of You Make the Call involves a union’s request for an employer to supply contact information for all of its employees.
Port Transport, a British Columbia shipping company, had a collective agreement with its union, CAW-Canada, Local 2006, expire on June 30, 2010. Six days before the collective agreement expired, the union gave the company notice to bargain a new agreement and preparations began for a round of talks.
On July 20, 2010, the union formally requested in writing for Port Transport to provide it with information on the employees who were part of the bargaining unit in order to help with its preparation for collective bargaining. Port Transport agreed to provide some of the information the union wanted, but refused to give certain pieces of information, including:
•A contact list with employees’ names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses
•Specific information on each bargaining unit member including date of birth, type of benefit coverage, wages, premiums, job classification, vacation entitlement and bonuses
•Data on each employee’s usage and cost of benefits over the previous three years.
Port Transport said it wouldn’t provide this information without the written consent of the employees in order to protect their privacy interests. It also stated that if the union was able to obtain that written consent, it would at the same time be able to collect the information it wanted.
The union argued it required the information so it could properly engage in collective bargaining and make rational proposals on wage rates, premiums and benefits. It also claimed to need the contact info so it could communicate with the employees, that it was entitled to the information as the certified bargaining agent for them and that most of the requested information couldn’t be obtained any other way.
Port Transport maintained the B.C. Labour Relations Code did not include a legal right to the disclosure of information to the bargaining agent and the union didn’t indicate it had any difficulty contacting its members without the information. It also argued there was a two-step process established in labour arbitration that must be met before an employer has to disclose information to a union: the union must establish that the employer’s refusal to provide the information interferes with its capacity to represent the employees and whether the employer has a sound business purpose for the refusal.
You Make the Call
Was the union entitled to the detailed information on employees?
OR
Did Port Transport have the right to refuse to disclose employees’ personal employment information?
If you said the union was entitled to the employee information, you’re right. The board noted that it had established in earlier decisions that employee privacy was not a sound business reason to refuse to provide information on employees, because the union is authorized by law to collect the information in order to fulfil its duty to represent its members.
The board then looked at the other part of the two-step process and found the union did not have to establish whether the information could be obtained by other means to determine whether the refusal interfered with the union’s ability to represent the bargaining unit. In this case, the employer did not dispute that the union required the information, nor did it say it couldn’t provide the information. Since the information was for the purposes of collective bargaining and there was no sound business reason to refuse the information, the board found Port Transport’s refusal interfered with the administration of the union and its ability to represent its members, which was a breach of the provincial Labour Code.
