The grievor had not been chosen for a temporary posting. The employer argued that he did not have the qualifications for the position because he had neither worked unsupervised nor experienced the greater pressures of the holiday position. The arbitrator agreed.
A plant worker grieved after his application to work over the Christmas shutdown was rejected in favour of a worker who had less seniority.
K.P. worked as a Parts and Materials Associate (PMAT) for a manufacturer and reseller of motor coaches. He began with the company in 1988. In 2005, he was reassigned to work in the company’s main regional outlet, which was housed in a 450,000-square-foot facility.
The Materials sector of the operation was divided into Shipping, Receiving and Stores. K.P. was employed primarily as a Shipper. Chiefly, he was engaged in picking parts as directed, putting them away and driving a forklift. As part of his job, K.P. used a scanner to locate, verify and track parts.
Prior to Christmas 2009, K.P. was one of 20 employees who applied to fill six positions to work in the plant over the annual holiday shutdown.
Three workers were required to cover Shipping, Receiving and Stores.
The two workers selected to work in Shipping and Receiving were senior to K.P. However, the worker who was selected for Stores had less seniority than K.P.
The union grieved.
Sufficient ability
The union argued that the employer had violated K.P.’s seniority rights according to the terms of the collective agreement. The union’s Shop Steward, who was experienced in all facets of the Materials classification, deemed K.P. to be qualified to do the work in Stores over the shutdown. Management had been informed of this assessment. K.P. had some limited experience working in Stores. Management’s insistence on assigning the most qualified person to the position was not consistent with the requirements of the seniority provisions of the collective agreement, the union said. After it was determined that a worker was qualified for an assignment, seniority then became the determining factor.
The employer disputed K.P.’s qualifications for the job and asserted that its Management’s Rights under the collective agreement empowered it to establish particular requirements for shutdown work. Moreover, in the absence of any specific contract language to the contrary with respect to qualifications for the job, management was entitled to make such determinations as long as they were reasonable and made in good faith. That was the case here, the employer said. The employer judged that K.P.’s limited experience in Stores would be a liability in terms of production and safety because he would not be able to rely on any supervision to guide him over the shutdown period.
The Arbitrator agreed.
The union was correct that the standard for qualifications negotiated by the parties in the collective agreement was “sufficient ability” rather than a “competitive standard,” the Arbitrator said.
It was also predictable that the employer would prefer as much as possible to have a free hand to select workers that it deemed to be the most skilled and qualified.
The question became, the Arbitrator said, whether or not the employer had improperly raised the bar in order to ensure that it could select not just a qualified employee but the most qualified employee.
High-pressure contingencies
The Arbitrator accepted the Shop Steward’s assertion that K.P. could manage the job under “ordinary circumstances” but that wasn’t good enough.
“ ‘Ordinary circumstances’ in this context means that the normal complement of staffing in the Materials Department, both bargaining unit personnel and supervisors, would be in place. Help would be near at hand in case the grievor had questions, needed guidance or sought direction. But the employer’s rationale for demanding a full skill set during the winter shutdown was based on the skeletal nature of staffing at that time of the year. There was no evidence to contradict the Company’s position that the PMAT covering Stores would have to operate largely on his own and would face high pressure contingencies…”
The proper focus of arbitral review in the circumstances was whether or not the employer had acted unreasonably in setting the qualifications for staffing during the shutdown.
The Arbitrator said that the employer had not acted unreasonably.
“It is my conclusion that the job standards set by the Employer for this limited time frame did bear a reasonable relationship to the work in question. Moreover, there was nothing arbitrary, unfair, discriminatory or inconsistent about the manner in which the standards were applied to the grievor’s application…”
The grievance was dismissed.
Reference: Motor Coach Industries Limited and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Lodge 1953. Arne Peltz — Sole Arbitrator. William Gardner for the Employer. Wayne Relf for the Union. May 23, 2012. 30 pp.
