City staff get ultimatum to purchase uniform gear
DESPITE ITS POOR execution, an employer has won its bid to dictate the uniform purchase timeline for its staff.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) complained after the municipality of Halton, Ont., gave its employees an ultimatum to purchase their work uniforms.
The union claimed the collective agreement did not permit the employer to dictate to employees when uniform purchases were to be made.
Union members employed full-time by Halton were provided with a $600 annual uniform allowance, with part-timers receiving $300.
The case began when Halton gave its staff a deadline to purchase a three-in-one jacket.
Employees were paid the amount of their accrued but unused uniform allowance at the end of every year. Payouts for the accrued by unused uniform allowance cost the employer between $18,000 and $26,000 per year.
In 2006, the labour/management uniform and equipment committee settled on a plan to introduce the new three-in-one jacket to replace the outdated range of separate seasonal outerwear uniform options.
Workers could deduct the cost of the jacket from their annual uniform allowance on a one-time basis, or they were also given the option of spreading out the cost of the jacket over two years.
In March 2010, the employer issued a memo to alert employees that purchase of the jacket was now mandatory.
As a result, OPSEU filed a grievance.
Past practice
The union conceded the employer was within its rights to determine that all employees must purchase the jacket.
However, the union said past practice was such that employees would replace uniform components as needed. There was nothing in the collective agreement that permitted the employer to dictate the timing of the purchases. If the employer wanted to be able to dictate the timing of uniform purchases, it would have to negotiate language to that effect, the union argued.
Furthermore, the employer’s assertion of management’s rights in this case was undermined by the arbitrariness of the employer’s actions.
But Halton said it did not require specific language in the contract to allow it to direct the timing of purchases of uniform components.
In fact, it argued, the language of the agreement addressed the subsidy provided by the employer to enable employees to purchase and clean their uniforms. Under these circumstances,
management’s rights gave the employer the unfettered right to determine what the uniform was and when it was to be purchased.
The employer acknowledged that past practice permitted employees to replace elements of their uniforms as required. However, in the present circumstances, the employer was making a case to depart from established practice for good business reasons in order to establish a consistent uniform.
Therefore, the employer maintained it had not acted arbitrarily, and it was within its rights to mandate the timing of the jacket purchase.
The arbitrator agreed, saying specific contract language was not required to allow the employer to mandate the timing of uniform purchases.
Management’s rights
The employer’s directive on the uniform purchases clearly fell within the terms of the management’s rights clause in the collective agreement, arbitraror Larry Steinberg said in his decision.
The only question was whether or not the employer’s exercise of management’s rights in this case was tainted by actions or motivations that were arbitrary, discriminatory or in bad faith.
Steinberg ruled they were not.
“The way in which the employer went about exercising its discretion was poorly executed. In view of its long past history in dealing with such matters and in view of the fact that employees had become accustomed to the extra income from any unspent clothing allowance and in view of the fact that the employer gave no notice of any kind to employees much less the union of its intention, the resulting grievance could not have come as a surprise,” he said. “In my respectful opinion, the union and employees had every right to be upset with the way in which the employer altered its discretion regarding the purchase of the jackets.”
“However, the legal issue is whether the employer acted arbitrarily in the way in which it exercised its management rights,” Steinberg continued. “To act arbitrarily is to act in an illogical or capricious manner. The stated rationale for the change was to achieve a consistent uniform. This is legitimate goal for the employer to seek to achieve.”
The way the employer went about achieving its goals left much to be desired, but its actions were neither capricious nor illogical, he concluded.
Thus, the grievance was dismissed.
Reference: Ontario Public Service Employees Union and The Regional Municipality of Halton Larry Steinberg — Sole Arbitrator. Mitch Bevan for the Union. Craig Lawrence for the Employer. July 19, 2013. 13pp.
