The grievor’s kept a mental record of unpaid overtime they had worked and decided to use in on a Friday afternoon. The loose approach the company took to record-keeping, despite the sophisticated systems it required employees to use, meant that it could not hold them to a strict standard.
Two workers were fired after a review of time logs showed that they had billed for time that they were not in the plant.
Late in December 2009, the human resources manager at a manufacturing plant was advised that she should check into and verify the hours worked by two electricians employed at the plant.
In particular, she was alerted to suspected discrepancies between hours worked and hours claimed on December 24.
At that time, the tubing manufacturer had three systems in place to monitor access and hours worked at the highly automated plant.
In addition to a security entrance/exit system that tracked all employees in and out of the plant, there was a punch clock for production employees and a separate system called Kronos for skilled trades employees.
The Kronos system was designed to keep track of the amount of time that the trades worked on different pieces of equipment in the plant. Assigned codes identified various pieces of equipment as well as meal and coffee breaks. Workers were to enter the appropriate code and the time they spent at that particular station.
The records for December 24 did present discrepancies. While both workers booked for eight hours through Kronos on that day, plant security records showed that both workers left about halfway through the shift. Further investigations revealed a number of similar shortfalls for the two workers over the previous five months.
The workers were called into separate meetings on January 19. Confronted with the discrepancies related to their reported hours, neither worker denied the allegations. Instead the workers claimed they were making good on hours that the company owed them for unbilled call-ins and numerous lunches and breaks that they had worked through.
Non-recorded banked hours
The workers said they kept a running tally of these non-recorded banked hours in their heads and made use of them to top up their Kronos accounting when needed — as when they left early on December 24. Their supervisor— who was absent on December 24 — was aware of this practice, the workers said.
The workers were fired. The union grieved.
The workers had falsified their time records, the employer said. The workers were minimally supervised and largely self-directed, therefore trust was an important element of the relationship.
There was no need for an informal system of non-recorded banked hours when there was an existing system to bank hours. None of the other workers had taken such liberties. The workers expressed no remorse or regret and neither offered an apology. Their falsification of time production records amounted to theft of company time. Trust in these employees was irreparably broken and termination was warranted, the employer said.
Neither worker intended to defraud the employer, the union said. Both workers genuinely believed they were entitled to take back hours they had worked but had not immediately logged through Kronos. Both workers felt they had an understanding with their supervisor that they could use lieu time to leave early.
No intent to defraud company
The employer did not meet the onus on it to establish that the workers had intended to defraud the company, the Arbitrator said.
The Arbitrator acknowledged that it was, at first, difficult to comprehend how workers who were required to log their time increments carefully into the Kronos system would also think it was reasonable to make use of a running personal tally of non-recorded banked hours that they kept in their heads.
However, the supervisor’s acknowledgement at one of the termination meetings that the worker was indeed owed two hours lieu time for a phone call that he took at home, did lend credence to the workers’ assertion that such an informal lieu time economy existed. The employer was therefore required to bear some responsibility, the Arbitrator said.
Employer must share blame
“[B]y failing to enter their banked hours into Kronos, as they knew was expected of them, [the workers] were wrong and gave the employer every right to conclude they claimed more hours worked than was the case. However, because of the practice followed by allowing employees to make entries into Kronos in a haphazard fashion, the employer must share some of the blame for the lackadaisical attitude entertained by the grievors in their approach to entering data into Kronos,” the Arbitrator said.
The employer did not have proper cause to terminate the workers, the Arbitrator said. “The grievors claim they had unrecorded banked hours available to them. Based on all the evidence presented, I find their evidence has merit to the extent they believed they were owed time which goes counter to the accusation they intended to defraud the employer with time theft.”
However, the workers did commit a culpable dishonest act when they charged their non-recorded banked hours to a fictional project in order to make up the time for their shift on December 24. Either they knew this was wrong, or they reasonably should have known that to be the case.
Discipline was warranted for that dishonest conduct, the Arbitrator said.
The workers were ordered reinstated with no loss of seniority but without other benefits or compensation.
Reference: Sandvik Materials Technology Canada and National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada, Local 2228. C. Gordon Simmons — Sole Arbitrator. Jeffrey Murray for the Employer and Harry Ghadban for the Union. April 18, 2011. 19 pp.
