Airline didn't exercise all rights in agreement: Arbitrator
When a pilot left an airline without fulfilling terms of a training bond, the company made a large deduction from the employee’s final paycheque to pay for training he received while he was employed.
Jonathan Sipko — who worked as a pilot at Air Georgian in Mississauga, Ont., since 2015 — began training on Aug. 3, 2016. He signed an initial training bond with a $12,000 value that was supposed to be paid back to the company if the employee quit before a 12-month period had elapsed.
A second upgrade training bond with a value of $6,000 was issued on Aug. 8, which was intended to replace the first one, according to a letter from Gabriella Marsala, director of human resources.
But Sipko advised Jeff Tillapaugh, chief pilot, that he would not accept the new bond and he didn’t sign the form.
According to Sipko, Tillapaugh advised him that Air Georgian would simply apply the bond despite Sipko's actions, but the employer denied this conversation ever happened.
Sipko received the training and was put into a higher compensation level as a captain on Aug. 28.
On Feb. 10, 2017, Sipko resigned from Air Georgian, within the 12-month period stipulated in the training bond.
His final pay was on Feb. 28, but the company deducted $2,992.08 and labelled it as a pro-rated training bond deduction.
Sipko and the union, Air Line Pilots Association, grieved the deduction and argued the company breached the Canada Labour Code.
It said the amount of compensation owed to the company was not the issue, but the fact the company took the extraordinary step of making a large deduction without obtaining Sipko’s signature on the second training bond.
Air Georgian argued that because Sipko successfully completed the training, it was implied that he accepted the terms of the new training bond.
And it relied on a clause in the collective agreement that said if a pilot takes upgrade training after the first signed bond is in effect, “the initial bond will be terminated and the upgrade bond will take effect.”
Arbitrator Russell Goodfellow upheld the grievance and ordered Air Georgian to refund Sipko the amount of the original deduction, with interest.
“I find and declare the company breached the code in making the deduction,” he said.
The employer arbitrarily decided to impose the training requirement bond on Sipko — despite him not signing the new bond form — and that was inappropriate, according to Goodfellow.
“Express authorization was required for the deduction to be made from wages and, in my view, there was no such authorization in this case. The collective agreement does not provide for it, the bond does, and the bond requires employer and employee signatures. The latter was missing. Sipko did not sign the bond, to the knowledge of the company, yet the company provided the training anyway.”
The company should have adjusted the collective agreement during negotiations if it wanted to impose training on pilots without a signature, said the arbitrator.
“The perhaps unfortunate bottom line is that the company did not avail itself of its clear collective agreement right to require Sipko to enter into the bond as a condition of receiving the training. It trained him notwithstanding.
"That being the case, the company was not authorized to make the impugned deduction from Sipko’s wages,” said Goodfellow.
Reference: Air Georgian and Air Line Pilots Association. Russell Goodfellow — arbitrator. Lorenzo Lisi for the employer. Jesse Kugler for the employee. Sept. 5, 2017.
