Staff interactions not considered experience for traffic position
An Ontario municipal worker who was laid off didn’t have the qualifications to bump into the position she wanted.
Leigh Ann Dixon was hired by the City of Windsor in Ontario in 1998 to be a temporary data entry clerk in the city’s public works department. She had previously spent three months as an administrative assistant for a home builder. She worked in other temporary administrative positions for a couple of years until she landed a permanent position as clerk-steno in the city’s planning department.
Dixon moved around to other city departments before becoming a payroll clerk in the corporate services department in 2007.
On June 8, 2008, the city informed Dixon that her position was being eliminated due to a reorganization and she was being laid off.
However, the collective agreement allowed laid-off employees to “bump” employees in other positions who have less seniority “provided they meet the qualifications.”
Dixon reviewed various positions with the city that she felt qualified for and had the seniority to bump into and provided a list of six positions. Her first choice was that of operations data technician (ODT) in the traffic operations area of the public works department.
On June 22, the city’s HR department told Dixon that she didn’t meet the experience qualifications for the ODT position — specifically, the requirement of “over one year of municipal transportation experience.”
Dixon disagreed and at a meeting six days later said that her experience working in the planning department — involving intake and review of applications for city departments such as fire, police and traffic — with the home builder before her employment with the city, and her time as a payroll clerk met the experience requirements. She noted that she interacted with the traffic expert regarding applications and this should count as traffic experience.
However, the city specified that the necessary experience was of a technical, not administrative nature, from working in the field. The senior manager of traffic operations reviewed Dixon’s qualifications and agreed.
The union filed a grievance on Dixon’s behalf, arguing she had the more than one year of municipal traffic/transportation experience in the posted job requirements and the city changed the qualifications in the middle of the bumping process to require technical experience.
The arbitrator noted that the city could have asked for technical or field experience related to specific ODT job duties but it chose not to. The job posting gave no indication that such experience was required and the other qualifications — such as experience creating databases and spreadsheets, post-secondary education, and good communication skills — were mostly related to “sedentary” work. As a result, the city’s assessment of Dixon’s qualifications “improperly took into account experience qualifications beyond any reasonable interpretation of the words ‘over one year of municipal traffic/transportation experience,’” the arbitrator said.
However, the arbitrator found that Dixon’s experience with various city departments and the traffic expert was “purely clerical” and “did not equip Dixon with any significant understanding of the operations of the traffic department beyond its relevance to the planning process.” The arbitrator noted that to use that standard would mean Dixon had fire and police experience as well, which wasn’t a reasonable conclusion.
The arbitrator stated that it was reasonable to view the experience qualification in the ODT posting must relate to “the core or central work that is performed in a municipality’s traffic or transportation area.” Dixon’s experience as a payroll clerk was “supportive of, but tangential, to the operations of the traffic department” and didn’t qualify her for the ODT position, the arbitrator said.
The arbitrator dismissed the grievance, noting that it might be possible for Dixon to be able to perform the duties of an ODT “with time and training” but she didn’t meet the experience requirements in the job posting.
Reference: Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 543 and Corporation of the City of Windsor. Lyle Kanee — arbitrator. Mark Nazarewich, Amit Gurpersaud for employer. Stephen Krashinsky for employee. Jan. 31, 2020. 2020 CanLII 9248
