Over $70,000 win for our PPC Members
In December of 2018 the Vancouver Local filed a grievance against the Corporation for an obvious violation of article 39. Having attempted to advise the Corporation during the consultation process that their plan to bring in Temporary employees immediately following regular shift times for the month of December would be a violation of article:
39.05(f) Notwithstanding paragraph 39.05(c), regular full-time employees in the required classification and who are present at work will be offered overtime hours if temporary employees are at work in the full-time employees’ section in the two (2) hour period that immediately follows the end of their shift.
The Corporation decided to ignore our warnings and so a grievance was filed.
During that month most sections at the PPC were affected by this clear violation, as Temporary employees were assigned positions throughout the plant day in and day out. As a result of this, the Corporation continued to incur liability for bypassing the regular employees for their deserved overtime opportunities. The Corporation denied the grievance at the first level hearing stage and so we had to wait until the grievance was referred to an arbitrator before we could see some justice.
Because of the excellent work done very early on by sisters Anju Parmar and Erin Collins we were able to establish a very good case. This eventually led to Labour Relations agreeing with us that the Corporation did in fact violate the Collective Agreement and was liable for all of the missed opportunities. A lot of forensic work followed, trying to discover who was working where and how many people had been bypassed. This work took months of careful examination and negotiation with the Corporation. Sister Neerjha Bhatara helped us get this across the line by using her extensive knowledge with equal opportunity list management and her deep understanding of the internal workings at the PPC. And as a result, the Corporation has agreed to pay members for the missed overtime opportunities. This is a total amount that will be upwards of $70,000 payable to our members that had their rights abused by the Corporation. Once a MOA has been signed, members from VEO Inbound and Outbound, Parcels and Packets will be notified by the Union and the employer.
In Solidarity,
Alan Dobbs, Grievance Officer