2013.10.18 | CWA Canada Local 30085 | Saint John Typographical Union
Saint John Local wins union jurisdiction battle
The powerful Irving media empire in New Brunswick has been thwarted once again in its relentless drive to rid its workplaces of unions.
CWA Canada’s Saint John Local has won a significant arbitration victory that will bring 13 employees under union jurisdiction, doubling the size of the bargaining unit, which includes editorial workers at the provincially circulated Telegraph Journal.
“It’s been a long year, but it feels really good to have this result,” says Bruce Barlett, president of the Saint John Typographical Union.
CWA Canada Director Martin O'Hanlon says he hopes the company has learned a lesson and will start dealing with the union in a mature and reasonable way.
"This whole sorry episode has cost Irving hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance pay and legal fees — money that could have been in their bank account," O'Hanlon notes. "It just doesn't make any sense. I hope they finally get beyond these kinds of primitive, ham-fisted tactics and learn to respect their employees and conduct mature labour relations."
In the summer of 2012, Brunswick News laid off five unionized employees in the advertising department at the Telegraph Journal in Saint John. Under the guise of restructuring, the company then set up an advertising department and hired people to work in the offices of a weekly newspaper it owns in a neighbouring community.
Although the workers were still selling advertising for the Telegraph Journal, the company said they were not employees of the newspaper, but of a “separate and distinct business unit.”
With full legal and financial support from CWA Canada, the Local grieved the matter and took it to arbitration.
The arbitrators ruled that the jurisdiction clause in the collective agreement covers employees no matter where they work, so long as they work for the employer. They noted that the contract language covers all employees of the Telegraph Journal "employed at or out of its Advertising Department."
The 13 employees are bound to be better off in terms of pay and benefits once they are covered by the collective agreement, says Bartlett.
The company in 2011 slashed the commission income of its advertising sales reps by limiting them to specific geographic areas. Bartlett says the scheme was subsequently revised, but the Local was unable to get detailed information on employee compensation while their union status was in dispute.