HomeMy WebLinkAboutGrimley 99-07-11 L.
IN THE MATTER OF AN ~IT~TION
BETWEEN:
LOYALIST COLLEGE OF APPLlED ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
The College
ONTARIO PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES UNION,
LOCAL 420
The Union
AND IN THE MATTER of grievances by Brian Grimley alleging hnproper layoffand a
failure to reassign.
Board of Arbitration:
I.G. Thorne, Arbitrator
Richard O'Connor, Employer Nominee
Ed Seymour, Union Nominee
Appearances for the College:
D.K Gray, Counsel
D. Butler, V.-P., Human Resources
Appearances for the Union:
Andrew Lewis, Counsel
Cecelia Reilly, Chief Steward
Brian Grimley, Grievor
A hearing in this matter took place on April 12th, 1999, at Belleville, Ontario.
PRELIMINARY AWARD
The griever was notified on July 23rd, 1998, of his layoff from his position as a full-time
professor at the College. He filed three grievances followh~g this decision. Two of the grievances
alleged an improper layoff and each, by way of remedy, sought reassignment to positions then
occupied by other full-time members of the bargaining unit; two individuals were named in each
case. The third grievance asserted that the College had failed to reassign the griever into
positions which should have been created through combining non-full-time work; that grievance
sought a reassignment of a full-time load from sessional, part-time and/or partial load positions
then held by four named individuals (but not limited to them). The grievances thus named eight
individuals whom the griever claimed entitlement to displace in one way or another.
The grievances p~'o~eeded tlu-ough the gt'ievoa~ce pi'ocedmt: but were not resolved. It is
common ground that the College's decision at Step 2 of the grievance procedure was received by
the griever on Friday, October 16th, 19998.
At the commencement of the hearing the College raised two preliminary objections: that
the Union's referral of the grievances to arbitration was untimely in that notice in writing had not
been given to the College within the fifteen-day period ~peeified in Step 2 under Article 32,03;
and that the referral to arbitration did not comply with Article 27.08(B) which in the College's
view limited thc gri~vor to ~pecifyh~g two full-time position~ (oi possibly mum if partial load
positions were involved) into which the gfievor might bump.
The parties called evidence about the circumstances surrounding the sending of the
Union's referral to arbitration.
The offices o£the President of the College and of the Human Resources Department are
both located in the main building of the College, the Kente Building. The office of the Chief
Steward, Cecelia Reilly, is in the same building one floor below the administration offices. The
Union office, in which the referral to arbitration was prepared, is also in the building but quite
some distance from the administration offices. Obviously in some circumstances it will be easy to
deliver important documents within the building by hand. On other occasions the internal mail
system will seem more convenient.
The College's internal mail system is operated by a private contractor. Although the
contractor which provides the service and the clerk who does the work had been in place for less
than a month at the time of the referral to arbitration, it appears that the system for delivering mail
had been in place for quite some time before that. There is a mailroom in the Kente Building in
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which mail can be left for internal delivery by the mail clerk. Those leaving mail can either place it
on the counter or put it in one of the slots kept for each member of the faculty in the mailroom.
In either case the clerk gathers up the mail twice a day and delivers it throughout, the building,
initially between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., and then between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.. Mail
Milch arrives in the mailroom too late for one delivery goes out with the next. On all the
evidence the mail delivery system is a routine operation and a dependable one.
Ms. Reilly prepared a letter referring Mr. Grimley's grievances to arbitration on October
30th, 1998; the date was generated by her computer when she prepared the letter. The letter
noted that the written response from Step 2 had been received by Mr. Grimley on October 16th,
1998. Ms. Reilly's best recollection was that she had sent the letter, which was addressed to the
President of the College, in the internal office mail that Friday afternoon. She did so by taking it
to the mailroom as was her usual practice. She assumed that mail sent through the system would
reach its destination in a reasonable length of time. She was aware that the deadline in this case
was coming up, she stated, and that in fact she used the mail to be expedient. The letter reached
the Human Resources Depamnent at 2:55 p.m. on Monday, November 2nd. Luisa Bowry, the
executive secretary to the Vice-President for Human Resources, made a point of recording the
time she received the letter and also noted on it that this was 17 days after the grievor had
received the written response from Step 2. It was her evidence that she checked with the office of
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the President (to whom the letter had been addressed) and was informed that that office had
received the letter in that afternoon's mail. Indeed it is our understanding from Ms. Bowry's
evidence that separate copies of the letter were received by her and by the President's office.
There was some evidence that members of faculty and staffmay on occasion work on
weekends and that in some circumstances it might be possible to deliver a letter to one of the
administration offices during a weekend. However that did not happen on this occasion and on
the evidence it seems most probable that the letter was taken to the mailroom on the Friday
afternoon after the last delivery of the day.
On November 2nd, the same afternoon that the referral to arbitration was received, the
Vice-President of Staff and Student Services wrote to Ms. Reilly taking the position that the
grievance was out of time and also that Article 27.08 B had not been complied with.
Counsel for the college submitted that the referral to arbitration was defective in two
respects. First, it did not meet the requirements of Article 27.08 of the collective agreement.
Counsel proposed that the agreement set up a process for dealing with the placement of faculty
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members affected by a layoff. Under Article 27.05 a joint union/management committee (the
CESC) would nloct to discuss plmmed staff reduCtions mid to £ormulat~ recmmnendafimlS. If tim
College then decided to proceed with a layoff, it could do so on not less than ninety calendar days'
notice to the employees being laid off and must then follow the placement and displacement
provisions of Article 27.06. A laid-off employee seeking to challenge the actions of the College
could do so in a grievance under Article 27.08 A in which he must state the positions occupied by
other employees whom he claimed entitlement to displace. In the College's view there was no
limit to the number of names and positions a grievor could mention in his grievance. When it
came to a referral to arbitration under Article 27.08 B, however, it was the College's position that
the article specifically restricted the number of positions a grievor could mention to two (or more
if partial load or part-time employees were affected). Thus the grievor had to make an election
after Step 2 when a grievance was referred to arbitration. In this case there were three documents
in which the grievor set out the positions he claimed to be entitled to hold, but in substance there
was one grievance arising out of one layoff, in counsel's submission. To permit the grievor, by
filing three grievances, to name more than the two positions in total permitted under Article 27.08
B would be to allow an end mn around the provisions of the agreement.
In support of these submissions, counsel referred to a number of awards dealing with the
adequacy of r~ff~rrah to arbitration under Articl~ 27.08 B, including R~ Canadom Coll~g~ and
Ontario Public Service Employees Union (unreported, December 12th, 1996, MacDowell); Re
Humber College mid Ontmiu Public Service Employees Union (unreported, May 21s't, 1997,
Shime); Re Fanshawe College and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (unreported, August
12th, 1997, Simmons); and Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology and Ontario Public
Service Employees Union (unreported, February 6th, 1998, H.D. Brown). Counsel also referred
us to three cases which he suggested dealt with attempts to defeat contractual provisions by
technical means: Re Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Telecommunications Union
Division No. 43 of the United Telegraph Workers et al. (1975), 10 O.R.(2d) 389; Re Council of
Printing Industries of Canada and Toronto Printing Pressmen & Assistants' Union No. 10 et al.
(1983), 149 D.L.K (3d) 53; and Gardner v. Coutts & Co. [1967] 3 All E.R. 1064. Only a
waiver by the College could relieve the Union from the necessity of complying with the express
requirement of the collective agreement, and in this case the College had put the Union on notice
immediately upon receiving the referral to arbitration.
So far as the timeliness of the referral to arbitration was concerned, counsel argued that
notice of the referral must be "given" to the other party and that putting the document in the mail
system was not sufficient to accomplish that. The agreement specified a fifteen-day time limit,
defined a "day" as a calendar day and made only one exception to the calculation of time limits by
excluding the period from Cl~'istma~ Day to New Yem~s Day inclusive. Iai Iris submission there
was no significance to the fact that the fifteen days would expire on a Saturday in this case. While
no awmd d~dt ~pt~ly wittl the ttue~[ion of tt~e expiry of a time limit on a weekend, counsel
argued that the effect of the decisions in the area was consistent and he referred us to Re
Fanshawe College and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (unreported, May 25th, 1989,
Devlin); Re Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology and Ontario Public Service
Employees Union (unreported, May 3rd, 1991, Simmons); Re Fanshawe College of Applied Arts
& Technology and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (unreported, November 26th, 1991,
Swan); Re Fanshawe College and Ontario Public Service Employees' Union (unreported,
September 4th, 1992, Brent); Re Cambrian College and Ontario Public Service Employees Union
(unreported, October 18th, 1994, Swan); Re George Brown College of Applied Arts and
Technology and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (unreported, May 14th, 1997, Kruger);
Re Cambrian College and Ontario Public Service Employees Union (unreported, October 22nd,
1997, Devlin); Re St. Lawrence College and OPSEU (unreported, March 30th, 1998, Keller); and
Re Seneca College and Ontario Public Service Empl~eef Union (unreported, April 20th, 1998,
Brent).
With respect to timeliness, counsel for the Union argued first that the fifteen-day time limit
did not expire until after the weekend: he suggested that, when the last day for doing an act falls
on a day when it i~ not possible to act - a die5 non in counsel'~ mbmi~ion - the time for doing the
act is deferred to the next day on which it can be done. In support of this view he referred us to
Re $~elco Inc. Hilton Workers and United Steelworkers of America, Local 1005 (unreported,
December 28th, 1988, Jolliffe) and s. 28(h) of the Interpretation Act, as well as to Rule 3.01 of
the Rules of Civil Procedure.
Counsel further submitted that the requirement that the referral to arbitration be by notice
in writing "given to the other party witlfin 15 days ..." was complied with when the letter in
question was delivered to the campus mail. This was delivery to the College, hc argued, in that
the contractor which handled the mail was an agent for the College. Alternatively, the College
had represented that the Union could rely on the campus mail.
Addressing the College's argument that Article 27.08 had not been complied with, counsel
for the Union argued first that a strict reading of that article entitled a grievor to name two
positions in each of the grievances he had fried. But even if this were not so, he argued, the
College had waived its right to object to any deficiency in the referral to arbitration. The grievor
had filed three grievances, each naming individuals he sought to displace, and all of the grievances
had been processed through the grievance procedure without objection from the College. An
objection during that period would have prompted Ms. Reilly to seek advice and possibly to act
differently, but the College's silence had led the Union to believe that this way of proceeding was
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acceptable and to believe that all three grievances could be the subject of referrals to arbitration.
The Union also suggested an alternative course: this board could direct the Union to
narrow the grievances by restricting the number of positions with respect to which it wished to
proceed.
Following the hearing the parties provided the board with certain additional authorities
having to do with the application of Rule 3.01 of the Rules of Civil Procedure and with the
application of the Interpretation Act to various proceedings including labour arbitrations.
Certain provisions of the collective agreement are particularly relevant to the parties'
submissions:
Lay-Off Grievances
27~08A An employee claiming improper lay-off, contrary to the provisions of this
Agreement, shall state in the grievance the positions occupied by full-time and
non-full-time employees whom the employees claims entitlement to displace. Ihe time
limit referred to in 32.02 for presenting complaints shall apply from the date written
notice oflay-offis given to the employee.
27.08B If the grievance is processed through Step 2, the written referral, to arbitration
in 32.03 shall specify, from the positions originally designated in 27.08 A, two full-time
positions, or positions occupied by two or more partial-load or part-time employees (the
sum of whose duties will form one full-time position), who shall thereafter be the subject
11
matter of the grievance and arbitration. The gfievor shall be entitled to arbitrate the
grievance thereafter under only one of (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), or (viii) of 27.06.
Article 32
Grievance Procedures
Grievances
32.03 ...
Step Two
The grievor shall present the grievance to the College President.
The College President or the President's designee shall convene a meeting concerning the
grievance, at which the grievor shall have an opportunity to be present, within 20 days of
the presentation, and shall give the grievor and a Union Steward designated by the Union
Local the President's decision in writing within 15 days following the meeting. In
addition to the Union Steward, a representative designated by the Union Local shall be
present at the meeting if requested by the employee, the Union Local or the College.
The College President or the President's designee may have such persons or counsel
attend a~ the College President or the Pre~ident'~ designee deem~ necessary.
In the event that any difference arising from the interpretation, application,
administration or alleged contravention of tiffs Agreement has not been satisfactorily
settled under the foregoing Grievance Procedure, the matter shall then, by notice in
writing given to the other party within 15 days of the date of receipt by the grievor of the
decision of the College official at Step Two, be referred to arbitration.
General
32.05 A If the grievor fails to act within the time limits set out at any Complaint or
Grievance Step, the grievance will be considered abandoned.
32.05 D The time limits set out at the Complaint or Grievance Steps including referral
to arbitration shall be calculated by excluding the period from Christmas Day to New
Year's Day inclusive.
Definitions
32.12 A "Day" means a calendar day.
There is really no dispute between the parties that the time limits set out in the grievance
procedure and for referral to arbitration in this collective agreement are mandatory in nature and
that a board of arbitration appointed under the agreement has no jurisdiction to extend them. If a
step is not taken within the appropriate time limit a grievance is expressly considered to be
abandoned. However the Union has not asked us to extend the time limit in this case but to
recognize that the time limit which would otherwise have expired on Saturday, October 31st,
actually continued to run until the end of the following Monday. None of thc decisions under this
collective agreement to which we have been referred has expressly dealt with a situation in which
a time limit has expired on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday.
The award relied on by the Union (Re Stelco (supra)) considered a factual situation with
some similarity to the present case, in the sense that the period of time allowed for referring a
grievance to arbitration had come to an end on a Saturday The matter involved the timeliness of
a referral to statutory expedited arbitration under what was then s. 45 of the Labour Relations
Act. Arbitrator Jolliffe observed that the offices of the Ministry of Labour were closed on the
Saturday, Sunday and following Monday holiday so that it was not "physically and legally
possible" to deliver the Union's request for arbitration until the Tuesday. Noting the Employer's
reliance on the requh'em~nt oF the statuLc that the l'eque~t must b~ made "witlfin 30 calendar
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days", Arbitrator Jolliffe continued (at pp. 12-13):
Moat --- but not all --- of the reaso,fiug explained above i~ well-Founded, but it contains a
flaw which I consider to be fatal. It necessitates reading Article 9.15 as though it said ---
in circumstances where the thirtieth day falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a holiday ---
that the referral to arbitration must be made within twenty-nine calendar days of the final
Reply. That is not what Article 9.15 says. In permitting referral on the thirtieth day, I
do not think it can permit the impossible.
The impossibility of literal compliance with certain time-limits is recognized by law. An
interesting example is to be found in paragraph (h) of Section 27 in the Interpretation
Act, R.S.O. 1980, Chapter 219. It is consistent with that principle to hold that the
time-limit in Article 9.15 does not expire on what lawyers used to call a dies non. The
result is both practical and equitable.
It is not entirely dear to us whether the award purported to apply Section 27(h) (now
Section 28(h)) of the Ititerpretation Act in order to interpret s. 45 of the Labour Relations Act, or
whether the provision of the Interpretation Act was simply used as an illustration of the
application of a general principle. Section 28(h) reads:
(h) where the time limited by an Act for a proceeding or for the doing of anything under
its provisions expires or falls upon a holiday, the time so limited extends to and the thing
may be done on the day next following that is not a holiday;
Section 28(h) itself can be understood only if account is taken of the definition of
"holiday" in Section 29(1): '"holiday" includes Sunday ..."', and a number of specified holidays,
but not Saturday. Section 28(i), which extends a time limit for making certain filings in court
offices which expires on "a day that is prescribed as a holiday for that office", would appear on
the titce of it not to be applicable to filings in Ministry offices. In Young v. City of Mississauga
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24 C.P.C.(3d) 202, it was found that the Interpretation Act operated to extend the time for
service of notice on a municipality when the time limited in a statute fell on a holiday; in that case
the Court based its decision in part on the fact that the Interpretation Act of Ontario defined
"holiday" as including a number of stipulated days - and thus that the definition was not finite.
Earlier in City of Montreal v. Vaillancourt [1977] 2 S.C.R. 849, the Supreme Court of Canada
had determined that the Interpretation Act of Quebec did not have the effect of extending the time
for service on a municipality in quite similar ckcumstances. It may be that the board in Stelco
was engaged in the exercise of applying s. 28(h) of the Interpretation Act a~ would have been
appropriate given that the issue before it was whether a referral to arbitration had been made
within the time limit specified in a statute~ (The fact that the board was obliged to interpret and
apply a statute made it appropriate for the arbitrator to determine whether he had the authority to
extend the time for making a referral to arbitration under the statute - that being the alternative
ground on which Arbitrator Jolliffe found the grievance to be arbitrable.
Since our task is to interpret and apply the provisions of the collective agreement rather
than a public statute, it is our understanding that the Union urged us to apply the reasoning in
Stelco in the sense that it illustrated the application of a broader principle of the law rather than
the precise application of s. 28(h) of the Interpretation Act, and that it put forward Rule 3.01 of
the Rules of Civil Procedure on the same basis. The effect of that Rule, m~d of the defiififion ora
15
"holiday" in Rule 1.03, is generally to extend time limits under the Rules of Civil Procedure in
Ontario it' th~ li~fits expire on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday.
We are not convinced that a general principle of law operates, apart from the provisions of
statutes such as the Interpretation Act, in such a way as to extend a time limit which runs out on a
day on which it is not possible to do the act in question. Instead, the approach of the courts
appears to be that some authority must be found in legislation for the non-expiry of a time limit
otherwise clearly expressed. That was the ease in City of Montreal v. Vaillancourt (supra) in
which it was found that the time for giving notice to a municipality of a claim for damages expired
on a Saturday as Saturday was not a "holiday" within the meaning of the Interpretation Act in
question, notwithstanding the fact that the municipal offices were not open to receive the notice
on a Saturday.
In this case we are obliged to interpret and apply the parties' private collective agreement
rather than a public statute. We do not consider that we can give effect to the Union's view of the
way in which the time limit in this case should be applied either because the Interpretation Act
applies - clearly it does not - or on the basis of a more general principle. It seems to us that the
collective agreement makes the parties' intentions quite clear. A referral to arbitration must take
place "witlfin fifte~ day~" of the happe~fing ora certain event, The effect ora failure to act within
16
that period of time is well understood in the context of this collective agreement: the time limit is
mandatory and strict obsc~ vm~ce cml be insisted on by the other party. The agreement elaborates
on what days are to be counted in the fifteen days and Article 32.12 A defines "day" as a calendar
day. When one considers the possibilities before those who drafted the agreement of perhaps
defining a day as a weekday or as excluding such days as Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, the
choice of a "calendar day" can be seen as deliberate. That view is reinforced by a reading of
Article 32.05 D which expressly excludes only one period in the year from the calculation of time
limits, that being "the period from Chriatmag Day to New Year's Day inclusive". The parties
themselves have determined with reasonable clarity how time limits are to be applied. It may be
that this has the effect of shortening in practice some stipulated time limits, just as the
interpretation urged on us by the Union would have lengthened them in some circumstances, but
it is the parties' collective agreement which produces this result.
We do not agree that delivery of the Union's letter to the campus mail amounted to
delivery to the College on the basis that the recipient was an agent of the College for this purpose.
The requirement of the collective agreement is that the notice in question be given to "the other
party". If reasonable ethicacy is to be given to the agreement, this must mean giving the notice to
an individual with responsibilities for administering the collective agreement on behalf of the party
and, of course, the identity of such individuals is usually well understood as it was in this case.
There is nothing in the agreement or the evidence which would suggest an understanding that the
uuntxacto~ who handled the campus mail was such a person. Likewise there was no evidence
which would suggest to us a representation by the College that the Union could rely on the
campus mail for that purpose.
It is our conclusion that the referral to arbitration which was given to the College
seventeen days after the receipt by the griever of the decision at Step 2 was out of time and that
we do not have jurisdiction to consider the grievance. In these circumstances we do not think it ia
appropriate for us to comment on the question of compliance with Article 27.08.
Dated at Kingston, Ontario, this ~ day
1999.
I.G. Theme, Arbitrator
I concur
Richard O'Connor, College Nominee
I dissent
Ed Seymour, Union Nominee - Dissent attached
06/09/1999 20:35 5196249356 $ A MOLLON PAGE 02
I have read the Majonty Award and find that I must dissent in part.
While I am in agreement with the Majority insofar as aocepting the position that
the time limits are mandatory, I am of the view that the situation which arose in this ease
is "on all fours" with those present in: Re S~leo l~te., ltiltoB Work~ grid tile United
Steelworl~ers of America, Loc~l 100S (unreported, December 28, 1988, Jolliffe.)
The language in that Agreement, as well as in the Agreement involved here, is
similar in that the time limits arc mandatory. Also in both instances, the final day for
refemn8 thc grievance to arbitration occurred on a Saturday, a day on which the
administrative offices were not open for the conducting of business.
In Re Stelco (supra), Arbitrator Jolliffe addresses the matter as follows:
That, home,er, is not the end of the matter. There is a second and crucial
issue: whether the 30-day limit had actually expired ~hen a Request was
delivered to the Ministry of Labour on Tuesday, October I I.
Assuming ~ as I have conclmted-- that time began to run on Thursday,
Septomber g, I find that the first day tharoafter expired at the end of Friday,
September 9. Similarly, the twenty-ninth day expired at the end of Friday,
October 7. Saturday, October 8, was the thirtieth day. Sunday, October 9,
was the thirty-first day. Monday, October 10, was the thirty-second day
~ 06/OB/1BBBo ~ 20:3§ §lB62~IB3§6 S A MOLLON
~ also a sta~to~ holi~. It ~ common ~ledge -- a~ ca~t be
disputed-- ~t the offices of the M~ms~ off.ur are closed a~ not
open f~ tho p~o of receiving ~ preening Rcq~s~ ~er Section 45
on Sat~, Su~ or a statuto~ ~iid~ such ~ T~n~giving D~. It
foll~s t~t t~.first ~ ~er the end of the ~en~-ninth ~ when it
became p~stcally a~ legally po~tble to deliwr a Request ~ the Minis~
~ ~b~r w~ Tues., October 11.
~e E~loyer'~ a~er is of course t~t A~cle 9.15 requi~s the Req~st
to be ~ ~ithi7 thir~ calendar ~s ~om ~ptember & On that
rec~ing, the l~t ~ wouM be ~, October 8. It wouM have been
e~ to comply wi~ the ~e ~ ~ng the request on a~ ~ after
~plember 12 (when t~ fi~l Rep~ wm received) d~n to ~d incl~ing
Frtd~, October 7 (the ~en~tnth d~) except on mte~emng
and Su~s when o~ces would be close& ~is ~ment de~ on a
li~ral ~te~retation of the tem "cale~ar ~s ".
Most -- but not aH-- of t~ reining explained above is well fouMe& but
it con~i~ a fl~ which l co~ider to be fatal. It n~cc~itutvz re~ing
~nicle 9.15 ~ t~ugh it said~ in cir~mstan~s where the thirtieth
falls on a ~m~. a Su~ or a ~li~ -- ~t the refe~al
~btwaOon mint be m~e within ~en~?in~_ cale~ ~ys orderly!
~p~. That is .Oot w~t Ari(clg 9~15 s~s, In pe~ttting ~f~l on the
thi~ieth ~, I do not think it can pe~it the i~ossible.
The im~ssibili~ of literal co~iiance with certain time limi~
~ed by the l~. An interesting e~ple is to be fou~ in p~a~aph
~) or.chon 27 ~n t~ lnte~retation Act, R.S.O. 1980, ch~ter 219. It
coK~stent with that pri~iple to hoM t~t ~e time limit in Aaicle 9,15 d~s
~t e~4re on what l~yers ~ed to call a dies noT. ~e re.it is both
prac~cM ~ equable.
~course it wouM ~e ~en p~ent to ma~ the request on ~e ~en~-
ninth d~ or ~arli~r, but z~ctly ~caking tha Union ~ ~l the thirtieth
~ to comply. On t~t ~ a~ t~ mofoll~tng ~s, SuM~ and
Mon~ -- beyo~ the con~l the ~mes-- it w~ impo~ible to ~liver
~e Req~st to ~e Mtnis~ or. hour. ~e first ~ after ~e ~en~-ninth
on which it became posxible to da ~ was Tuesd~, October 11.
-2-
85/89/1999 2B:35 519~249356 S A HOLLON PAGE 84
It is my view that Arbitrator Jolliffe is addressing the terms of the Collective
Agreement and not the Labour Relations Acl in the above reference. It is the Collective
Agreement which stipulated the Union had :30 days in which to file the matter to Arbitra-
tion.
In this case before the Panel, the Union had 15 days in which to file the matter to
Arbitration and, as e~ressed in the Majority decision, the fifteenth day fell on a Saturdr, y,
a non-business day on which, as previously stated, the College's administrative office was
closed.
In thc circumstance, therefore, I would have granted the Union thc full 15 days to
which it was entitled, especially since Ms. Reilly placed the letter in the College mail
system on the Friday afternoon, (the fourteenth day,) '.,nd I would have so ruled.
With re~pect to Article 27.08, ! am in complete agreement with the Majority that
there is no need to make a ruling on this issue since the timeliness issue was dismissed.
F. xt seymour, Union Nomi~