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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1986-0471.Anderson.90-11-01ONTAR, EMPLOYbDELA COURONNE CF,OWNEMPLO”EES DEL’ONTARIO GRIEVANCE CPMMISSION DE ;;WTfMENT REGLEMENT DES GRIEFS BETWEEN: BEFORE: FOR TBE GRIEVOR: FOR THE EBPLOYER: 1 i BEARING: IN TEE RATTER OF AN ARBITRATION Under TEE CROWN EKPLOYEES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING ACT Before TEE GRIEVANCE SETTLERENT BOARD OPSEU (Anderson) Grievor - and - The Crown in Right of Ontario (Ministry of Natural Resources) Employer R. J. Roberts Vice-Chairperson J. Solberg Member A. Stapleton Member C. Wilkey Counsel Cornish Roland Barristers & Solicitors M. Furanna Staff Relations Officer Staff Relations Board Management Board of Cabinet February 8, 1988 May 19, 1988 March 11, 1989 June 20, 1989 March 22, 1990 The grievance in this case alleged a violation of the job security provisions of Article 3.20.1 of the 1986-88 Collective Agreement. Article 3.20-l reads as follows: JOB SECURITY 3.20.1 Seasonal employees who have completed their probationary period shall be offered employment in their former' positions in the following season on the basis of seniority. 3.20.2 Where the Employer reduces the number of seasonal employees prior to the expiry date of employment specified in the contracts of employment, seasonal employees in the same position shall be,laid off in reverse order of seniority. . . . . . The grievor claimed that this provision was violated when a less senior employee, Ms. Joanne MacDonald, was recalled about one month before him. For reasons which follow, the grievance is dismissed. All of the events leading up to the present grievance took place some time ago, in 1985-86. It seems that in an interest arbitration award relating to the Collective Agrement. arbitrator Swan included for the first time provisions giving, inter alia, specific‘seniority rights to seasonal employees. Before this, seasonal employees were on limited term contracts and had few, if any L express rights under the Collective Agreement and the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act. I At the time of this change in'the Collective Agreement, the 2 grievor was a long-term contract employee with the Ministry of Natural resources (the Ministry). He had been with the Ministry at its Blind River location since 1973. From at least 1974 onward, he was continuously hired back on contract as a Resource Technician 2. Usually, the grievor was hired back in April of each year, and the length of the contract varied from year to year. Generally, his contracts lasted from 9 to 11 months. The grievor testified that from year to year, the work he performed was essentially the same. In the Spring, he stated, there would be about 8 weeks of tree planting. This would be followed by other assignments such as "cut inspections". cut inspection involved going into an area which was licensed to be cut and monitoring cutting operations. These assignments, the grievor stated, were made from time-to-time by Mr. M. J. Stewart, the Forest Operations Manager for the Ministry in Blind River. According to the grievor there was no typical duration of any particular type of duty: Generally an assignment lasted until the project came to an end. He mentioned that in 1983-84, he was assigned to a Mill Yard Scaling position for 2 - 3 month periods. This assignment involved the measurement of wood for Crown duties. In executing these duties, the grievor was required to make up time sheets and scaling cards and give them to Mr. Stewart. The grievor was shown a position specification for the job of 3 Timber Technician-Scaler. He agreed that it set forth a "good representation" of the duties which he generally performed. These duties were described as follows: 1. Assist in implementing and carrying out Forest Management Program by: 65% acting as crew boss on projects such as planting, tending, timber cruising marking etc.; acting as field representative for Ministry on projects such as site preparation, seed collection, thinning, etc., and acting as auditor on tree planting contracts, etc., as required; acting as foreman supervising several crews for short period of time; locating and marking boundaries on the ground for cut layout, private land locations, laying out areas of concern with regards to cutting, strip cuts, etc.; recording information and mapping projects and preparing preliminary reports; collecting and compiling primary data for FRI. OPC, assessment purposes, etc., and preparing data input. 2. Assists in controlling cutting operations by:- measuring Crown timber for the purpose of collecting Crown charges and/or collecting samples for the purpose of determining species distribution, cull 30% percent, mass-volume relations, etc.: carrying out cut inspections to ensure cutting is carried out according to requirements of Crown Timber Act, etc.: completing and submitting appropriate cut inspection reports, as required: filling in for millyard scaler(s) during absence; acting as assistant scaler as required. Performs other duties as required by: assisting in fire suppression duties as required; 4 answering public enquiries regarding Forestry matters, advising on reforestation, etc.; as assigned. The grievor made a few qualifications to this. He said that there were other specific duties which he had performed and which were not listed. These duties included putting flight.lines on maps for aerial photography and performing different types of tending procedures. He also indicated that because the duties varied from year-to-year and person-to-person, the percentages set forth in the position specification were not necessarily accurate. The grievor also was shown the position specification for the job of Assistant to Forester. The specification described the duties of this job as follows: 1. Assisting in implementing and carryout Forest Management Program by performing such office tasks as: recording information and mapping projects; 60% preparing preliminary reports and compiling data for input to District and Head Office information systems: preparing maps and compiling data for annual plans, cutting approvals, etc.: 'entering annual cut areas, volumes etc., in appropriate silvicultural ledgers; updating forest stand maps and stand information re: preparation of management and operating plans by redrafting stand boundaries and entering new stand information as required. 2. Assisting in carrying out the Forest Management Field program by:- acting as crew boss on projects such as tree planting, 5 20% 3. 20% marking, tending etc; checking on activities such as site preparation, seed collection, thinning, locating and marking boundaries on the ground for cut layout private land locations, areas of concern with regards to cutting, strip cuts, etc.; recording information and mapping projects in the field and preparing preliminary reports: collecting and compiling primary data for FRI, OPC assessments, etc., and preparing data input. Assists in controlling cutting operations by: measuring Crown Timber for the purpose of collecting Crown charges and/or sample information; carrying out cut inspections to ensure cutting is carried out according to requirements of Crown Timber Act, etc.; completi'on and submitting appropriate cut inspection reports as required: filling in for Millyard Scaler during absence; Performs other duties as required by: answering public enquiries regarding Forestry matters, advising on reforestation etc.: assisting in fire suppression duties as required; assisting in supplementary Aerial photography by navigating flights and assisting in darkroom procedures: acting as assistant scaler as required; as assigned. As with the previous specification, the position specification for Assistant Forester was drafted for purposes of implementing the new, seasonal employee provisions of the Collective Agreement. 6 It was the generation of these two separate position specifications which was at the heart of the grievance leading to this arbitration. From the point of view of the grievor, they described essentially the same position. The only substantial difference between the jobs, in the grievor's opinion, derived from the emphasis upon the duties to be performed. In one, the emphasis was upon field work. In the other, it was upon office work. This led to a suspicion, it seems, on the part of the grievor and some of his co-workers that the Assistant to Forester position specification might have been drafted to ensure that Ms. Joanne MacDonald, a Resource Technician who specialized in office duties in the past, would continue to be recalled to this position. Accordingly, when it became apparent to the grievor that Ms. MacDonald, who had less seniority than the grievor, was recalled into the Assistant to Forester position one month earlier than the, grievor was recalled into the Timber Technician-Scaler position, he filed the grievance leading to the present proceeding. There was considerable evidence touching upon the question whether the only difference between the two position was in emphasis, i.e., field work for Timber Technicians-Scalers and office work for the Assistant Forester. The grievor testified that he or any other Resource Technician was capable of performing all of the duties established for the Assistant to Forester. He stated that when he was involved in tree planting, he compiled records as -I to the number of plants and species. To a certain extent, in the 1970's. he said, he prepared maps and compiled data for the annual plan. In doing so, he entered information onto project cards, including the type of equipment, numbers of acres involved, etc. The cards were then sent to the Regional Office. The grievor estimated that prior to 1986 he spent about 15 - 20% of his time in office work of a similar nature to that established for the Assistant Forester. He also assisted in carrying out the Forest Management Field Program and was heavily involved in assisting and controlling cutting operations. The only duty that was established for the Assistant Forester and which he incapable of doing, the grievor said, was the incidental duty of assisting in darkroom procedures. On cross-examination, the grievor agreed that since at least 1982 Joanne MacDonald was primarily assigned to the office. He stated that when she came to the Ministry, she performed similar field work to his own. Thereafter, he stated, she was assigned to work primarily on paperwork in the office. This probably resulted, the grievor testified, from the fact that the Blind River Office is much busier now than it was in the mid-1970's. with a much greater need for office work. The grievor also agreed that because he was primarily out in the field, he did not know of all of the duties that Ms. MacDonald performed. He also agreed that office duties differed from field 8 work, but, he stated, only up to a point. He insisted that he was equally capable of doing the jobs that Ms. MacDonald was assigned to do. As far as the gri.evor was concerned, office duties and field duties could be performed interchangeably, as.zssigned. The grievor added that, to his knowledge, another Resource Technician, Roger Mulligan, was assigned to the Kirkwood Office for the majority of his time in 1985, apparently to help with paper work regarding a "timber cruise" which was being carried out. Mr. D. Johnston, who was a Resource Technician 3 at Blind River until the 1986 change, and also was the Union Steward for the Local, testified that when the new position specifications were discussed with him and his fellow Resource Technicians at a meeting on December 20, 1985, he objected to the creation of separate position specifications. As he recalled, there were only two separate position specifications discussed: Timber Technician- Scaler and Timber Technician-General. It was his fear that this could lead to more junior personnel getting recalled to the Timber Technician-Scaler position ahead of more senior people who were assigned to the position of Timber Technician-General. The only difference between the two, he stated, was that those people in the Timber Technician-Scaler position were licensed and approved to perform scaling. 9 Mr. Johnston could not recall any mention of a separate position specification, i.e., Assistant Forester, for Ms. MacDonald. His impression was that she was one of the group assigned to the Timber Technician-General position. If a separate position for her had been discussed, he said, it would only have heightened his anxiety about potential defeat of seniority rights. He knew, he stated, that the grievor herein was senior to Ms. MacDonald. Prior to this process, Mr. Johnston reiterated, all Resource Technicians were in "one pot". Different positions did not exist because prior to the introduction of the seasonal language into the Collective Agreement, there was no requirement for the Ministry to set out job descriptions for seasonal employees. When he was shown some Ministry job descriptions dating from 1982-83, Mr. Johnston indicated that he had never seen such descriptions before. He then indicated that he thought that supervision might have written up these descriptions to ensure that management could hire the experienced people they needed from year-to-year. Mr. M. J. Stewart, the Forest Operations Manager in Blind River since 1973, gave extensive testimony on behalf of the Ministry. He stated that the reason for making up job descriptions in 1982-83 was to ensure that potential employees who were referred to them would be able to do the work which was required to be done. As a result, he drew up specifications for a number of different -3 _< 10 positions, including Timber Technician-General, Timber Technician- Scaler, Timber Cruiser, Cruiser's Assistant, Tracer/Draftsperson and Timber Technician and Draftsperson. The latter, he stated, was the job ~assigned to Ms. MacDonald. The list of positions described the "special skills" for this job as being the "same as Timber Technician but also requires the refined skills of the Tracer/Draftsperson." The special skills of the Tracer/Draftsperson were set forth in the description of unclassified positions as follows: must be skilled in using drafting instruments: ability to provide neat accurate work; ability to do free hand lettering; must be able to prepare maps for information provided on aerial photographs and prepare data input sheets which indicate forest stand data to be forwarded to Head Office for further processing. Mr. Stewart agreed with the Union Steward, Mr. Johnston, that before 1986 the above job descriptions were not used in recalling specific employees. At the same. time, he said, Resource Technicians were never treated as being in *one pot" for purpose of recall: The Ministry often would recall contract employees according to the speciality which they might have developed, e.g.. Marking Crew Leader, Tending Crew Leader, Cruiser Crew Leader, Associate Crew Leader, etc. When he was advised by the Ministry that official position specifications would have to be, developed for employees, Mr. Stewart said, he began to draw up specifications reflecting the foregoing specialities; however, this was abandoned in favour of the more general positions of Timber Technician- General, Timber Technician-Scaler and Assistant Forester. These three position specifications, Mr. Stewart stated, were discussed with employees at the December 20, 1985 meeting. He was certain, he said, that the Assistant to Forester position was mentioned. He produced notes which were taken by the secretary, Ms. H. Rabness, at the meeting. These indicated that all three position specifications were mentioned. Mr. Stewart added that he definitely remembered saying at the meeting that certain people were in their particular jobs because of their special skills. When asked which job he was referring to. he answered "the one that Joanne MacDonald has." Mr. Stewart agreed that the meeting was not necessarily calm. Members of the bargaining unit expressed concern about seniority problems. When it was suggested that jobs should not be broken out, but all should be placed in one big group, Mr. Stewart stated, management said no. The reason was that not everyone was qualified to do all of the jobs. Mr. Walker recalled that one of the suggestions from the bargaining unit was that people should be trained. He indicated that this was difficult to do and that was why there were different jobs. 12 As to the comparison between the duties of the Assistant to Forester and Timber Technician-Scaler, Mr. Stewart said that when he made up the job descriptions the jobs were different enough to be separate jobs. He disagreed emphatically that the lists of duties in the position specifications were the same. He referred to the specific duties of preparing maps, data, and cutting plans. He indicated that the final maps were drafted up either by Ms. MacDonald or the Tracer-Draftsperson. Expanding upon this, Mr. Stewart stated that before final maps were made up, a check was made to make sure that the stands which were listed were actually available to be ,cut, based upon Ministry allocations. This was done by Ms. MacDonald. If all was okay, he said, she drafted up the map. Sometimes, he stated, the map would be drafted up by the Tracer/Draftsperson. Then, the Clerk/Typist would type up the actual approval document and put the package together for work permits and a covering letter detailing the enclosures and any particular concern. This package then was sent out to the company involved. A Timber Technician-Scaler, Mr. Stewart went on. would not possess the special skills that were necessary to do this kind of drafting. He said that if the Ministry were going to fill this position, e.g.. if it were to become vacant, he would look' very strongly at drafting skills because that was a high priority in this job. The same held true, he stated, for cartographic skills. i 13 The amount of this kind of work which was performed by Timber Technician-Scalers, he emphasized, was very small. As to the office work performed by Roger Mulligan at the Kirkwood Office, Mr. Stewart indicated that he did not consider this to have been comparable to the work performed by Joanne MacDonald. When it was pointed out on cross-examination that the percentage,of time Mr. Mulligan spent doing office work in 1983- 84 and 1984-85 was comparable to that of Ms. MacDonald, Mr. Stewart maintained that it was different because Mr. Mulligan was only filling in on an "overload" basis. Moreover, he stated, it was not the same type of work as performed by Ms. MacDonald. And because the assignment was on an "overload" basis, Mr. Stewart added, Mr. Mulligan was assigned to the position of Timber Technician-Scaler for purposes of recall rights. At the completion of the evidence, counsel for the parties made extensive submissions upon the meaning to be ascribed to the requirement in Article 3.20.1 of the Collective Agreement that seasonal employees have recall rights to employment in "their former positions" on the basis of seniority; We now turn to consider the issues raised in these submissions. There seems to be little dispute that, in general, seniority rights constitute "one of the most important and far-reaching benefits which the trade union movement has been able to secure for its members by virtue of the collective bargaining procedure." 14 Tung-Sol of Canada Ltd. (1964), 15 L.A.C. 161, 162 (Reville). In recognition of this,. the Grievance Settlement Board has adopted the view laid down by Judge Reville in the foregoing case that "an employee's seniority should only be affected by very clear language in the collective agreement...and 'arbitrators ._. should construe the collective agreement with the utmost strictness whenever it is contended that an employee's seniority has been forfeited, truncated or abridged under the relevant sections of the collective agreement." u. See also, Re MacDonald and Ministry of Natural Resources (1989), G.S.B. #1937/87, at p. 9 (Barrett). These principles have been applied in cases under Article 3.20-l of the Collective Agreement as follows: In Re Beacock and Ministry of Transportation and Communications (1987), G.S.B. #1249/85 (Forbes-Roberts), the grievor claimed recall rights to a seasonal job which was not the done he regularly performed, but one which he had performed on a fill-in basis when the regular person was sick, etc. It was contended on behalf of the grievor that because Article 3.20.1 speaks in the plural, i.e., it talks about employees having recall rights to "their former positions", a seniority employee ought to be considered recallable to any number of jobs he or she held in the past, no matter how brief the exposure might have been. The Board rejected this submission. It concluded that to develop recall rights to multiple positions, it was not sufficient 15 merely to have worked in all those positions. A seasonal employee had to work long enough in each position to satisfy probation therein. Since the grievor did not meet this criterion, his grievance was dismissed. 1 In Re Brousseau and Ministry of Natural Resources (1988) G.S.B. #2285/87 (Devlin), the issue revolved around the creation of two separate position specifications with seemed similar to the Timber Technician-General and Timber Technician-Scaler specifications in the present case. The main difference between the two was that in the latter, the technician had to be a licensed scaler approved by the Ministry. In 1987, the grievor was recalled to the Scaler position. When more junior employees who had been recalled to the Timber Technician-General position had their .contracts extended beyond his, the grievor filed a grievance claiming that he essentially should have been allowed to "bump" into that position. There was no dispute that the grievor was more than qualified to perform all of the duties assigned to employees in the position of Timber Technician-General. In the course of the arbitration, the question arose whether ,the Ministry was justified in generating two separate position specifications for the jobs in question. The Board held that because one of the positions, the grievor's, required incumbents i Requiring multiple probationary periods was, however, rejected as unsound in Re Gen&ry and Ministry of Transportation (1989), GSB #1468/85 (Fraser) at pp. 11-12. 16 to have particular qualifications which the other did not, it was legitimate to distinguish between the two positions. The Board said: In our view, the position advanced by the Employer on this issue is the correct one. Although positions #47 and #48 have a number of common duties relating to the implementation of forest management projects, 55% of an employee's time in position 847 is devoted to scaling for which a licence and approval by the Ministry is required. While the Grievor has obtained such approval, the incumbents of position #48 have not, and thus, we find that there is a valid and legitimate basis for distinguishing between the two positions. Were the submission of the Union to prevail and the former position refer simply to Forest Technician, the Employer might well find itself compelled to offer scalingwork to an employee who was not qualified to perform the work but who was entitled to it by virtue of his seniority. Being unqualified for the work, the seasonal employee might then be forced 'to decline the offer of employment as a consequence of which he would lose his seniority in accordance with Article 3.19.2(d) of the collective agreement. In all the circumstances, therefore, we find that the former position in which Mr. Brousseau was entitled to be offered employment, was position #47. . ..g. at p. 9 If distinguishing between the two positions were improper, the Board noted, 'the Ministry might have been forced to offer employment to unqualified personnel who then would be forced to decline, thereby losing their seniority under Article 3.19.2(d) of the Collective Agreement. The Board then went on to reject the grievor's claim to bumping rights into the Technician-General job. The Board said: .._ Article 3.20.1 does. not simply provide that seasonal employees are entitled to be offered employment on the basis of seniority but instead their rights are tied too employment in "their former positions". In this case, we have found that i ,i 17 the Grievor was entitled to be offered work in position #47 and that, in fact, he worked pursuant to that job specification until October 2, 1987. After this date, the Employer had no further requirement for scaling duties to be performed by a seasonal employee. Although there is no dispute that the Grievor was qualified to perform the work which was performed by employees assigned to position #48 subsequent to October 2, 1987, once again, this is not the basis upon which seasonal employees are entitled to be offered employment. In addition, even if the Employer could be required to reassign employees during this season in the manner suggested by the Union, the Grievor has never formally occupied position #48 and, in our view, he cannot rely on work performed prior to the establishment of the position in issue. Once again, therefore,, it is position #47 rather than position #48 which is the former position in which the Grievor was entitled to be offered employment within the meaning of Article 3.20.1 of the collective agreement, . ..u..at p. 10. It was concluded that because Article 3 .20.1 limited recall rights to the "former positions" of seasonal employees and not work which they were capable of performing, the recall rights of the grievor were limited to the #48 Timber Technician-Scaler position. In Re Smith and Ministry of Transportation (1988). G.S.B. #2315/87 (Dissanayake), the grievor, who was a seasonal employee in the classification of Heavy Equipment Operator 2, claimed recall rights to another position which was in the same classification. The work assigned to the position, however, differed substantially from 'the work which the grievor had performed in, his previous position, which was to operate a snow plow. The work assigned to the position which he claimed was primarily office work, with some potential for running a spare snow plow as needed. 18 The Union submitted to the Board that the word "position" in Article 3.20.1 of the Collective Agreement ought to be read as meaning "classification". The Board rejected this submission, stating: A classification is broader than a position. A single classification may encompass a number of positions. Each position may include some combination of the duties from within the bundle of duties in that classification. Thus two employees may be identically classified'but may be performing completely different duties. In article 3.20.1the employee's right to recall is to his "former position". The word "classification" is one well known to parties and it has been used in numerous other places in the collective agreement. If the parties intended to extend a right of recall to any position in the classification in which the employee had previously worked different language would have been used. The article as it is presently worded cannot reasonably be interpreted in that manner. . . . Id. at p. 8. The Board concluded that the word "position" was well known to the parties to have a narrower meaning than "classification", and as such was incapable of bearing the interpretation suggested by the Union. The Board'went on to suggest, however, that the words "former position" as used in Article 3.20.1 of the Collective Agreement, could not be narrowly construed to mean the precise position occupied by the seasonal employee in the preceeding year. The Board said: If the Board adopts a test requiring identical duties, seasonal employees may be denied their seniority and recall rights unreasonably simple because some minor changes in duties in the position. . . . In determining whether a position is the grievor's former position some latitude must be allowed 19 for minor differences. In our view the appropriate test is whether or not the substance of the duties and responsibilities are sufficiently similar. This of course will be a question of fact in each~case. -..L Id at p. 9. The Board essentially concluded that so long as two jobs were "substantially similar" in their duties and responsibilities, they qualified as one and the same "former position" under Article, 3.20.1 of the Collective Agreement. This "substantial similarity" test mirrored the test applied by the Board in determining whether seasonal employees occupied the "same position" under the job security provisions of Article 3.20.2 of the Collective Agreement.= It was determined in Re Nielsen and Ministry of Natural Resources (Watters), GSB #1985/87 (1988) that to be the "same" within the meaning of Article 3.20.2, two positions had to be "substantially similar". Id. at p. 11. In that case, the Board determined the existence of "substantial similarity" by comparing the core functions of the two positions, the extent of overlap of duties, and whether a significant period of training would be required to acquaint the incumbent in one position with the duties and responsibilities of the other. Id. at pp. 10-11. 2 Article 3.18 of the Collective Agreement, relating to the probationary period of seasonal employees also uses the "same position" language: however, it seems that different considerations which are specific to the purpose of probation may enter into the determination of "sameness" under this provisions. See Re Lobraico and Ministry of Natural Resources (19891, GSB #1905/87, 1906/87 (Forbes-Roberts), at p. 14. 20 We accept that these criteria of "substantial similarity" are likewise relevant to determining the issue in the present case, i.e., whether the jobs of Assistant Forester and Timber Technician- Scaler are so "substantially similar" as to constitute a single "former position" for purposes of recall under Article 3.20.1 of the Collective Agreement. We also consider relevant those factors which are specific to the nature of the recall provisions such as those considered by the Board in the Brousseau case, supla. There, it will be recalled, the Board concluded that it was appropriate to generate two position specifications where the sole difference between one and the other was the possession of a scaler's licence, because to do otherwise could result in forcing, unqualified personnel to decline an offer for a licensed Scaler's position, thereby forfeiting seniority .under Article 3.19.2 (d) of the Collective Agreement. Turning to the facts of the present case, there seems to be little doubt that the core functions of the positions in dispute were different. It was common ground between the parties that the core functions of the Assistant Forester position, i.e., at least 60% of the job, involved office wqrk. On the other hand, at least 65% of the duties assigned to the Timber Technician-Scaler position involved field work such as acting as a Crew Boss or Field Representative of the Ministry on various projects. While the Board recognizes that on occasion, certain projects required Timber Technici.ans to perform a greater degree of office work, it seems 21 beyond dispute that, in general, the emphasis in this position was upon field work, and this seemed to be confirmed by the evidence of the grievor as to his own experience over the years. Considering the extent of overlap of the duties assigned to the two positions at issue in this arbitration, it seems that on this criterion, the jobs were closer to each other. While the emphasis in the Assistant Forester job was upon office work, the Assistant Forester was required to perform similar field work to that of the Timber Technician-Scaler, particularly with respect to controlling cutting operations by carrying out cut inspections, etc. We also note, that in both positions, the incumbent was required to possess a Scaler's licence. At the same time, however, the degree of overlap between the duties assigned to the two positions was far from complete. In his evidence, the grievor conceded that he was not familiar with all of the office duties carried out by the incumbent in the Assistant Forester position, Ms. Joanne MacDonald. The Forest Operations Manager, Mr. M. J. Stewart, testified with considerable conviction that, in fact, a large part of the office duties performed by Ms. MacDonald involved the use of drafting and cartographic skills which were beyond the range of skills possessed by Timber Technicians-Scaler and would require considerable training to develop. This led Mr. Stewart to state that if the position of Assistant Forester became vacant, the incumbent would 22 have to possess such drafting and cartographic skills because this was a "high priority" in the Assistant Forester position. In light of the foregoing considerations, and in particular, the degree of differentiation in core functions and essential skills, the Board must conclude that the positions of Assistant Forester and Timber Technician-Scaler are not "substantially similar" and therefore cannot be regarded as a single “former position" for purposes of recall rights under Article 3.20.1 of the Collective Agreement. It follows that the grievor did not possess recall rights to the position to which Ms. Joanne MacDonald was recalled, and accordingly, his grievance must be dismissed. DATED at London, Ontario, this 1st day of November 1990. “1 DISSENT” (Dissent without written reascn) Janet Solberg, Member Member