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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1987-1768.Camilleri et al.92-06-17CJNiARlO EMPLOYESDELA COURONNE CROWNEMPLCJYEES DE “ONTAF(IO -. GRIEVANCE C$lMMlSSlON DE SETTLEMENT REGLEMENT BOARD DES GRIEFS , IN THE MATTER OF AN ARBITmTION Under THE CROWN EMPLOYEES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING ACT Before THE GRIEVANCE SETTLEMENT BOARD BETWEEN OPSEU (Camilleri et a ,I) - and - Grievor The Crown in Right of Ontario (Ministry of Transportation) Employer BEFORE: A. Barrett M. Gandall F. Collict Vice-Chairperson Member Member FCR THE GRIEVOR S. Ursel Counsel Cornish Roland Barristers & Solicitors FOR THE EMPLOYER M. Failes Counsel Winkler, Fiiion & Wakely Barristers & Solicitors HEARING December 2, 1991 March 26, 1992 I 1 i DECISION This is one in a series of drafter classification grievances that have arisen in this Ministry over the last several year.5. There h:ls been long-standing dissatisfaction amongst the drafters. who say that their class standard, which was written in 1963, no longer accurately reflects the type of work they do. The standard refers, in its preamble, to "the exercise of manual skill in the man~ipulation of drafting tools", whereas in fact computers now perform the majority of the work, and the drafter has evolved into a computer professional. The class standard also refers to a ~"characteristic duty" of drafter 3's to "direct the operation of , .coding and decoding information for survey calculations made by i electronic computer". but the union says that the reference is to : a very primitive computer technology, not today's much !lOl-P i sophisticated technology. These are the grievances of four drafter 3's from the King.ston office whose job title is Examiner Plans. IJpon consent, Mr. Camilleri is the representative grievor, and it is agreed that his testimcny and his circumstances apply also to William Connolly, Gerry I,aLande and Gerald Martin. These grievers are all of the Examiner Plans working out of the Kingston office. The grievor-5 functic,n as group leaders supervising drafter 2's who prepare complex engineering and legal plans. Over the years, the end product has stayed the same, while the method of producing the plans has changed rather dramatically. Rack in the 1960's. mathematical calculations were done with logarithms and a hand- i - 2 crank calculator. Drawings were <one by hand. Surveyors' field notes were the raw material used to build a plan. Now the surveyors' level or transit has been replaced by a "total station" computer which records a tremendous amount of data from the field on a diskette and then is down-loaded into a computer in the office by an Automated Plans Technician who checks the data for accuracy and generates a preliminary drawing. Then it goes to a drafter 2 for sub-drawings and changes and the addition of detail. The drafter 3's supervise the drafter 2's directly, but also work with the Automated Plans Technicians assisting them with the interpretation of field data. The drafter 2's use computer programs to create their drawings. Some of these programs the drafter 3 can utilise himself: others he cannot. Mr. Camilleri and the other grievor-s have taken some computer training courses and have learned other programs on the job by teaching themselves.. If a drafter 2 has difficulty with his computer operation, he goes to a computer supervisor. The Examiner Plans' concern is .with the accuracy of the end result, and he does not need to be as .proficient as the.drafter 2 in the computer creation of the plan or drawing. At the time these grievances arose, there .were about seven highly-sophisticated computer programs used in the office which now perform the calculations, produce drawings and plot the plans. A job that used to take a week can now be done in a day and a half. I While the class standard for drafters has not been amended I / since 1.963, the job specifications for drafter 2's and 3's have 1 been amended in 1983 and 1987 to reflect the increas~ing requirement ! of computer knowledge and skills. lJnion counsel argues that this ,steady accretion of computer duties to the drafter 2's and 3's ltakes t:aem out of their standard, which focuses primarily on manual skills. The union relies upon Eldon -, GSB #1324/88 (Samuelsl, a 1989 idecision of this Board, wherein the panel framed the issue as: :"Whethsr or not the computer is merely a drafting tool, or has the ;job of a drafter 2 gone beyond the exercise of manual skill in the jmanipul.ation of drafting tools?" In that decision, the Roar-d tacknowledged that the final product is essentially the same today 'as it was 20 years ago. However, it found that the grievor was now more than a draftsman; he had become a very experienced and :knowledgeable computer operator, thus making him a more valuable ;employee to the Ministry. There the Board found that the grievor ,should more properly be classified as a Data Processing Technician ;6 , which is the job title of the Automated Plans Technician ,referred to earlier. In that case, the grievor performed almost all of his work on a computer, and had recently been trained in AUTOCAD, the most sophisticated inter-active drafting program to date. 4 'By analo3y, the union argues that it is anomalous to upgrade drafter 2's b~ecause of their increased computer expertise and not upgrade their supervisors at the same time. .’ Another decision of this Roard, Nadavallil, GSB #1411/90 (Roberts), followed Eldon and made a Berry-type order for re- classification for a drafter 3 in the Kingston office. Th~at grievor was not a group leader of .drafter 2's, but fel.1 into another category of drafter 3's described in the class standard ads those people engaged in highly-technical, sub-professional desi3n drafting, where the supervisory responsibilities are secondary to highly-technical survey drafting performed for senior survey officials. At the time of his grievance, Mr. Nadavallil spent 35% of his time at a computer work station performing drafting duties. He was also trained in and using AUTOCAD and an even more sophisticated version of it called AUTOTOOL. The Board found that as a result of the i.ntroduction of these two new programs, it had been eight or nine months since the grievor had used any manual skill at all in the manipulation of drafting tools to produce the engineering design drawings for which he was responsible. Counsel for the employer seeks to distinguish the present fact situation from those in Eldon and Nadavallil. Employer counsel concedes that a significant change in the method of doing a job can change the job altogether as in Eldon and Nadavallil, but argues that what these grievers are doin is the same as they have always done: use their wealth of knowledge and experience to check the I , I 5 ,accuracy of plans produced. Employer counsel also argues that a11 'of the programs deployed at the time of these grievances were just iinput data programs, and it was not until after the grievances that , the inter-active A'JTOCAD was introduced. Employer counsel relies 1pon Chi\g, GSR #172/89 (Watters), where it was found that drafter ?'s who were working on the most' complex of drafting projects (not functioning as group leaders) spent 12% of their time working with computers but that did not take them out of the class standard for drafters which described the characteristic duties as including /'the operation of coding and decoding information for survey calculations made by electronic computer". There the Board follnd that the longevity of the class standards did not militate against giving the words contained therein their plain and ordinary meaninq, and that the class standards expressly contemplate that drafter 3's will perform complex work and that a certain amount of same will be accomplished through the use of the computer. The situation of the four grievers in this case is not parallel to that of the grievers in Eldon and Nadavallil. These grievors supervise the work and the product of the drafters using the sophisticated computer technology, but they do not engage themselves that much in computer work directly. Mr. C;tmilleri testified that he spent about 15% of his time hands-on at the computer. He has sufficient understanding of the computer programs that he knows what the drafters can do with them and can direct their efforts and corrections. However, if a drafter has difficulty with the program itself, he goes to a computer specialist and not i I I 6 Tao Mr. Camilleri for direction. These grievances are all dated August, 1987, which was just prior to the introduction of ATJTOCAD. When AUTOCAD came into regular use in 1988, the drafter 2's used it and the drafter 3's checked their final product, hut did not actually use the program themselves We do not think the evolution of the drafter classification jurisprudence leads us as far as union counsel would take us. If the drafter 3's were required to be totally conversant with all of the drafting programs in order to supervise that aspect of the drafter 2's work, the union argument would be more compelling. If the drafter 3's were training the drafting 2’s in comput.er functioning and performing the trouble-shooting function when computer problems arose, it might safely be said that a qualitative change in their job duties had taken place requiring a re- classification, as in Eldon -. However, in this case, the level of computer knowledge and use by these group leaders was not so significant that it requires that they be taken out of the drafter class standard and a new standard devised for them. c 7 Accordingly, the grievances are d ismissed. Patsd at Toronto this 17th day of isIne, 1992. A. Barrett, Vice-Chairperson *'I Dissent" (dissent to follow) Camilleri et al (GSB# 1768/87) DISSENT I previously indicated my dissent from the majority decision, issued June 17, 1992. The decision denied the grievances of a group of plans examiners, classified as drafter 3's, in the Kingston MOT office. It is, of course, a judgement call, as to whether the change to the jobs of the grievors provoked by the progressive automation of the drafting process is quantitative or qualitative. In my opinion, the 'change in job content is qualititative and not insignificant, and therefore warrants reclassification. My reading of the evidence suggests that by 1987, when the grievances were filed, the use of computers had decisively affected the manner in which the plans examiners discharged their responsibilities. As noted by the majority, automation required supervisory as well as non-supervisory drafting personnel to learn a variety of sophisticated programs such as ICES COGO, LEPLOT, MTC COGO, SP PROF. and HORVER. The original class standard did not anticipate this development. The peripheral need to understand rudimentary coding and decoding functions had virtually nothing to do with the knowledge of computer commands and advanced software which became a central requirement of the jobs of the plans examiners by the middle of the last decade. I do not believe, with respect, that the issue in this case is that the four grievors "do not engage themselves that much in 'computer work directly". The issue, it would appear, is whether their work has become, directly or indirectly, dependent on an understanding of computerized drafting techniques; That seems to me to be the essence of the matter in Eldon (GSB # 1324/88) and Nadavallil (GSB # 1411/90). While it is true the grievors do not directly interact with the technology, it is difficult to imagine how they could continue to effectively supervise their subordinates without an intimate grasp of the new computerized techniques which they needed to acquire. Accordingly, I would have issued a Berry order remitting the matter to the parties to determine a proper classification. for the grievers. Marvin Gandall Union Nominee