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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1980-0145.Gavel.81-03-23 ONTARIO CROWN EMPLOYEES GRIEVANCE SETTLEMENT BOARD 180 DUNDAS STREET WEST. TORONTO, ONTARIO. M5G 1Z8-S1J)TE 2100 TELEPNONE1 4161598-0688 IN THE MATTER OF AN ARBITRATION Under The CROWN EMPLOYEES COLLECTIVE BARGA'INiI�TG ACT Before THE GRIEVANCE SETTLEMENT BOARD Between : Mrs . Mary Gavel Grievor lend The Crown in Right of Ontario (Ministry of Health) Employer Before: Prof . P . G . Barton dice Chairman Mr . F. T. Collict Member Mr . H. Weisbach Member For the Grievor: Mr. G. Richards , Grievance Officer Ontario Public Service Employees Union For the Employer; Mr. J. Callas Regional Personnel Administrator Ministry of Health, Penetanguishene Hearing: February 25 , 1981 . t �I i f -- 2 - In a grievance filed on March 30 , 1980 the grievor alleged that the employer violated Article 4 . 3 of the Collective Agreement by failing to promote her to a position of Clerk III General, At the time of the hearing the grievor had been promoted to a position of Clerk III - General in the Social Therapy Unit of the Mental Health Centre, Penetanguishene. The position that she sought originally, was a position as a Clerk III - General in the Purchasing Office at the same institution, which position is now filled by a Mrs. Donna Dickie who was present and gave evidence at the hearing. Because the grievor had been promoted to a different position at the .same level, the relief sought in this grievance was that the grievor be---paid for the extra time she spent as a Clerk II - General and that the Board issue a declaration that the procedures followed in the competition which gave the job to Mrs. Dickie were unfair. Some background is useful. The Purchasing Department at - the Mental Health Centre in Penetanguishene is run by two persons. One of these persons is a Purchasing Officer. This person, Mrs . Sandra Ross, the former Clerk III - General in the Department, is responsible for the Purchasing Office. It is her job to supervise the activities of the Clerk and to make all final decisions concerning the activities carried on in the office. Under her supervision is a Clerk III - General. The requirements for this position are as follows. Sixty-five percent of the time is spent providing clerical assistance to the Purchasing 3 - Officer. This includes obtaining price lists , expediting purchase orders, placing codes on items, maintaining files and brochures , and preparing purchasing orders and requisitions. Fifteen percent of the time is spent in typing duties, fifteen percent of the time is spent acting as a receptionist, and related duties take up the remaining five percent. The position specification suggests that the skills required are as follows "Grade 10, preferably grade 12 education. About 3 years clerical experience. Knowladge of purchasing procedures preferred. Typing up to Civil Service Commission standards . Ability to communicate and deal effectively with firms, public, department heads, and central purchasing office staff. Tact, good judgment and personal suitability. " In October of 1979 a vacancy appeared in the Purchasing Office. ' Mrs. Sandra Ross was ultimately appointed to the position of Purchasing Officer and from about October of 1979 Mrs. Dickie filled the position of Clerk III - General on an acting basis. On January 15, 1980 the vacancy in the position of Clerk III - General was posted, which position was filled by Mrs . Dickie in late February. There were three candidates for the position, Mrs. Dickie, the grievor, and one other. The relevant seniority dates of Mrs . Dickie and Mrs . Gavel, the grievor, are May 1977 and February, 1977, respectively. The position was filled by a selection board Made up of (1) Mr. Callas, the Regional Personnel Administrator (2) Mrs. Ross, the Purchasing Officer (3) Heather Smith, the Administrative Assistant to the Medical Director. r - 4 - The process of filling the vacancy was a process of writing a written test and participating in an interview as well as filling I in an ,application form. The questions on the written test and the questions asked at the interview, both of which were conducted 3 on February 11,1980 were prepared with a view to the position specifications referred to earlier. All three candidates were asked the same eight questions at the interview and three questions on the written test which took approximately forty minutes to one hour to complete. Using this information as well as the information that the members of the selection board had concerning the qualifications and ability of the three candidates , the Board rated all three candidates on a' score card in six categories : (1) qualifications (2) experience (3) job .knowledge (4) communications (5) initiative and (6) interview. Each of- these areas was itself independently weighted with experience and communication skills being weighted more heavily than qualifications, job -,knowledge, or the other criteria. As a result of this process Mrs . Dickie scored 89 1/2 points the second candidate scored 70 1/2 and the grievor scored 61 1/2. Because the members of the Selection Board felt that Mrs. Dickie was clearly better than the other candidates , the members did not take seniority into account and gave the position to Mrs . Dickie. As far as paper qualifications are concerned Mrs. Dickie appears to have had less clerical experience than the grievor but considerably more actual, experience in the area of purchasing . i - 5 - In particular she had at the time of the competition, approximately six months experience in part-time or acting capacity in purchasing. The grievor on the other hand is better educated, possesses considerably more clerical experience, and had some purchasing experience as an assistant to an accounts clerk at the Educational Relations Commission in 1977 and with two private motor vehicle dealerships. Put simply the contention of Mr. Richards was that the candidates were equally qualified or in the terms of Article 4. 3 their qualifications and ability were "relatively equal" and that for this reason the employer erred in choosing Mrs. Dickie He also suggested that the questions asked on the written test and in the personal interview gave an excessive advantage to a person with actual knowledge of the workings of the Purchasing Office at Penetang and did not adequately probe the ability of the candidates to do the Sob. Our approach to this question has been that we have not felt that it was up to us to second guess the decision 'on the merits, provided the employer used appropriate criteria, applied them honestly in an unbiased and good faith way, and reached the decision which we felt was a' reasonable one in the sense that a reasonable employer could have reached it in light of the facts available to it at the time. We were unable to find any evidence of bad faith or arbitrariness in the way in which the decision was made and we feel that the criteria which were used were honestly applied by the members of the Selection Board. with respect to 6 the suggestion that the criteria which were chosen, in particular 'the questions which were asked on the interview and in the examin- ation were not appropriate, we feel that the questions asked at the interview were entirely appropriate. One of them for example "have you read the job spec" asks for information which, we would have thought, would have been available to each candidate. As it ' happens, the grievor did not seek out the job specifications before coming to the interview and saw them for the first time at the interview. It strikes us as strange that a person applying fora job would not seek out the job sepcifications to find out what the job was about before entering an interview of this sort. The other questions seem sufficiently general that they would not reward experience in the particular position at the expense of experience generally. The questions on the written test did not seem to us to reward experience excessively. The only one of these which might come close to this is Question 1, which asks the applicant to list a series of priorities for work requests. It seems to us that this list could be prepared by anybody with a minimum of common sense. We might add that in dealing with the results on the written test which included a typing test, the employer indicated that the typing of the grievor was substantially inferior to that of Mrs. Dickie. We did not see the tests and could not asses this independently. The only quarrel we might have with process of selection i is that the weighting of the six criteria on the score card, in which experience is weighted as twice as important as qualifications - 9 - i f 7 I may have given an undue advantage with respect to -that criterion only, to Mrs.. Dickie. Because, however, the raw score totals were - so different we do not feel that even if this factor had been ignored the grievor would have been rated as relatively equal by the members of the. 5election Board. we therefore feel that the Selection Board did its job properly, that its decision was a reasonable one and are not prepared to interfere. In dismissing the grievance we feel that we should comment on the delay in posting the vacancy. It is quite clear that Mrs.. Dickie came to the interview in February with considerably more knowledge concerning the requirements of the position than the other two candidates. This knowledge had of course been gained during the time that she was in the position of acting Clerk III - General. There is no requirement in the Collective Agreement that a staff vacancy be posted quickly but, particularly when a job is one which could be done by a very large number of people, we feel that an unfair advantage can be given to an incumbent .i:f a competition is not held. quickly. The other factor which we should perhaps comment upon is the fact that the immediate supervisor of Mrs. Dickie, Mrs. Ross sat on a Selection Board. We feel it is inevitable in a two person department, where the two people have worked together for some months, that assuming that the two have gotten along well, the tendency of the supervisor would be to unconsciously favour the familiar person at the expense of the unfamiliar. This problem could also be obviated by requiring the position be filled quite quickly. i Because we are not prepared to disagree with the decision that the candidates were not relatively equal in qualifications and ability, we do not have to decide the meaning of the concluding part of Article 4 . 3 "where qualifications and ability are relatively equal , length of continuous service shall be a consideration" . Unlike most clauses of this kind this clause does not seem to require that the job in such a case be given to the person with , the highest seniority. If that is the case then the section is obviously not likely to carry out the purposes which it was designed to serve. DATED AT London, Ontario this 23rd day of March, 1981 Peter G. Barton Vice-Chairman "F. T. Collict" I, concurjd6smer& F. T. Collict Member "H. Weisbach" I, concura't H. Weisbach Member i . � I