Re-assigned nurses win duties back

Re-assignment of nurses' duties violated collective agreement

A group of employees at a long-term care facility in St. Catharines, Ont., won their grievance against the employer, which they said contracted out exclusive bargaining unit work.

Nurses and members of the Labourer’s International Union at Henley House had had their work re-assigned to members of the Ontario Nurses’ Association in the summer of 2014. As a result, the union’s Local 1110 chapter filed a grievance, saying the move violated the collective agreement.

The schedule change happened when the employer decided it was no longer necessary to assign a floater registered nurse.
 Rather than eliminating the position, the employer converted it from a registered practical nurse (RPN) to a registered nurse (RN).
The result was that the hours of work performed by practical nurses were converted to part-time status, and two part-time practical nurses were converted to casual status.

Arbitrator Norm Jesin said the issue here was the nature of the work — and that the duties performed by RPNs and RNs are virtually the same at this worksite.

However, in each of the two collective agreements that governed the long-term care facility, there were provisions addressing the hours of work.

Essentially, if Local 1110’s grievance were to succeed and an order was made to reinstate the RPN position, the employer would have had to assign an additional RN to meet its minimum staffing obligation with the nurses’ association.

The union argued the employer should not have assigned a home area which was being covered by an RPN under its collective agreement to an RN employed in another bargaining unit.

Both the employer and the nurses’ association said that as the duties of the two positions clearly overlap, it is within the employer’s management rights to have eliminated the floater position and reassigned an RN position to one of a previously assigned RPN.

It was within its rights to reorganize in order to boost efficiency.

Jesin determined that, in this case, there was no reorganization of duties. Instead, the employer simply eliminated a floater assignment held by an RN and then re-assigned the duties in one area from the RPNs to the RNs, resulting in a reduction of hours for RPNs, Jesin said.

“In my view, the (collective agreement) prevents the employer (from) simply transferring this assignment from the RPN to the RN,” Jesin said, adding that the minimum staffing requirement between nurses and the employer did not trump the collective agreement.

“Such a bargain cannot come at the expense of the protections which the employer had previously agreed to with Local 1110 in the collective agreement,” he said.

He ordered the employer to re-assign the functions in that particular area back to the RPNs employed under Local 1110’s bargaining unit.

Reference: Labourer’s International Union Local 1110 and Henley House Long Term Care Facility and the Ontario Nurses’ Association. Adrienne Anderson for the union, Robert Kelly for the employer, Robert Dobrucki for the association. Norm Jesin — arbitrator. Jan. 19, 2016.

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