Last month, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published a decision regarding an appeal submitted by an employer regarding a recent financial remedy they were ordered to pay to two of their workers.
The employer was EPCOR Utilities Inc.
Two of their St. Albert workers were both employed at the company’s Edmiston location in 2022. At the time, they each had 3 children and shared parenting responsbilities with their respective spouses.
The shifts EPCOR had assigned them were from 06:30 in the morning until 15:00 in the evening. Their spouses would handle the morning parenting responsibilities, including getting the children to school or daycare. These workers would then be home with the children after school; although they would get home 15 minutes after the children did, so they could not pick them up from school or daycare.
In August 2022, EPCOR informed both workers that they were being reassigned to the company’s Kennedale location in October 2022. Plus, their shift times would change to 07:00–15:30.
As a result of these changes—and a change to the children’s school schedule—the children would be home unsupervised for 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
To accommodate these changes, the workers proposed in September 2022 to EPCOR being able to reduce their hour-long meal break by half an hour, which would then allow them to complete their shift 30 minutes early and return home in time to welcome their children.
After meeting with the workers 3 times, EPCOR approved the request to leave 30 minutes later, but that they would need to record it as “vacation, banked time or personal leave”.
That would add up to 130 hours of lost vacation time every year. Workers who have been with the company between 1 and 7 years get only 120 hours a year, and those between 7 and 20 years get 160 hours per year.
The union that represents these workers—Local 1007 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers—filed grievances with the labour board regarding EPCOR’s decision.
Ultimately, the arbitration panel that reviewed the grievances found in a November 2024 decision that Local 1007 successfully made their case of discrimination, that EPCOR had not established an adequate accommodations process, and that EPCOR would have to pay remedies to the 2 workers.
Oddly, EPCOR had actually argued during the grievances case that “by offering the grievors a 7:00 a.m.–3:30 p.m. shift, it had provided a reasonable accommodation in the circumstances”.
Those remedies included $12,500 to each worker, as well as “an accommodated schedule which allows them to reasonably address
their childcare obligations”.
However, since that November 2024 decision, EPCOR filed an application for review, presenting 6 arguments as to why the decision a majority of the arbitration panel was unreasoable.
- They misapplied the accepted legal test for determining prima facie discrimination, without adequate consideration of the context.
- They made unreasonable findings on whether the changed work schedule resulted in adverse impacts on the workers.
- They made unreasonable findings on whether EPCOR had offered the grievors a reasonable accommodation.
- They made unreasonable findings on whether the inquiries by the EPCOR’s managers to the grievors were improper.
- They made an unreasonable and excessive damages award.
- Their award was unreasonable, lacked intelligibility and
transparency, and fell outside the range of possible acceptable
outcomes at law.
However, the labour relations board, in last month’s decision on the review application determined that EPCOR had “not met its burden
to persuade the Board that the Award is unreasonable”.
The ALRB acknowledged that EPCOR presented plenty of arguments as to why they thought the award was unreasonable. Unfortunately (for EPCOR, at least) none of those arguments were compelling or convincing enough.
As such, they dismissed the application for review.
