Last month, I wrote an article about workers at a continuing care home in Morinville filing an application with the Alberta Labour Relations Board to be granted a unionization certificate.
Local 3000 of the Labourers’ International Union of North America, also known as LiUNA filed the application on 16 December 2024 on behalf of workers employed by Yarrow Limited Partnership.
The employer operates Aspen House, the 72-space continuing care facility, which is owned by Optima Living.
Well, in this week’s new application report from the ALRB, there’ another application from LiUNA Local 3000. This time, however, it’s not a certification application; it’s a unionbusting application.
Okay, to be fair, the application that Local 3000 submitted on 9 January doesn’t explicitly say “unionbusting”. However, they do claim that Yarrow had laid off one of the workers who had filed the certification application.
Local 3000 alleges that the laying off of Tiphanie Norn, a licenced practical nurse, violates several sections of the Alberta Labour Relations Code.
For example, they maintain that Yarrow violated section 148(1)(a)(ii)
No employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of an employer or employers’ organization shall participate in or interfere with the representation of employees by a trade union.
They also assert it went against several parts of section 149(1)(a):
No employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of an employer or employers’ organization shall refuse to employ or to continue to employ any person or discriminate against any person in regard to employment or any term or condition of employment because the person
- has indicated in writing the person’s selection of a trade union to be the bargaining agent on the person’s behalf,
- has testified or otherwise participated in or may testify or otherwise participate in a proceeding under this Act,
- has made or is about to make a disclosure that the person may be required to make in a proceeding under this Act
as well as 149(1)(b)
No employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of an employer or employers’ organization shall impose any condition in a contract of employment that restrains, or has the effect of restraining, an employee from exercising any right conferred on the employee by this Act.
The ALRB currently has no hearing scheduled for this application.
One reply on “LPN laid off after trying to unionize her coworkers”
[…] They might have been certified earlier if not for an accusation from Local 3000 that the employer was engaging in unionbusting. […]