Discipline, Discharge and Remedies in the Unionized Workplace

Seminar Summary

In a unionized workplace, imposing discipline has always presented unique challenges for employers. The rules of the game are often changing as case law and grievances provide new sets of facts and issues for arbitrators to consider, laying the groundwork for new law. The last few years have been no exception.

We last covered discipline, discharge and remedies back in our 2010 Managing the Workplace series and now it's back — updated to reflect developments in the last two and a half years, including:

• Progressive discipline: Exceptions, alternatives and everything in between. In this section, we will tackle ongoing issues such as the use of sunset clauses and what to do about questionable off-duty conduct.
• Discharge: Is the bar to proving just cause moving higher, or has the discharge law stayed fairly consistent since 2010? We will take stock of the current state of the law of discharge to help you manage your labour relations more effectively.
• Remedies: A few recent cases have taken remedies for breaches of the collective agreement in very costly new directions. In one grievance, a worker was awarded damages many once thought were simply unrecoverable in the unionized context. We will take a closer look at some groundbreaking remedies cases and evaluate the practical impact these could have on grievances in your workplaces.