NS: Union files complaint over ECBC management ratio

[SYDNEY, NS] — How many managers does it take to run one Crown corporation?

A newly formed union local at Enterprise Cape Breton Corp. has filed a complaint with the Canada Industrial Relations Board, saying ECBC absorbed another local Crown corporation and excluded every one of the new employees from the union.


When ECBC took over the Cape Breton Development Corp. at the end of 2009, 13 employees from Devco joined ECBC, and all of them were given a management position, officials with the Public Service Alliance of Canada say.

ECBC chief executive officer John Lynn was unavailable for comment Thursday, as he was in Singapore, said spokesman DA Landry.

Jeannie Baldwin, PSAC regional executive vice-president, reached by phone Thursday, wasn’t buying that excuse.

“He just brought over 16 new managers, so somebody must be in charge there,” she said.

Baldwin said in addition to 13 employees brought in from Devco, ECBC hired three new managers around the same time.

“It’s totally unacceptable what they’re doing,” she said.

Local 84200 negotiated its first contract last September, with the help of a conciliator, establishing a collective agreement for 34 ECBC employees including administrative and information technology staff, account representatives and others.

Local union officials said it wasn’t a surprise that ECBC wanted to place some of the new employees in management positions, but no one expected all 13 new employees to be considered managers.

“The employer says 27 employees at ECBC should be considered management and 34 employees should be considered union,” said PSAC local 84200 vice-president Joe MacKinnon. “It seems like a high percentage.”

Cheryl MacMullin, president of the union local, said ECBC and the union currently disagree on the classification of the new employees and PSAC regional representatives are working with the local on a complaint with the industrial relations board.

“It’s upsetting, I guess, that everybody has gone over (to management) … (but) we are still in the midst of this process so it’s not all said and done,” she said.

No one knows how long the federal complaint process will take, and the union local is still feeling its way along.

“This is a new process for everybody,” said MacMullin.

The 39-month contract, which started last fall and expires December 31, 2012, saw employees receive a 6.5 per cent pay increase over a 31-month period, of which 13 months were given to union members in retroactive pay.