OLDS - Sundial Growers intimidated workers when two company managers attended the site of a union information session at the Olds Municipal Library last summer, according to a recent Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB) ruling.
Calgary-based Sundial has a cannabis production facility just west of Highway 2A in south Olds.
Teamsters Local Union 987 filed a complaint against the company saying two members of the Olds facility’s management team attended the library as employees were getting ready to start the information session on July 13.
The union alleged that Sundial violated sections 148 (1)(a)(ii) and 149 (1)(c) of the Labour Relations Code by interfering with the representation of employees by a trade union and intimidating employees to compel them to refrain from becoming a member of a trade union.
Section 149 states “no employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of the employer or employers’ organization shall seek by intimidation, dismissal, threat of dismissal or any other kind of threat . . . from becoming or to cease to be a member, officer or representative of a trade union.”
At the ALRB hearing, union organizer Preston Quintin testified he got into a verbal altercation with Sundial scheduling manager Alan Corrales outside the library on the day in question.
The board’s 16-page ruling was issued on Jan. 25.
“He (Quintin) testified Mr. Corrales approached him and shouted at him, asking who he was and who he was working for,” the ruling states. “He testified Mr. Corrales stated: ‘I think it is kind of weird to close the door to a meeting when invited, to which Mr. Quintin says he responded it was ‘kind of weird for a manager to show up to an employees-only meeting.'"
Quintin then cancelled the information session, which had not yet got underway.
“Mr. Quintin testified at this point that the attendees were ‘pretty scared.'”
Corrales testified he went to the library with operations manager Latifa Dewji after receiving information that the union information meeting was planned.
“Ms. Dewji testified she had no reason to believe she could not be represented by the union, and wished to attend the meeting to see what the union could do for her.
“Asked whether the purpose (in attending the library) was to see who would go in and out, as Mr. Corrales had said the purpose was to ‘watch for activity’, Mr. Dewji testified that might be what Mr. Corrales did, but that was not her intent. She testified the purpose was to ‘see if we could go inside.'”
The board ruled that Dewjie and Corrales’ stated reasons for attending the library were not credible.
“Seeking to insert themselves into a union meeting as persons well-known to be managers by the organizing employees is an act that is so naturally disruptive of the meeting and intimidating to employees, the board is fulling prepared to infer they intended that natural consequence of their actions. Again, to find otherwise would be to suggest a level of naivety not otherwise consistent with the testimony of these manager.”
The board ruled that the employer had breached both Section 148 and 149 of the Labour Relations Code.
“Mr. Corrales’s and Ms. Dewji’s attendance at the site of the union organizing meeting was an interference with the representation of employees by the union and sought by intimidation or threat to compel employees to refrain from becoming union members.”
The ALRB directed Sundial to allow workers at the Olds facility to attend a one-hour paid meeting with the union in two separate work shifts.
As well, the board directed the employers or anyone acting on its behalf to “cease and desist from any further action that interferes with the representation of employees by the union and seeks by intimidation or threat to compel employees from becoming union members.”
Sundial did to immediately respond to several Albertan requests for comment.
