Labour Tribunal orders Queen Elizabeth to stop obstructing union

A sign for the Administrative Labour Tribunal, photographed on Jan. 30, 2024 in Quebec City. (The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot)

The Administrative Labour Tribunal has ordered the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel to cease interfering with and undermining the union’s role.

The tribunal partially granted a request for an interim order filed by the hotel workers’ union, affiliated with the CSN.

The union had also filed a complaint regarding several communications made directly by the employer to unionized employees, arguing that these communications undermined the union’s role and credibility with its members.

The tribunal acknowledged that “several communications use negative qualifiers such as unreasonable, inflexible, intransigent, and negative impact.”

The employer argued before the tribunal that its statements fell under its freedom of expression and were intended to respond to the union’s “often false publications” and to “correct falsehoods spread by the union.”

However, the tribunal observed that some of the employer’s messages “directly attack the union’s credibility” and that certain statements “appear to appeal to employees’ emotions, while others resemble threats or propagate a rather negative opinion of the union.”

At the interim injunction stage, as in this case, the Tribunal had to determine whether there was an appearance of rights, irreparable harm, and weigh the balance of inconvenience.

“The tribunal concludes from all of this that there is a strong appearance of rights that the union is being hindered due to these communications. Their overall content appears far from strictly factual, neutral, and objective information.”

The union had requested that the employer refrain from addressing its members directly regarding ongoing negotiations for the renewal of the collective agreement.

However, the tribunal declined to go that far, noting it also had to respect the employer’s right to freedom of expression.

Nonetheless, it ordered the employer “to refrain from publicly commenting on negotiations with the union, as well as on negotiations concerning related working conditions, except through factual and objective summaries.”

Since this is an interim order, the parties will now need to be heard for a permanent order.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Dec. 18, 2024.