Employment Court orders Queen Elizabeth to stop obstructing union

The Administrative Labor Court orders the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel to stop obstructing and interfering in the role of the union.

It thus partially accepts a request for a provisional order presented by the hotel workers’ union, attached to the CSN.

The union also filed a complaint because of several communications from the employer made directly to union members, judging that they undermined its role and credibility with them.

The Court concedes that “several communications use negative qualifiers such as: unreasonable, inflexible, intransigent, negative impact”.

The employer had argued before the Court that his comments fell within his freedom of expression and that he thus wanted to respond to the “often misleading union” publications and “rectify falsehoods conveyed by the union”.

But the Court noted that certain messages from the employer “directly attack the credibility of the union” and that statements “seem to appeal to the emotions of employees while others resemble threats or propagate an opinion rather negative of the union.

At the provisional injunction stage as here, the Court had to determine whether there is an appearance of right, whether there is irreparable harm and assess the balance of convenience.

“The Court concludes from all this that there is a strong appearance of right that the union is being hindered as a result of these communications. The content of these, as a whole, appears far from strictly factual, neutral and objective information. »

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

The Court, however, refused to go that far, considering that it must also respect the employer’s right to freedom of expression. However, it orders the employer “to refrain from publicly reporting negotiations with the union as well as negotiations of the related working conditions, except by means of factual and objective reports”.

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