Extra Foods employees won the battle to freely express themselves in a decision that union members are calling "a major victory for working people in B.C."
BC Labour Relations arbitrator Robert Diebolt stated on Monday (July 31) that off-duty Extra Foods employees had the right to distribute leaflets urging customers to shop elsewhere while awaiting the formation of a new collective agreement, which has been in a bargaining process for over a year.
"It's a great day for union workers in British Columbia," said shop steward Fred Avis. "It tells union workers throughout the province that they have the right to leaflet during disputes in negotiations without being suspended."
Diebolt's decision also states that Extra Foods owner/operator Craig Woida must now pay lost wages to the employees who were suspended without pay as a punishment for leafleting.
Woida would only say that he's disappointed with the ruling and that he hasn't yet decided whether he will comply with the order to compensate suspended workers.
In a letter in this week's Chief, Woida said he suspended employees because he would not "stand by and watch my employees try to damage my business by telling my customers not to shop at our store".
The arbitrator's 33-page decision stated that customer levels at Extra Foods had significantly decreased and the employer attributes the loss of sales to leafleting.
Woida sent employees several letters warning them to "govern yourself accordingly" since the leafleting would result in punitive measures and loss of employment. Following the final warning letter, all but 10 of the 30 leafleting employees stopped their information picketing out of fear for their jobs, according to the arbitrator's summary. Six employees were subsequently suspended for one day to a week.
Diebolt wrote that leafleting is an important component to labour relations despite its capacity to inflict economic harm on the employer. And Avis agreed.
"If it had went the other way I don't know what we would've done because we would've really been stuck in a hard place not being able to tell the public what's going on and at the same time trying to negotiate a contract," said Avis.
Contracts negotiations stalled over employer Westfair Foods representatives' proposed change of the junior clerk to senior clerk ratio from 50/50 to 25/75, a move that would decrease benefits and job security, according to union representatives. The union is also angry about the proposal to rescind the accumulated time off program negotiated into contracts as time off in lieu of wage increases over the past 30 years.
Negotiations have improved since a plunge in parent company Loblaws market shares, according to Avis. And despite a May 25 strike vote resulting in 95 per cent of workers in support of a strike, Avis said he doesn't believe he'll be picketing anytime soon.
"Both the union and the company met last week in Calgary and as far as the union was concerned they felt the company was being a lot more amenable to negotiations," he said. "This decision here just takes the wind right out of their sails."
