By Bob Mackin | Prince George Citizen
An arbitrator found a Northern Health contractor violated the Labour Relations Code when it did not consult the BC General Employees’ Union before implementing a standby/on-call policy for workers providing services to hospitals, primary care sites and care homes.
In an April 2 decision, Arbitrator Christopher Sullivan found NTT Data Canada Inc. employees were entitled to be paid for assessing information on their laptops before accepting an after-hours call on their cell phones. But, Sullivan dismissed individual grievances filed by deskside services technicians Charline Lachance, who covered Smithers, Hazelton and Burns Lake, and Tamara Nelson for Quesnel.
“At the heart of the union policy grievance is the claim that employees designated to be on-call to address after-hours matters should be paid the standby rate rather than the on-call rate, based on the response times the employer required employees to attend to calls,” Sullivan wrote.
The standby rate is 33 per cent of a regularly hourly wage, while the on-call rate is only 8.5 per cent.
After IT services were privatized, ISM held the contract from 2011 to 2020. Competitor NTT took over in July 2020, following a 2017 tendering process. The BC Labour Relations Board declared in February 2020 that NTT was the successor employer to the group of 240 employees transferred to NTT and that BCGEU would remain their certified bargaining agent. The bargaining unit now numbers 465.
NTT’s predecessor ISM had no standby policy, but its unwritten policy/program meant designated on-call employees had up to 30 minutes to respond to a call and four hours to begin work, including at a remote location.
“The fact NTT did not have a policy with clear time frames is not fatal to its case, so long
as it operated within the negotiated terms of the collective agreement, which it did,” Sullivan wrote. “Again, no employees received discipline for not responding ‘immediately’ to an after-hours callout, and there was and is no reasonable threat of such.”
During a 2022 mediation session, NTT said it expected on-call employees would push a button on their cell phone within 15 to 30 minutes after receiving notification of a page and start work on the issue within up to two hours. They must also be within cell phone range and a reasonable driving distance of workplaces they may attend.
Sullivan found the lack of “express and precise” on-call response time expectations did not violate the code, but “such an omission certainly comes with legitimate questions from employees, if not supervisors, about the degree of readiness an employee must be in on their off-hours in terms of how quickly one might have to respond to a call.”
Sullivan accepted that NTT was obliged to consult with the BCGEU prior to initiating its standby/on-call program. He told the parties he remains available to resolve the pay remedy.
