The B.C. Labour Relations Board dismissed a retirement home employee’s complaint after finding her claims did not have sufficient evidence.
Linda Salisbury works at the Village at Smith Creek in West Kelowna. She alleges the Hospital Employees’ Union acted in contravention of the Labour Relations Code, which states “a trade union or council of trade unions must not act in a manner that is arbitrary, discriminatory or in bad faith.”
Salisbury was issued a disciplinary letter early in 2020. She brought the letter forward to the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU), which was filed as a grievance. The union asked for the letter to be removed from Salisbury’s personnel file.
According to the board’s decision, filed on March 10, 2021, Salisbury complained about how long the process was taking, demanded that the discipline letter be removed from her personnel file and said that “a letter of expectation (LOE) was unacceptable.”
By June 17, 2020, the retirement home provided Salisbury with a letter of expectation and then on the 26th, the HEU advised her that the discipline letter had been removed from her file and replaced with the LOE.
In an email to the HEU, Salisbury said she felt that the LOE was discriminatory, given that it was addressed personally to her.
Salisbury then approached the B.C. Labour Relations Board, alleging that the HEU and her union representative’s representation of her were arbitrarily defined as “representation not based upon any course of reason and exercise of judgement.”
“I feel my union rep’s representation was arbitrary because there wasn’t any principled basis for (the union representative) to accept the LOE,” Salisbury wrote to the board.
“There is no logic or factual basis for their action, for me to have received LOE.”
After investigating Salisbury’s allegations, the labour board found there wasn’t sufficient evidence of HEU’s alleged arbitrary representation, bad faith representation or discriminatory representation and dismissed her case.
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