Cambridge, Ont., company ordered to pay warehouse workers for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

A company in Cambridge, Ont., will have to compensate employees for failing to recognize the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30 as a paid holiday, in violation of a collective agreement, an arbitrator has ruled.

A Western University law professor says this week's precedent-setting decision, which involved National Grocers Co. Ltd., will clarify how unionized workplaces handle the new national holiday.

"This interpretation — including the National Day [for Truth and Reconciliation] as a paid holiday under at least unionized workplaces — is going to probably be pretty widespread this time next year," said Michael Lynk, who specializes in labour law.  

National Grocers is a division of Loblaw Companies Ltd. and owns a warehouse in Cambridge. The over 900 employees at the warehouse are represented by Local 1006A of the United Food and Commercial Workers. 

The company had told the union in advance of Sept. 30 it wouldn't recognize the day as a paid holiday, as defined by the collective agreement.

The union disagreed and filed a grievance.

Arbitrator Norm Jesin ultimately sided with the union.

Its "strongest card," Lynk said, was language in the collective agreement that said the company would recognize a list of specific holidays, along with any future legal holidays declared by either the federal or provincial governments.

This is common language in collective agreements across Canada, Lynk said. Taken together, this case — along with a similar one out of London, Ont. — set a precedent that could make it tough for employers to deny unionized workers the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a paid holiday, he said.

The London case involved concrete workers whose collective agreement also stated their employer would recognize a list of holidays along with "any other holiday proclaimed by the provincial or federal government." The arbitrator, Adam Beatty, also sided with the union in a decision issued Sept. 28, 2021.

"An employer wanting to challenge the demand from its own workforce that it honour the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a statutory holiday is going to be up against two very well-written decisions," said Lynk.

"They'll have to prove that their language in their own collective agreements is quite different from the bargain language in these first two cases."

Not only does the decision set a precedent for many unionized workplaces, Lynk said, it also reinforces the whole point of the holiday: to give people time away from their work and regular activities to reflect on and repair relationships between Indigenous people and the rest of Canada.

"If this was just simply another named day … it would really lose a lot of its punch and a lot of its meaning," said Lynk.