Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel ordered to stop obstructing union

The Tribunal administratif du travail (TAT) has ordered Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel to stop obstructing and interfering in the role of the union.

The Tribunal partially granted a request for an interim order filed by the hotel workers’ union, affiliated with the CSN.

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

The employer had argued before the Tribunal that its comments fell within its freedom of expression and that it wanted to respond to the “often misleading publications of the union” and “rectify falsehoods spread by the union.”

But the Tribunal noted that some of the employer’s messages “directly attack the credibility of the union” and that some statements “appear to appeal to employees’ emotions while others are similar to threats or propagate a rather negative opinion of the union.”

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

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

The Tribunal, however, declined to go that far, considering that it must also respect the employer’s right to freedom of expression. It does, however, order the employer “to refrain from publicly reporting on the negotiations with the union and the negotiations on working conditions related thereto, 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.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews