By Isaac Phan Nay | The Tyee
After a Vancouver school switched cleaning companies, the BC Labour Relations Board ordered the company to honour the previous cleaners’ collective agreement and hire back terminated workers.
A company called Integral Hospitality previously cleaned the Stratford Hall school in Vancouver.
Last summer, the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, Local 2 added Integral’s Stratford Hall employees to an existing bargaining unit the union had with the employer.
According to court documents, the school was not happy with the previous cleaners’ performance and instead hired Majestic Building Maintenance to start cleaning Stratford Hall.
But last week, the BC Labour Relations Board ordered Majestic Building Maintenance to honour the collective agreement and rehire any workers who may have lost a job when the school switched.
While the company argued the employees were terminated over performance, the decision hinged on a six-year-old change to the B.C. labour code intended to protect contract employees’ right to unionize.
Successorship laws require employers, called successors, to honour union rights and collective agreements when taking over a company or contract.
The decision underscores the board’s preference for successorship laws as crucial for cleaners and other contractors to organize.
“It’s welcome news,” Chester Duggan, an organizer with SEIU Local 2, said. He added successorship provisions that exist in B.C. are a powerful protection against employers firing contract workers for unionizing.
Majestic Building Maintenance said it cannot comment at this time and its lawyer declined requests for comment.
Majestic did not hire five of the employees who previously worked at Stratford Hall for Integral.
According to court documents, the company asked the BC Labour Relations Board not to apply successorship principles to its case.
It argued the school ended its contract with Integral because it was unsatisfied with the cleaners’ performance, and thus it should not have to hire the terminated employees.
Nadine Poznecov, director of finance and operations for Stratford Hall, said the school does not comment on contracts with vendors.
“We can share that our Board is not involved in any way with contract decisions with these vendors,” Poznecov said in a statement to The Tyee.
The cleaning company added it was not aware SEIU Local 2 had a collective agreement with the employer.
But BC Labour Relations Board vice-chair Rene-John Nicolas said in his decision he was not convinced the concerns about Integral employees’ performance justified their termination.
He emphasized that employers may not use successorship to weed out employees it perceives as undesirable and to go around provisions that require employers to have “just cause” to take action against employees.
“The successorship process is not the process to address those concerns,” Nicolas said in the decision.
Nicolas ordered Majestic to honour the employment of the five employees and previous collective agreement, which expires at the end of May.
Cleaners’ access to successorship law is relatively new, Duggan said. The B.C. government extended successorship rights to contracts for service workers, including building maintenance and security employees, in 2019.
“These [cleaning] contracts are flipping all the time, which is why it’s been so significant for folks to have this kind of protection,” Duggan said.
He added contract companies that offer services like cleaning, security and transportation often win business by offering the lowest cost to clients — meaning there is a constant drive to cut their operating costs.
“It has created a real downward pressure on standards. It’s a race to the bottom in terms of working conditions,” Duggan said. “Workers fought to have the successorship legislation applied to them in the contract-for-service sector to begin to raise the ceiling.”
