Chief Grievance Officer: Kevin McPhail
Chair: Don Currie
Members: Mandeep Mahanger, Harpinder Sandhu, Donna Murray, Trent Snikkers, Jared Melvin

Reduction in Pay – Capital

An employee returned from Short Term Disability and is on a graduated return to work schedule supported by their medical practitioner. Upon receiving the graduated return to work schedule the employer reduced the pay of the employee as a result of the schedule because they cannot currently do all the duties they were hired to do while they gradually return to full time hours.

We request the Employer change this practice and reinstate their pay back to the level for a Senior Appraiser while they complete their graduated return to work schedule. In addition, we claim damages for injury to their dignity pursuant to the BC Human Rights Code.

Status: This grievance was heard and denied at step 1 and 2. It has been elevated to arbitration with no dates scheduled as of yet.

Policy Grievance – Dress Code

We claim the employer has violated the Collective Agreement by allowing some offices to institute a ban on wearing blue jeans at work. We feel the employer has not proven that blue jeans are detrimental to the business especially when they are worn in many offices around the province.

We request the managers of work sites which have a no blue jeans policy publicly rescind it and conform to the corporate Workplace Attire policy.

Status: This grievance was denied at step 3 (now step 2) and has been elevated to arbitration and is scheduled to be heard on June 10 and 11 in Kelowna.

Policy Grievance - Temporary Part Time

We claim the employer has violated the Collective Agreement by hiring or having hired an employee working less than full-time hours when the Collective Agreement only allows less than full-time hours for permanent employees. After spending many hours in the last round of bargaining fine-tuning the LTFT language the employer had wanted to change the title to 'part-time' and your union held firm saying we have no part time workers. Your union has discovered that quietly the employer has been doing just that, hiring workers on a part time basis when we bargained against this. We are alarmed at this action and what it could result in. We don't want to see the Safewayization of BCA

We request that the Employer cease and desist from employing temporary employees on a less than full-time basis, and that the Employer make all employees who have not been provided with regular full-time hours whole.

Status: This grievance was originally elevated to arbitration. At the present time, the arbitration has been put on hold. Discussion between our Union and the Employer are continuing with respect to this grievance.

Hours of work – Kelowna

We claim the employer has violated the Collective Agreement by denying the grievor’s request to work normal hours as defined in article 18.01. Our member has never worked longer than the 7.75 hour shift however this year at PARP time, rather than asking the member to work longer hours, it was demanded that he work an 8.5 hour shift. Seeing the language talks about the need to have mutual agreement we are troubled at the employers insistence that they can make our members work any hours they 'require' for operational needs.

We request that the employer allow the grievor’s request to work normal hours. In addition we ask that the grievor be compensated for overtime hours worked as a result of this denial.

Status: This grievance was denied at step 3 and has been elevated to arbitration. It is scheduled to be heard in September 2015.