Reference no: EM133518109
Case Study: John Adams is the Human Resource Manager at a Penn College, a medium-sized education institution located in Faraway, Manitoba. Faraway has a population of 120 000, and many of the residents are employees of the federal or provincial governments or Via Rail Canada. Penn College, like many other Canadian educational institutions, is under pressure to meet budgets. There have been some staff reductions (e.g. layoffs) already, and it is likely that there will be more that will affect all areas of the college.
John is mulling over how he should handle a situation that Ann Zimmer, a supervisor in the maintenance and housekeeping department, has just brought to his attention. According to Ann, she is quite certain that an organizing campaign has begun among the employees reporting to her who maintain and clean the on-campus residences. She indicated that she actually witnessed a representative from XYZ Union meeting with a number of the employees, urging them to sign union authorization cards. She also observed several of those who report to her "cornering" other employees to talk to them about joining the union and urging them to sign cards. Some of this activity occurred during working hours as the employees were carrying out their normal duties.
She indicated that a number of employees have come to her asking her opinion about unions in general and XYZ Union in particular. They informed her that several other supervisors in the department had told their reporting employees not to sign any union authorization cards and not to talk about the union while they were on campus. One of Ann's fellow supervisors told his reporting employees in a meeting that anyone who was caught talking about the union or signing an authorization card would be disciplined and perhaps terminated.
QUESTION : Based on the details of the situation and legislation, have members of the union committed any unfair labour practices to date? If so, please describe what they did that would constitute an unfair labour practice and what are, if any, the possible legal ramifications