An Alberta employer breached its collective agreement when it purported to contract out work but instead contracted in an outside worker to perform work that had previously been performed by bargaining unit employees, an arbitrator has ruled.
There’s a big difference between contracting out and contracting in, in a unionized workplace, says Stephen Torscher, a labour and employment lawyer at Carbert Waite in Calgary.
“Contracting out is when an employer will take work on a project that has to be done and they hire an independent third party to do that work – typically, it’s work that’s done outside of the employer’s usual workplace and the employer doesn’t have a whole lot of control over how it’s done,” he says. “Contrasting that with contracting in, which essentially is hiring a worker to come into the workplace and work alongside bargaining unit employees doing work that generally looks very similar to the work that the bargaining unit employees are doing.”
