The City Workers Union and the town of Smallville have a collective agreement that covers all of the town’s employees. Since the bargaining unit was certified nearly a decade ago, the town and the union have agreed on collective agreements with terms of two years.

The first collective agreement between the town and the union included job descriptions for all the positions covered by the collective agreement. The second collective agreement established a joint union-management committee to negotiate revisions to job descriptions, and stated that the job descriptions in the previous collective agreement would be in effect until that committee agreed on any revisions or changes. The third collective agreement contained the same wording. In the most recent agreement, that part of the contract was changed to state that the employer would create job descriptions for all the jobs in the bargaining unit, and these would be mutually agreed upon with the union” before they were implemented. The most recent collective agreement expired at the end of December. At the start of November, the union notified the town of its readiness to begin bargaining for a new agreement.

The union and the town held their first negotiation meeting in late January. The union’s head negotiator was a representative from the parent union, and the town’s head negotiator was a labour relations consultant hired by the town. At the fi rst meeting, the parties exchanged their initial proposals and had some discussion around the items in each party’s proposal. There were several meetings after that. Agreements were reached on some items, but no monetary proposals were made by either party. On April 13, the parties had a labour-management meeting prior to the bargaining session scheduled for the next day. On April 14, during the bargaining session, the

town’s representatives presented a proposal for a set of new job descriptions for the jobs within the bargaining unit. The job descriptions included not only tasks but also personal attributes (e.g., “must be able to work within a political environment”). The proposal also contained a description of a new promotion process based on the new job descriptions. The town’s proposal also suggested the deletion of the current collective agreement language around job descriptions.

Both the union’s and the town’s head negotiators told the board that, at the meeting, it was clearly stated that the employer (the town) did not consider the job descriptions a bargaining issue. It was also stated that the employer had no intention of including job descriptions in the collective agreement.

The union’s head negotiator told the board that the union’s negotiating team was very unhappy that the town presented the job descriptions, describing them as a “slap in the face.” He added that the negotiating relationship between the parties became much more antagonistic after the proposed job descriptions were presented. He noted that it was unusual in municipal government for job descriptions to be included in the text of a collective agreement.

The town’s head negotiator told the board that the job descriptions were presented “for information purposes,” so that the union would know what the town was looking for with respect to job descriptions. He noted that revised job descriptions had been part of the last three sets of negotiations without any agreement being reached on the issue. He added that the town was willing to negotiate the process by which the job descriptions would be finalized.

At the next bargaining meeting, four days later, the union responded to the proposed job descriptions by proposing that the new collective agreement include the same language around job descriptions as was in the previous collective agreement.

The parties continued to bargain. In early June, the town made another offer, which it characterized as a final offer, involving the proposed job descriptions. The town would accept the job description language from the previous collective agreement, along with providing a 2% wage increase, if the union would agree to a one-year collective agreement.

The town’s head negotiator told the board that the town saw this proposal as a “conciliatory” way to reach an agreement on the job descriptions issue in the short term; once the collective agreement was settled, the town and the union could then start separate negotiations to resolve the job description issue. The town’s head negotiator also told the board that the final offer included a monetary component because the union was “insisting” on a wage offer before it was willing to negotiate any further.

The union presented the town’s final offer to the bargaining unit members and held a vote on whether to accept the offer. The members voted to reject the offer. The union then fi led the complaint of bargaining in bad faith. 

The Union’s Position

The union characterized the collective bargaining process in general as a process of narrowing down issues. It argued that by introducing the proposals around job descriptions at a relatively late stage of bargaining, the employer was engaging in “receding horizon bargaining,” where new proposals move the discussion back to issues that were previously discussed.

The union stated that the employer had not given any notice that job descriptions would be part of its bargaining proposals, and that the process of collective bargaining had been diverted by the introduction of the job descriptions proposal. The union characterized the proposal as evidence that the employer had no intention of concluding a collective agreement. It also stated that the content of the proposal was not consistent with how other towns and cities in the same region had involved their employees’ unions in determining job descriptions.

The Employer’s Position

The employer stated that, by requesting that the next collective agreement exclude the current language around job