December 2019 Union News
Occasionally the Communications Committee receives questions from members regarding various clauses in the collective agreement asking for insight as to their obligations and rights in respect to these clauses.
We will focus on Article 42, leave with pay for family related responsibilities. We will set out our position and opinions based on the wording in the collective agreement and/or supported by various adjudication decisions upholding this interpretation and intent of this article.
Article 42 provides leave to employees in situations related to care of family members as described in the definition of “family” found in Article 2 Definitions. In any fiscal year the maximum amount of leave which may be granted to an employee shall not exceed forty-five (45) hours.
The question posed to us was, “Can the employer ask for proof of leave if they suspect abuse?”
Normally when we hear the word “abuse” used, it’s mentioned in the context of an employee who, in someone’s opinion, is using more leave than they should. An example of this would be “I think they are abusing their sick leave; they’re using too much”. Most of the time this is a very subjective opinion and not necessarily based on any sound facts.
With family related leave the issue is not so much abusing the leave but rather, managers questioning the need for the leave. The maximum as stated above is 45 hours. Once an employee has utilized this amount of leave, there is no further time available to them. We believe this challenges the notion of abuse.
At the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE), we counsel our members when requesting leave under this clause, that they should provide their team leader or manager enough information as to satisfy that the leave request meets the requirements. For example, if you say to your manager you are taking your child to a medical or dental appointment, as long as the individual in question met the definition of family, that should suffice. Our position is the employer needs not ask any further information nor question why this could not be done at a different point in time or other invasive questions.
One part of Article 42 is that “the Employer shall grant leave with pay”. Statements such as this can be found in many places in our and other collective agreements. Adjudication decisions have supported the basic principle that as long as the request meets the criteria outlined, the employer has no ability or right to deny these requests.
In UTE’s opinion, the only thing that could potentially be of concern would be if an employee requested the leave and never used it for its intended purpose. An example would be asking for leave to take someone to an appointment, but then using the time for another purpose. This would be seen as fraudulent leave usage on behalf of that employee, which the union would never condone.
As we have mentioned in previous articles in the Union News on your collective agreement, if you run into situations where you feel that too much information was being requested from you, we suggest you contact a member of your local executive.
For more information on Article 42 please refer to the April 2019 edition of the newsletter. This can be accessed on the UTE website or by typing in the following link:
https://www.ute-sei.org/en/node/12211
Gary Esslinger
Chair of the Communications Committee