The Canada Industrial Relations Board has certified a Teamsters local to collectively bargain for about 200 drivers hauling freight for an Oshawa, Ont.-based trucking company, including drivers employed by outside agencies and owner-operators.

The certification order, issued Jan. 23, 2002, allows Teamsters local 938 to represent drivers working exclusively for Mackie Moving Systems. The board’s written decision, which provides a rationale for the ruling, is said to run several hundred pages and was not available at press time.

Mackie is one of Canada’s largest for-hire carriers. The drivers affected work in the company’s general freight division, which hauls predominantly for General Motors. Adams Services, also in Oshawa, is Mackie’s primary supplier of temporary drivers.

“Those agency drivers are our biggest issue at Mackie,” says Randy Doner of Teamsters Canada’s joint council, a co-ordinating body for the union’s locals. “They may be technically employed by an outside agency, but we take the position that temporary drivers should be included in the collective bargaining unit due to the nature of their working relationship with Mackie.” If a company assigns work to a driver, provides day-to-day control over him, determines his hours, and otherwise treats him like a direct employee, collective bargaining should apply even though the driver is actually being paid by a third party, Doner explains.

“The same goes for owner-operators, who really are dependent contractors, and to any drivers they have who work for Mackie,” he adds.

The board agreed. “We will serve notice and request dates to start bargaining, and then draft what we think is a collective agreement,” Doner says. “We think this is a precedent-setting decision. It should send a message to employers that temporary drivers, owner-operators, and other third-party employers are not your ticket out of collective bargaining. If I was at the local union level, I would certainly be talking to guys in similar situations at other carriers and saying, ‘Hey, if you want a chance to organize.'”

Mackie vice-president Norm Mackie was disappointed with the order.
“Our general freight business is very lean, and General Motors is very competitive on its contracts,” he says. “We’re trying to sort out what this means to our owner-operators with multiple drivers who want nothing to do with this. We’re going to have to step back and see how this will affect our ability to compete on the general-freight side.”

Chairman Ross Mackie says the ruling took company managers by surprise. “We didn’t think the board would make a decision that is so broad,” he says. “The decision itself kind of sneaked up on us — all of us, including our drivers and owner-operators — because the application was made three years ago and some of the drivers who were pushing so hard for this bargaining arrangement are no longer here,” adds Norm Mackie. “In the meantime, we’re hoping we can come to some kind of arrangement with the Teamsters.”