(Montreal) The decision of the court which had ruled that the anti-scab provisions of the Labor Code do indeed apply to employees working from home is contested.
Posted at 12:39 p.m.
It was the Administrative Labor Tribunal that rendered a decision to this effect, at the end of last November, partly in favor of the Unifor union, affiliated with the FTQ.
Unifor had filed a complaint in court, arguing the use of replacement workers during the lockout decreed at the Joliette cement plant, which belongs to the CRH Canada Group.
The court ruled that the replacement work performed by one of the workers, from his home, during the lockout, contravened the anti-scab provisions. He considered that teleworking constituted a form of extended establishment of the employer and that the anti-scab provisions therefore applied.
However, the CRH Canada Group is now challenging this decision of the Administrative Labor Tribunal before the Superior Court. And he says he does this for all employers who are subject to the Quebec Labor Code.
He accuses the Administrative Labor Tribunal of having exceeded its jurisdiction and of having replaced the legislator, by creating a new concept of “deployed establishment” of the employer, with telework, and which is not provided for in the Labor Code.