The Freeze Provision Explained
What Labour Board Decisions Say
What happens if an employer violates the freeze provision? The union will file charges with the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
Read how the board has ruled [LINK] on cases when the employer violates the freeze provision.
At Royal Ottawa Health Care [LINK], the employer made the unilateral decision to change the benefits of hospital employees working under a collective agreement that was subject to the statutory freeze provision of Section 86(1) of the Ontario Labour Relations Act. As a result, the union filed charges under the act and was able to successfully resolve the violation to the members’ satisfaction. In his decision, Ontario Labour Relations Board Decision Board Chair R.O. MacDowell wrote:
Not to put too fine a point on it: wages and benefits are what bargaining is all about. If unilateral changes to employee benefits are not caught by section 86(1), then the section truly is meaningless; for on that test, the employer would have carte blanche to change just about anything. . . . I find therefore that the reduction in benefits contravened section 86(1) of the Labour Relations Act.
MacDowell went on to further clarify the definition of the statutory freeze provision.
The purpose of the statutory freeze imposed by section 79 [now 86] is to maintain the prior pattern of the employment relationship in the entirety while parties are negotiating for a collective agreement. This ensures they have a fixed basis from which to begin negotiations and prevents unilateral alterations in the status quo which might give one party an unfair advantage either from the point of bargaining or of propaganda.
