ALRB declines to exercise discretion to amend pension provisions in collective agreements covering employees transferred to a successor employer.
March 16, 2023
The Alberta Labour Relations Board (the “Board”) has declined to exercise its discretion to amend the pension provisions in the collective agreements covering employees transferred to a successor employer.
The provisions at issue provide that the transferred employees must be members of the Local Authorities Pension Plan (the “LAPP”), a defined benefit-plan created by statute whose participating employers primarily consist of public sector organizations. One of the collective agreements also allows for an alternative plan if agreed to by the union.
DynaLIFEDX asked the Board to exercise its discretion under s. 46(2) of the Canada Labour Code to replace references to the LAPP in the collective agreements with provisions for the Group RRSP that DynaLIFEDX offers to its employees.
DynaLIFEDX argued that the existing provisions were impossible to meet since they were not eligible to join the LAPP as a private sector employer, and that even if they were accepted, they would not be a good fit for the LAPP.
The Board declined to exercise its discretion, concluding that there was no definitive evidence that the pension terms in the collective agreements were impossible given that DynaLIFEDX never applied to join the LAPP. The Board further noted they would not exercise their discretion in situations where the successor employer would merely prefer to have transferred employees participate in a different pension plan.
Any future request to amend DynaLIFEDX’s pension obligations under the collective agreements would only be entertained by the Board upon “unequivocal evidence” that they cannot be fulfilled (namely, being rejected by the LAPP), and after the parties have exhausted their efforts to negotiate an alternative, as required by the collective agreements.
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