Covenant Health Collective Agreement 2020-2024

Article 28: Seniority

1.  

   1. For Regular or Temporary Employees, seniority with the Employer starts on the date on which the Employee commenced employment in the bargaining unit.

   2. For Casual Employees whose status changes to regular or temporary; or someone determined by the Labour Relations Board or agreed to by the Parties as being in the bargaining unit, the “seniority date” shall be established by dividing their contiguous hours worked with the Employer from the date the Employee commenced performing work of a paramedical professional/technical nature by two thousand and twenty-two point seven five (2,022.75) and converting the result to a seniority date.

   3. Subject to the provisions of Article 44.12, a Regular or Temporary Employee who changes their status to a Casual Employee and at a future date changes back to a Regular or Temporary Employee status will have their original seniority date recognized.

2. Seniority shall not apply during the probationary period; however, once the probationary period has been completed seniority shall be credited as provided in Article 28.01.

3. Seniority shall be the determining factor in:

   1. preference of vacation time;

   2. layoffs and recalls, subject to the qualifications specified in Article 30;

   3. promotions and transfers within the bargaining unit subject to the qualifications specified in Article 29.

4. Seniority shall be considered broken, all rights forfeited, and there shall be no obligation to rehire:

   1. when an Employee resigns or is terminated from their position with the Employer; or

   2. upon the expiry of twelve (12) months following layoff during which time the Employee has not been recalled to work; or

   3. if an Employee does not return to work on recall to their former classification and full-time equivalency in accordance with Article 30.03.

5. The Employer shall provide the Union within two (2) months of the signing of this agreement and in January and July of each year thereafter, a listing of Employees in order of seniority in accordance with the provisions of Article 28.01. Such seniority list shall include the Employee names, classification, status, designated Site and seniority date. The Employer shall make the list available to all Employees. This listing shall be provided to the Union monthly if there are Employees on layoff.

6. Seniority Tiebreaker
   
   Where two (2) or more Employees have the same seniority date, the Employee number (with the lower number given higher seniority), shall be utilized as the seniority tie-breaker. In areas/departments/Sites that had an already established tie-breaking system prior to November 2, 2022, will not be retroactively altered.
   
   In the event, that a transferring Employee has the same seniority date as an Employee or Employees in the receiving area/department/Site, they will move to the bottom of the seniority tie-breaker list.