Labour Relations

Drawing on our extensive experience and skill in labour relations, we help our clients tackle challenges efficiently and decisively with one of the most respected Labour Law teams in Western Canada. It’s why our clients have trusted us for decades to guide them with practical advice and straightforward communication.

We strive to know and understand every client, their organizations, and the background details affecting their labour relations. Whether leading negotiations or advising behind the scenes, we are a smart, highly responsive, and practical group with experience across a wide variety of industries. We stay up to date and current in all areas of law affecting multiple industries and know the right questions to ask on both the technical and legal side of the table.

Strategic advice. Practical solutions.

We assist employers from the start of a unionized relationship, including advising on and defending union certification applications so that you know what you can and cannot do to protect your organization. We have extensive experience representing employers before Labour Relations Boards, including certification applications, decertification applications, successorship and common employer applications, unfair labour practice complaints, strikes, and lockouts. We also advise employers on how best to structure their operations and avoid labour relations problems.

We help our clients manage labour relations in their unionized workplaces and represent public and private sector employers in managing those unionized relationships and litigating disputes. Our experience means we can negotiate the best deals possible for client collective agreements and give clients the confidence to seek the best outcomes in both interest and rights arbitrations. Our lawyers have considerable experience representing employers in grievance arbitration proceedings, including advising throughout the grievance process and representing our clients before boards of arbitration. Our work in rights arbitrations under collective agreements includes discipline and termination cases, pay and benefits disputes, work jurisdictional disputes, promotion and demotion issues, classification grievances, management rights, contracting out, technological change, harassment, drug testing, human rights, and accommodation in unfair labour practice complaints.

You want us in your corner.

With our deep roots in many industries, we have a valued network of strong relationships, industry knowledge, and a reputation for fierce advocacy before Labour Boards, Workplace Safety, Human Rights Tribunals, and all levels of court.

When it comes to labour relations, there’s no one you want in your corner more than McLennan Ross.

Contact us today. We’re always ready to help.

Our experience includes:

• Labour relations advice
• Labour strategy, including union avoidance
• Certification and decertification applications
• Successorship applications
• Common employer applications
• True employer applications
• Grievance arbitration
• Health and safety reprisal complaints
• Unfair labour practice complaints
• Collective bargaining
• Strikes and lockouts
• Duty of fair representation complaints.