Court to Union Worker: Your Case Is for the Arbitrator, Not Us

A service station attendant assaulted a government highway officer. The officer blamed his co-workers for provoking the confrontation and failing to protect him; he blamed his employer for not providing self-defence training; when he later got fired, he blamed the employer for not accommodating him; then he blamed the union rep for negligently representing him in the grievance. And he blamed just about everybody for conspiring to get him hurt, fired and shut out by workers’ comp. But while his claims were all over the map, they had one thing in common: they all stemmed from his union employment. And such disputes must be adjudicated via Labour Board arbitration not a civil lawsuit said the court in tossing out the entire case [Lapchuk v Saskatchewan (Highways), 2017 SKCA 68 (CanLII), Aug. 29, 2017].