Electrician Uses up ‘Last Chance’ by Committing Lockout Violation

This is your last chance; one more ‘serious disciplinary issue’ and you’re toast. The saw mill electrician with a long disciplinary history agreed and signed the agreement. About 13 months later, he was fired for troubleshooting on a feeder machine without locking it out. The arbitrator upheld the firing. The lockout violation was dangerous enough to constitute a ‘serious disciplinary issue.’ The union tried one more argument: This was the electrician’s first safety violation. And 2-week suspension was the maximum penalty for a first offence under the mill’s safety progressive discipline policy. But the arbitrator wasn’t impressed, finding that the last chance agreement trumped the discipline policy [Unifor, Local 104 v. J.D. Irving Ltd., 2017 CanLII 79244 (NB LA), Nov. 21, 2017].