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The reason why it’s important to have an enforced collective agreement is because without it the company would be able to do literally everything in your example that you and I’m assuming the terminated employees disagreed with them doing, with no recourse for employees at all.
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Well, I was fortunate (or unfortunate) part of it was, I got to see it from both sides, so in this particular case, I know what happened. I had been with the company in a non-union position, but I was working very closely with the seniority lists, so I knew exactly how they were divided. I left the company just before they lost half the work in that classification, but I moved to another company at the same location and thus, maintained close contact with the unionized employees.
I don't know at whch point the company and the union colluded to change the seniority classifications, but I do know it was done, and I saw the statements by both the company and the union that this classification seniority list never existed, even though it had been in place for about 5 years before I left the company. They didn't argue that they merged it or changed it when thye lost the work; they argued that it never existed.
Most of the employees paid no attention to posted lists, because layoffs were not really a thing. The only time they tended to care was when there was vacation bids or post bids. A complaint to the labour board was filed, but since the employees who filed had no proof, and since both the company and the union denied that this seniority list had ever actually existed, it went nowhere. As I was no longer with the company, I had not kept any documents such as seniority lists.
Obviously I wasn't privy to the union decision, but it was fairly easy to speculate that because the group involved was quite small compared to the rest of the classifications, that either they just didn't care, or some sort of deal was made.