by Nancy Gardiner
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 05/97) - The Union of Northern Workers is celebrating another court decision in its favor.

The Supreme Court of the NWT is ordering the GNWT to pay retroactive union dues for improperly excluding some positions from union membership. The Supreme Court recently denied an appeal by the GNWT.

Fredrick Bayer, director of finance and administration for the Union of Northern Workers, served as lead counsel for the arbitration.

"We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on it. It's been a costly price," Bayer said.

It's expected the union will recover the retroactive union dues in a lump sum, although Bayer said he cannot pinpoint a figure yet and the government could still use the federal court of appeal as a last resort. The dues would be paid to the union by the GNWT.

The Supreme Court awarded court costs to the union in the Supreme Court case, but not for the 80 full days of hearings over a three-year period starting in 1993 -- prior to reaching the high court.

In reasons for the judgment, NWT Supreme Court Justice Ted Richard, ruled that "the employer, over a period of years commencing as early as 1989, had purported to exclude certain employee positions from the bargaining unit to which the collective agreement applied.

"The union challenged the exclusions themselves, and alleged the employer was in clear violation of the collective agreement."

At least 800 positions and probably more, were affected by the exclusion arbitrations over a two-and-a-half-year period, said Bayer. More than 400 of them were ultimately returned to the bargaining unit completely or for a specified duration, according to the UNW.