Victory at Last:  SPEA Wins Reinstatement of President after Lengthy Arbitration!

Dear Members,

At long last, justice has been served!  Here’s the April 8th arbitration decision regarding the unjust termination of our President, Mark Chudak, along with SPEA member Woo-Jae Cheong:  2026 CanLII 31225 (ON LA) | The Society of Professional Engineers And Associates v Candu Energy Inc. | CanLII

The arbitrator has substituted a “written warning” for the terminations, and both employees have been awarded retroactive compensation back to July 2023.   Mark and Woo-Jae will be returning to work on April 21st.   We are pleased to report that the company appears committed to respecting this award and submitting Mark and Woo-Jae’s security clearance applications. Mark’s has already been approved and we expect Woo-Jae’s clearance to issue shortly.

Mark was terminated for sending a single email to SPEA in November of 2020, in preparation for an upcoming arbitration.  The email contained training documentation with technical information marked “internal use only”.  Mark shared this information with SPEA in accordance with the common practice at the time.  We adduced a great deal of evidence concerning these information sharing practices.  That - in conjunction with the fact that the company had been surveilling emails to @spea since 2019 - convinced the arbitrator that these information sharing practices had been condoned (i.e., known and allowed).  In addition, the arbitrator gave considerable weight to the fact that the employer knew about Mark’s email transmission for at least two years before they suspended him. This obliterated their argument that Mark was some kind of security risk.

The decision is frequently scathing in its description of Candu/AR’s conduct.  The arbitrator questions the reliability of some of their key senior management witnesses.  

Throughout, SPEA, Mark and Woo-Jae were buoyed by the tremendous support of our members.  Special shout out to our technical advisors, Vincent Lau, Laura Flatt and Wolf Reinhardt. 

The Path Forward

As you know, collective bargaining negotiations will commence later this year.  We are in a strong position for bargaining.  We have our President back!  We have demonstrated the strength of the Union and the solidarity of our members.    

The employer has indicated they would like to turn the relationship around.   We are willing partners in any good faith effort to do so.  We are all better off if SPEA and the Company can get to a position of mutual respect and trust.  But respect and trust can’t be built through words alone.

We firmly believe that Mark’s termination was an integral part of a strategy to try to weaken, if not destroy, SPEA.  It was preceded by the “email ban” of December 2021.  It was preceded by assaults on our jurisdiction, which continue, including:  The creation of countless “fake manager” positions (reducing the strength of the union and career advancement for our members), growing use of contractors, and offshoring of CANDU work.  Steps to turn the relationship around must address these issues.   A first step, in our view, is agreeing to an independent investigation into the conduct of the various senior Candu/AR managers involved in the “scheme” to terminate our President.

The Decision

The decision is 117 pages.  Some sections that might be of interest are highlighted below:

• PSPC Reporting shenanigans and CSO Pamela Tume:  paras 56, 66 – 71, 82-84, 141 – 151, 169, 230, 398-399 (and more….)

• The “Condonation” Analysis: paras 94-140

• The Decision to Terminate and the fact that “the fix was in” before any investigation:  paras 152-175, esp. para 170

• The termination “Workflow Plan” was drawn up by Labour Relations VP Steve Shemluck prior to any corporate investigations).  Details start at para 155.  

As an example, here’s what the arbitrator has to say at paras 398-399.  Ms. Cyr is a PSPC employee:

1. 398.           I was impressed by the unreliability of the evidence given by Ms. Tume  as demonstrated not only by Candu’s attempted revision of her evidence after submissions had been completed, but also the demonstrably valid challenges to her claimed authorship of the “initial breach reports” and the timing of her involvement in their preparation, her denial of Candu’s advice to Ms. Cyr regarding the intention to terminate the employment of the Grievors and regarding the Employer’s knowledge of the subsistence of a plausible reason for the Grievors’ having sent their email packages to SPEA, and her denial of her having knowledge of Mr. Chudak’s email package long before October 2022 notwithstanding her having been consulted by Mr. Shemluck in connection with his February 4, 2022 letter to SPEA.  

2. 399.            I find that the history of Candu’s inaction in response to the Grievors’ actions answers fully its claimed entitlement to deference. As the Employer trusted the Grievors to remain in place for many months with no precautions being taken notwithstanding its professed concern about their trustworthiness and their being disgruntled “insider risks”, Candu’s merely protesting the alleged concern post-termination — when the first mention to the Grievors of any issue about their behaviours came many months after the discovery of their failure to conform to stated rules and in the absence of any actions to confirm the reality of and justification for the concern  — impresses me as suggesting that the Grievors’ rule breaches were opportunities seized upon as the means to an end rather than having constituted alarming developments necessitating or justifying Candu’s eventual responses. [bold added]

And finally…..a reminder of our members’ spontaneous action at a Town Hall shortly after Mark was suspended, when asked Who is your silent hero or heroine at work?