The B.C. Hospital Employees’ Union will make one more appeal to try to help 2,200 members ordered to repay the federal government for money given to them by the province — more than a decade after B.C. contracted out their jobs.
The HEU has asked for a hearing with Ottawa’s new Social Security Tribunal to ensure that workers can appeal if Employment Insurance benefits were incorrectly allocated when the employees received them in 2003 and 2004.
The tribunal is meant to be an independent appeal process for Employment Insurance and other federally administered benefits.
B.C. paid $68 million to the HEU after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2007 that contracting out union jobs in 2002, via Bill 29, violated freedom of association. The HEU viewed the payments as compensation for violation of their constitutional rights, but that view has been consistently overruled in appeals since 2010.
The Employment Insurance Commission views the provincial settlement amount as undeclared income and part of the original severance pay — even though it was received years later — which should have reduced Employment Insurance payments.
The province made the $68 million in payments to the Vancouver Island Health Authority, which then issued payments in 2009 and 2010 to ex-union members. The request for repayments began in 2010.
HEU spokesman Mike Old said that, in February, the Employment Insurance Board of Referees ruled individuals could not appeal the timing of their allocations from EI. “And we think that’s patently unfair, and that’s why we’re going to the [tribunal] to argue that point.”
The board viewed the $68 million as earnings that should have lowered the EI payments workers were eligible to receive.
The board also refused the HEU’s request that members be reissued their records, given the lengthy time period involved. Instead, members must request records as individuals. The same goes as far as applying to the Canada Revenue Agency for kits to appeal paybacks on hardship grounds.
The board wants the HEU and the B.C. Government Employees Union (which represented a minority of the workers) to meet with the EI Commission to discuss how to minimize inconvenience and potential hardship for members.
“The irony is that the whole process has been not only inconvenient for the claimants but has caused them great hardship,” Old said.
