The way “duty of fair representation” complaints work is that an employer makes a decision in the workplace. The employee wishes to grieve the employer's decision. The union might not pursue the grievance, or it might drop the grievance, or it might negotiate a solution to the grievance.
What sometimes goes on at these meetings is that the employer and the union sit down and deal with, for example, 10 grievances, and they make a deal. On some grievances, the union and the employer agree that these won't be pursued, but that the ones will. It's probably like some of the deals that are made to move legislation through the House in terms of how things are going to happen, let's say, in a minority Parliament, in particular.
When the employee is turned down at any stage, they may decide to complain that their union has not fairly represented them, so they file a complaint with the labour board, called a “duty of fair representation” complaint.
The employer doesn't want the employee to succeed at the labour board because they want the decision to be found to be correct. They're glad that the union didn't take them on and pursue it all the way through to arbitration and to getting a decision.
Because there are so many of these now—they are the number one complaint the labour boards are dealing with—they're clogging their system. In fact, labour board chairs have approached LabourWatch and have asked us if there is anything we could do, as an organization, to put content on our website to try to influence unionized Canadians to file fewer such complaints.