Teachers were contractually entitled to amounts at issue

Arbitrator found that school board was not required to round up teacher's years of service when deciding whether teacher had 10 years of service for purpose of determining entitlement to vested retirement payment. In first arbitration decision, arbitrator found that for purpose of calculating payout, applicable regulations and collective agreement required board to round up years of service to next whole year for teachers with more than X.500 years. In second arbitration decision, arbitrator found that board could not round down years of service for teachers with less than X.500 in recalculation payouts . School board brought application for judicial review. Application dismissed. Arbitrator’s decision was reasonable. While article 26.01(b) of collective agreement may not be as clear as it could be in signaling its relevance to calculating accumulated service, its only possible relevance was in reference to step placement. While step placement concept may not fit perfectly, wording of article 26 did support arbitrator's conclusion that article 24.01(e) was meant to be used for calculating accumulated service. There was no reason to interfere with arbitrator’s rejection of school board’s estoppel argument on grounds that teachers were contractually entitled to amounts at issue and that board did not bring evidence that it was unable to pay.

Peel District School Board v. Secondary School Teachers' Federation, District 19 (Ontario) (2019), 2019 CarswellOnt 17282, 2019 ONSC 6172, R. Smith J., D.L. Corbett J., and Favreau J. (Ont. Div. Ct.); application for judicial review refused (2017), 2017 CarswellOnt 4361, Russell Goodfellow Member (Ont. Arb.). (Ont. Div. Ct.); application for judicial review refused (2018), 2018 CarswellOnt 13257, Russell Goodfellow Member (Ont. Arb.).

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