K'jipuktuk (Halifax) – Just in time for the holidays, the long-standing court battle between Commissionaires Nova Scotia (CNS) and PSAC local 851000, which represents the commissionaires working at the Halifax International Airport, has come to a fruitful resolution.

Four hundred current and former members of the union, along with the estates of 12 deceased members, will be paid for numerous years of overtime and statutory holidays that were not properly allotted due to conflicting opinions over whether the Halifax International Airport was a federal or provincial jurisdiction workplace.

The CNS, the local arm of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, was of the opinion that the airport was a provincial jurisdiction workplace, meaning that overtime pay kicks in at 48 hours, rather than the federally-accepted 40 hours. It was paying the members of local 851000 as such. Federal workplaces also have more statutory holidays.

Despite the original case of the airport being a federal workplace having been brought against the CNS by 40 members of the union back in 2008, the employer has legally fought the workplace jurisdiction designation – and the back-pay it would be required to hand over if it lost – every step of the way.

Two earlier federal court rulings clearly established that the airport was a federal workplace, but the CNS continued to hold out against handing over the retroactive pay to local 851000 – an issue not realistically tied into contract negotiations - while both sides were earlier this year engaged in what became contentious rounds of collective bargaining.

Earlier this week, the CNS cut cheques totalling approximately $500,000 in retroactive pay. Many of the airport commissionaires are retired military, making only dollars over minimum wage at their current jobs.

“It's a damn good feel good story,” Miles States, business agent for local 851000, told the Halifax Media Co-op. “It is wasn't for that local we wouldn't have gotten any of that. Santa Claus came early for the commissionaires at the airport.”

But States, the former local president, warns that the workplace environment at the airport has been “sliding backwards” for the last several months. States, former local 851000 president, notes that he has been fired by the employer since being the public face of his union earlier this year.

“What's next for [local 851000] is that they've got to fight to continue to maintain their collective agreement, which the Corps continue to try and dismantle. And in the process of trying to dismantle our collective agreement, they're going to get rid of anybody who gets too boisterous. The Corps's thing is about busting the union.”