A B.C. labour union is on the hook for at least $400,000 in damages for defaming a company that provides housing for the oilpatch, after the union claimed the company hadn’t hired enough Indigenous workers at a Kitimat facility.

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Civeo Corp. filed a grievance in 2021 against Unite Here, Local 40, which represents people who work in the Kitimat facility, saying a website posting had defamed the company and affected its relations with Indigenous people.

The union posted the statement, which was headlined “Civeo’s broken promises to First Nations people,” after Civeo refused to negotiate an increase in wages and benefits outlined in a letter of understanding, according to B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marla Morellato who ruled on the union’s appeal from an earlier arbitration finding.

Both sides agreed the letter of understanding didn’t compel either party to renegotiate the settled terms, it said.

Civeo’s Indigenous employees testified before an arbitration hearing that they were offended by the term “broken promises,” saying it was hurtful and offensive.

The arbitrator concluded the union published “completely false” statements about Civeo and found its conduct amounted to “extreme bad faith in the administration, application and performance of the collective agreement.”

The arbitrator relied on testimony from Trevor Gladue, Civeo’s director of Indigenous strategic initiative, who said the term “broken promises” has rightfully been used to describe past injustices, such as those stemming from residential schools.

“But using those words against me and our company — it’s hurtful,” he told the arbitrator who first heard the case and granted the damages.

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“It’s calling me a sellout. I’m a token Indian. I’ve never had that said to me — ever. I am emotional,” said Gladue, according to the court judgment. “I’m nervous about today. … Natives being used as a whipping tool again. So it’s hurtful. The statement is completely inaccurate.”

“I get it. The union is fighting for its members and for improved wages,” he said. But, “when the term ‘broken promises’ is used, it strikes hard.”

He said the impact of the union’s website statement on Civeo’s reputation and business was “deep and profound.”

He said news among First Nations spreads by the “moccasin telegraph” and “we are now on defence, because of this. It has a reverberation which is hard to rebound from.”

Ashley Hinton, an Indigenous woman who works for Civeo, said the union’s statement made her “angry” because the union was using it as a “catchphrase.”

“It is not a phrase to be used lightly,” especially at a time when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report shone light on the missing women on the Highway of Tears in Northern B.C. and the residential school issues. “But it was. The phrase was thrown out there on the website.”

The statement also claimed there had been a drop in hiring of Indigenous workers for the previous two years and it said: “This means that Civeo has not showed commitment to improving the living standards of Indigenous workers and their families.”

But the employer showed at the arbitration that 47 per cent of its employees were Indigenous.

The website statement was a “manifestation and continuation of an existing labour dispute” over wages and efforts to hire Indigenous workers, the arbitrator said.

The arbitrator found “the union did not have the ability under the (letter of understanding) to force the employer to the bargaining table ‘so it used the weapon of publishing on its website.’”

The arbitrator arrived at the damages award after relying on the letter of understanding, the collective agreement, B.C.’s Labour Code and previous cases on defamation, its defences and the appropriate damages, according to the court judgment.

The arbitrator concluded that Civeo staff and executives worked “long and hard to establish trust with First Nations people” and that was well known to the union, “which makes it all the more reprehensible that they deliberately attempted to destroy or break down that trust by highlighting and widely distributing the impugned statement.”

The union, after exhausting a number of appeals of the arbitrator’s decision within the grievance process and through the B.C. Labour Relations Board, and attempting to have Civeo file a lawsuit for damages instead of a grievance, requested a judicial review in the B.C. Supreme Court.

Morellato upheld the arbitrator’s decision and dismissed the union’s various jurisdiction arguments, upholding the $400,000 award for general damages.

But she ruled that the additional $100,000 in punitive damages granted by a labour relations board panel wasn’t “reasonable” because the original arbitrator had factored in punitive damages when arriving at the general damages award.

She sent the punitive damages part of the earlier decision back for a second attempt, in keeping with the terms of her judgment.

A request for comment from Unite Here wasn’t immediately returned.

alazaruk@postmedia.com