Court rules for Suncor on random drug testing; union to keep fighting

CALGARY Energy giant Suncor Energy has won another victory in a years-long legal battle over random drug and alcohol testing at its northeastern Alberta oilsands sites.

Suncor started randomly testing staff in safety-sensitive jobs in 2012, but the union representing many of those workers called it an infringement of privacy.

The majority of an arbitration tribunal ruled in favour of Unifor in 2014, but last year Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Blair Nixon quashed that decision.

Unifor appealed Nixon’s ruling, but three judges with the Alberta Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the union’s challenge in a decision released Thursday.

“The question before us is whether the reviewing justice selected the appropriate standard of review and applied it properly,” the Appeal Court judges wrote.

“We hold that he did both.”

The arbitration tribunal heard that, at the time of the grievance, there were about 10,000 workers at Suncor’s oilsands sites at any given time, including nearly 3,400 represented by Unifor.

The company presented evidence of more than 2,200 incidents that involved drugs or alcohol, but did not break down how many involved unionized employees versus non-union members and contractors. In Thursday’s ruling, the judges noted workers inside and outside the union regularly work side-by-side.