First level managers at four Quebec casinos wanted the protection of the province's general labour relations regime. Their association sought certification, but Quebec's Labour Code excluded managers from the statutory definition of employee. The association argued that exclusion undermined their constitutional freedom to pursue workplace goals together.
The dispute in Société des casinos du Québec inc. v. Association des cadres de la Société des casinos du Québec, 2024 SCC 13, travelled through several tribunals and courts. The Administrative Labour Tribunal accepted the constitutional challenge. The Superior Court disagreed. The Court of Appeal restored the tribunal's result, leaving the Supreme Court to decide how the Charter applies to workers who are outside a conventional union certification scheme.
The Supreme Court allowed the appeals brought by the casino corporation and Quebec's Attorney General. The majority applied a two stage analysis under section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. First, the Court asked whether the workers sought to engage in protected associational activities. They did. Their objectives included forming an independent association and making collective representations to their employer. The second question was whether the statutory exclusion substantially interfered with those activities. On the evidence presented, the association hadn't established that interference.
Quebec's decision to keep managers outside the usual bargaining regime was intended in part to preserve the distinction between management and employees and avoid conflicts of interest. But the majority's ruling wasn't a declaration that managers have no freedom of association. The right exists. What failed was the argument that exclusion from this particular legislative framework had been shown to breach it.
For organizations with supervisory staff, this is a useful distinction. A person's status as management can affect access to a statutory bargaining process without extinguishing every constitutional associational protection. The case also illustrates why the practical ability of a group to act together matters more than treating exclusion from one statutory scheme as automatically decisive.
The decision turns on Quebec legislation and the evidentiary record. It shouldn't be treated as a blanket ruling about the rights of managers under every Canadian labour statute.
Source: Supreme Court of Canada, Société des casinos du Québec inc. v. Association des cadres de la Société des casinos du Québec, 2024 SCC 13, https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/20398/index.do