CUB 7464

DECISION OF THE UMPIRE

Claimants: Pierrette Carpentier, Yvette Deschenes, Lise Paquin

Appellant: Commission

^* DECISION

MARCEAU, J.:

These three cases were heard jointly for purposes of the appeal. The facts, as outlined below, are the same in all three.

The three claimants are qualified to teach and offered their services on the labour market as teachers, but did not have regular employment. During the 1979-80 school year, they were hired by the school board in Cap-de-la Madeleine, Quebec, as substitute teachers to replace regular teachers who were temporarily unable to perform their duties. At the end of the year, as provided, all three were laid off; their employment was terminated. They obviously had no difficulty asserting their right to unemployment insurance benefits.

On December 4, 1980, however, the three claimants received a notice from the Commission informing them that effective September 2, 1980, they had lost their right to receive benefit. An insurance officer had learned that had it not been for a strike by the teachers in the employ of the Cap-de-la-Madeleine school board, a strike which prevented the opening of the schools on September 2, the three claimants would again have been called to act as substitute teachers, and the officer had concluded that all three had consequently lost their employment because of the strike and had become disentitled under section 44 of the Act. Naturally, the three claimants contested this decision, and the Board of Referees found in their . The In my opinion, the Commission is wrong. In order to support its point of view, it must give section 44 an interpretation which the terms of that section do not allow. The disqualification (sic) under section 44 applies to someone who has been laid off following a stoppage of work at the premises at which he was employed. It applies to someone who working and who has ceased working because of a strike. It does not apply to someone who had only a possible opportunity to work, or even a guarantee of employment, because such a person has not gone from the state of being employed to that of being unemployed; he has remained employed. When the strike began, the claimants did not have employment with the school board, and could not lose such employment because of the strike within the meaning of section 44.

The appeal is dismissed.

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Umpire

Dated July 20 1982