Saskatchewan court upholds joint bargaining status for livestock auction businesses

A Saskatchewan court has upheld a common-employer declaration covering Northern Livestock Sales and Heartland Livestock Services, finding that their years of joint bargaining supported preserving the union’s existing bargaining unit.

In Northern Livestock Sales v Grain and General Services Union (ILWU Canada), 2026 SKKB 171, Justice R.C. Wempe of the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan dismissed Northern Livestock’s application for judicial review on September 25, 2026.

The judgment leaves the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board’s common-employer ruling in place. It does not merge the businesses or establish that unrelated competitors must bargain together merely because their employees have the same union. The court’s conclusion rested on the history and evidence concerning these two businesses.

A sale followed by years at the same bargaining table

The Grain and General Services Union had been certified to represent the relevant Heartland employees in Saskatchewan since 2001. In October 2017, Heartland sold and leased assets associated with its livestock-marketing business in Prince Albert and Lloydminster to Northern Livestock. Heartland continued operating auction marts in Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Yorkton.

Northern Livestock told the union that it had purchased part of Heartland’s business and acknowledged being the successor employer for the Prince Albert and Lloydminster portion of the collective agreement.

For approximately six years after the transaction, the businesses continued bargaining together and entering collective agreements as one employer. The agreements described them collectively as “the Company” and did not distinguish between them.

During negotiations for the 2023–24 agreement, Northern Livestock raised a different position: the businesses should bargain separately because they were competitors. The union responded by seeking a common-employer declaration. The board unanimously granted that declaration in 2025 SKLRB 4, and Northern Livestock asked the court to overturn it.

Four requirements, not simply a shared shareholder

The court reviewed the board’s decision for reasonableness. That meant examining whether its reasoning was coherent and justified by the evidence and governing law, rather than deciding the application afresh or searching individual passages for errors.

Section 6-20 of The Saskatchewan Employment Act permits the board to declare separate entities to be one employer for the labour-relations purposes of that part of the legislation. The framework applied here required four things: more than one entity, with at least one a certified employer; associated or related businesses or activities; common control or direction; and a valid and sufficient labour-relations purpose for the declaration.

The union bore the burden of establishing the relevant facts on a balance of probabilities. Northern Livestock conceded that two entities were involved and that both were certified employers.

For the second requirement, corporate registry records showed a structural connection through common ownership: the same numbered company owned all or part of the businesses. Northern Livestock argued that a mutual shareholder was not enough to establish the necessary relationship.

Wempe found the board’s approach reasonable. The statutory wording required the businesses to be associated or related, not both. A structural connection could satisfy that particular requirement. It was still only one part of the four-part test, not a shortcut to the entire declaration.

Collective agreements and shared administration mattered

The common-control issue involved substantially more than ownership. The board examined the businesses’ bargaining history, collective agreements and administration of employee benefits and union matters.

The first agreement after the sale kept the same employee classifications, wage scale and work schedule as the earlier agreement. It did not distinguish between Heartland and Northern Livestock employees, and one person signed for the employer. Later agreements included terms allowing employees to move from Heartland’s Moose Jaw location to Northern Livestock’s Prince Albert location.

The businesses were named together on pension and benefit plans. Seniority and sick leave depended on employment with the combined employer identified in the agreements, rather than with one business or the other. Union dues came from the same payor and bank account, and one person handled grievances from both businesses.

Northern Livestock argued that the board had misconstrued the evidence and should have given greater weight to a November 2023 email supporting its position. The judge found it reasonable to give that email limited weight against the years of contrary conduct and the lack of other supporting evidence that the businesses were independent competitors.

The court also rejected the argument that the board had shifted the burden of proof. It had recognized the union’s burden and weighed the competing evidence. Northern Livestock’s assertions did not outweigh the evidence of how the businesses had actually dealt with the union.

Nor did the absence of evidence about some other possible indicators of control make the decision unreasonable. The relevant factors were not a checklist that had to be satisfied in every case. Their significance depended on the overall circumstances; here, the agreements and bargaining history carried particular weight.

Preserving a seven-person unit, not creating new rights

The fourth requirement concerned the declaration’s labour-relations purpose. Northern Livestock argued that union rights would remain intact because it accepted being a successor employer and was willing to negotiate with the union, just separately from Heartland.

The board found that separation would weaken the existing bargaining unit. At its October 2024 hearing, the evidence showed seven employees in the unit: four in Swift Current, two in Yorkton and one in Lloydminster. Splitting the businesses into separate units would leave one unit with six members and the other with one. Those figures describe the hearing evidence, not a current workforce count.

Wempe upheld the board’s conclusion that preventing this erosion of bargaining rights was a sufficient purpose. The declaration preserved the arrangement the businesses had maintained for years; it did not artificially enlarge the union’s bargaining power.

The judge also rejected Northern Livestock’s reliance on the years that passed before the union sought a declaration. That argument assumed the businesses had operated independently during that period, contrary to the board’s findings. The court agreed that requiring competitors to bargain together solely because they shared a union would be inappropriate, but found that was not this case.

Successor status was not decided

Northern Livestock argued it should be treated as a successor employer rather than a common employer. The union maintained that the two forms of status were not mutually exclusive.

The court did not resolve that broader question. The application before the board sought only a common-employer declaration; no application for a successor-employer declaration was before it. The board therefore did not err by confining its ruling to the application it had received.

The judicial-review application was dismissed with Column II costs payable by Northern Livestock to the union. The reasons did not set a dollar amount for costs and did not award wages or damages.