Mark is a maintenance worker at a large post secondary institution. He is one of four general maintenance workers. The work unit also consists of a maintenance mechanic and ten cleaning staff. All staff are unionized. Curtis is the building manager in charge of the work unit and maintenance of the facility.

Mark began working at the building six years ago. At that time Steve was the manager. Mark quite liked Steve as a manager and how he ran the facility, as did most of the staff. He was very open and used a participative style of management. Steve also quite liked Mark and even informally hinted that he would be hand picked to take over as building manager when he retired. However, one year ago when Steve did retire, the organization ended up hiring Curtis, who was a tradesperson at another building.

Once Curtis took over, he began to implement a number of changes to how work was done in the facility. He implemented maintenance requests and logs to prioritize and track all work done in the facility. Previously much of the requests were taken verbally and not tracked or recorded. Curtis wanted to ensure all maintenance was properly tracked and prioritized by management rather than having staff decide themselves what to make a priority. He also restructured the maintenance workers and made the maintenance mechanic, Bill, the supervisor of the other maintenance workers. This was done as the management duties of the building manager role had expanded to the point where Curtis could not be as involved in the day-to-day operations of the facility as Steve had been. Two smaller buildings had been added to Curtis’ area of responsibility. Curtis also had a very different style of management than Steve. He was a lot more controlling of the work assignments and priorities and was stricter and sterner in his dealings with the staff.

From day one Curtis had a great deal on trouble in dealing with Mark. While other staff generally took well to Curtis and his changes, Mark was very resistant and questioned the need to change what had been working just fine. He openly questioned the competence of Bill, the new supervisor to co-workers and even building tenants. He had to be spoken to by Curtis on a number of occasions about not following new procedures. This led to allegations by Mark that Curtis was harassing and picking on him. He soon began refusing to speak with Curtis for any reason without the presence of a union representative. Mark ended up submitted a long list of concerns with Curtis’ performance and behaviour to human resources and the union. A joint investigation has been launched and is in progress.

Shortly after that complaint was filled, the provincial boiler inspector raised an issue during a routine inspection. A certified operator must be on site at all times that the air conditioning unit is in operation. Currently, Bill and Mark are the only ones with the air conditioning certification and both of their shifts end at 4pm, whereas the air conditioners need to run until 6pm in the summer months. To comply with legislation, Curtis will need one of them to switch their shift to start 2 hours later in the morning and end at 6pm. He knows this switch will be viewed as undesirable. Bill is the supervisor and the most senior of the maintenance staff which means that Mark is the most logical choice for the shift change. However, Curtis fears Mark will see this as a retaliatory and punitive move for the complaints he submitted. How should he proceed?