Can I avoid inheriting a union simply by changing the business's name after buying it?

No, generally not, and this is a common misconception worth correcting directly. Ontario labour relations law's successor-rights protections look at the substance of the transaction and how the business actually operates, not at what it's called. Simply renaming the business, while continuing substantially the same operations with substantially the same employees, doesn't change whether a labour relations board would find you to be a successor employer for union recognition purposes.

The test focuses on things like whether the operation is recognizably a continuation of what the seller was doing, not on cosmetic or administrative details like a new sign, a new business name, or even a new corporate entity, if the underlying operation is essentially unchanged. A rebrand undertaken specifically to try to shed a union is exactly the kind of situation these protections are designed to catch, and attempting it can create its own labour relations dispute on top of not actually achieving the intended result.

If avoiding a union recognition finding matters to your deal, that needs to be assessed based on the actual substance of the transaction and operations, not solved through a name change. A Treadstone business lawyer can help you understand what factors actually matter here.