By Frederic Parisien

Workplace harassment, at the onset, involves two players — the harasser and the harassee. A third party is added once a complaint is filed — the employer. And a fourth player, the union, is added if that complaint is a grievance. To what extent does the alleged harasser continue to be a party in Canada? In Association du personnel de soutien du College v. College d’enseignement general et professionel, the Quebec Court of Appeal recently said that the harasser takes a backseat to the main parties — the employer and the union.

Facts
A laboratory technician at a Montreal-area college filed a harassment complaint against a teacher. When the college’s internal investigation did not support the harassment allegations, the union filed a grievance on the harassee’s behalf. The college, as the employer, was called to defend the grievance. But the alleged harasser sought to intervene and obtain full party status.

read more…

By Brian P. Smeenk

How can you protect yourself from arbitrators’ ever-increasing damages awards, based on ever-expanding grounds?

In the April 25 Northern Exposure entry “Canadian Court Trims $500K Dismissal Damages, Upholds Arbitrator’s Broad Authority,” we reported on the latest notable example of a Canadian labor arbitrator’s expansive award being upheld by the courts. That decision surprisingly granted a lower-level Greater Toronto Airport Authority employee $500,000+ for past and future wages, plus damages for mental distress, pain and suffering, and punitive damages. In upholding most of the award, the court clarified the broad remedial authority of labor arbitrators. But it confirmed most of the arbitrator’s powers, at least under that agreement.

read more…

By Antoine Aylwin

A month ago, we reported on the Ontario Court of Appeal’s surprising decision in R. v. Cole.  In that decision the Court of Appeal said that a high school teacher was protected against searches on his work computer by the police absent a search warrant. The Court of Appeal based its decision on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Recently, an arbitrator in Quebec also considered an employee’s Charter rights, this time the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. It said that Laval University violated an employee’s Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms when it reviewed an email sent by the employee — on the university’s systems — to the union.

Facts
At issue was a brief exchange of emails on January 16, 2007: read more…

by Julia Kennedy

A Canadian court recently upheld most of a more than $500,000 arbitration award involving a unionized employee of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA). But it ordered the arbitrator to reconsider the mental distress and punitive damages awards. In doing so, the court clarified the broad remedial authority of arbitrators to award a range of damages. Arbitrators are clearly not limited to reinstatement and lost wages.

A year ago we alerted our readers to this precedent-setting arbitration award (Employee Awarded $500,000 for Bad Faith Termination and Shocking Arbitration Decision in Ontario). A wrongfully dismissed vehicle fleet coordinator was awarded eight years of wages for both past and future employment income losses, damages for mental distress, pain and suffering, and another $50,000 of punitive damages.

read more…

By Maria Giagilitsis

Along with the extraordinary benefits accompanying today’s rapidly advancing technology comes an increasing vulnerability for Canadian employers who strive to hire the “best of the best” information technology groups.

On the one hand, “wizard like” computer skills are an invaluable asset — they can lead a company’s growth while sharpening its competitive edge. On the other hand, these advanced skills also can be a source of weakness as management struggles to predict the numerous and complex ways in which a technology employee might abuse his or her position and even cause harm to the business.

read more…

By Chris Semerjian

The Quebec Superior Court recently upheld an arbitration award against Wal-Mart regarding the  closure of its store in the town of Jonquière in 2005. That closure is now also affecting Wal-Mart elsewhere in Canada. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal recently indicated that Wal-Mart’s actions in Quebec possibly could be perceived as an intimidation tactic against Saskatchewan employees. Here is an update of the cases.

Facts
In February 2005, after the Jonquière workers had voted to become the first unionized Wal-Mart store in North America, the company announced it was closing the store. It did so on April 29, 2005. About 190 employees were laid off.

read more…

By Stephen Acker and Joel Henderson

Four years ago in Ottawa, the Federal Canadian Government nipped a nascent spending scandal in the bud when it fired two employees of the Canadian Department of Public Works, Douglas Tipple and David Rotor. Tipple successfully grieved his termination before the Public Service Labour Relations Board, winning the largest individual damage award in Canadian labor arbitration history this past July — $1.3 million. While Tipple waits for the ordeal to be over (the government has appealed the decision), employers can take stock of the immediate fallout.

read more…

By Bill Duvall

As the prognosis for Canada’s economy remains uncertain, the Canadian court system continues to churn out employment cases arising from distressed employers. On this front, two recent cases are of interest. In the first, an Ontario court concludes that employees may not be entitled to statutory severance pay when they are provided with pension bridging and supplementary benefits. In the second, a British Columbia court is more employee-friendly, giving a broad interpretation to the definition of wages.

Ontario employees not entitled to severance pay
In Ontario, employees with at least five years’ service are generally entitled to up to 26 weeks’ severance pay when their employer discontinues its business. Employers are exempt from this severance pay obligation when an employee retires on termination and receives an “actuarially unreduced pension benefit that reflects any service credits which the employee, had the employment not been severed, would have been expected to have earned in the normal course of events for purposes of the pension plan.”

read more…

by Ralph Nero and Ida Martin

Can an employer require a single parent to start occasionally working the night shift? A recent board of arbitration decision out of Alberta answered — yes. This Alberta decision is the latest in our coverage of decisions wrestling with the workplace application of discrimination on the basis of family status. (We also have reported on the Falardeau decision, and the Power Stream decisions. See our posts titled To What Extent Must Employees’ Family Obligations Be Accommodated and What Happens When Child Care and Work Conflict — More Guidance for Employers.)

read more…

By Donna Gallant

As we reported four weeks ago (Shocking Arbitration Decision in Ontario), a prominent Canadian arbitrator recently ordered the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) to pay more than $500,000 in damages, finding that it failed to take reasonable steps to ascertain the truth about an employee’s medical condition and fired her for sick leave fraud. The question is whether the door to higher damage awards in Canadian labor relations just got a whole lot wider.

What happened?
On February 19, 2004, the grievor (a 23-year employee with a clean record) underwent arthroscopic surgery as a result of a workplace knee injury. On February 24, her surgeon wrote a note authorizing her to be off work for four weeks to recuperate.

read more…