‘If you suspect your employee needs accommodation, you have to inquire’
“Termination is the capital punishment of employment and labour law, so if an employer is going to fire somebody, it better have a really good reason – especially for unionized employees, who will fight tooth-and-nail to get reinstated.”
So says Charles Millar, a labour and employment lawyer at Achkar Law in Toronto, after an arbitrator ordered a federally regulated employer to reinstate a worker it fired for time theft.
The worker, 35, was a part-time air ops sorter for package delivery logistics company Purolator in Richmond, BC. He was initially hired in 2019 and he became a permanent employee after accumulating 500 hours on the job. When he was hired, the worker signed a form indicating he had read and understood all the company’s policies and procedures.
The worker worked from 2 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. Monday to Friday sorting freight. The Richmond facility was Purolator’s second-largest air operation in Canada and the busiest time was between 5:30 p.m. and 7:15 p.m., with sometimes no freight in the mid-afternoon.
The collective agreement provided for 15-minute breaks for shifts exceeding four hours, and breaks were assigned specific times so that the conveyor belts carrying freight were always covered. Employees were allowed to manage their own bathroom breaks by telling a co-worker to watch their container on the conveyor belt. Normally, there were short daily meetings at which employees were...
There’s a lot of information around The LAPD has issued a rare public statement pushing back on what it says is “misinformation” and “false claims” circulating in media reports about the investiga...