Owner/manager’s missteps with worker’s accommodation requirements led to thousands in discrimination damages
“Accommodation is an organization-wide endeavour — in principle, an idea that accommodation has to happen but the implementation of it across the board just isn’t effective, then it doesn't actually do what it's supposed to do.”
So says Lior Samfiru, National Managing Co-Partner at Samfiru Tumarkin in Toronto, after an Ontario restaurant that told a server she would be fired if she went to a medical appointment instead of her shift was found liable for thousands of dollars in damages for discrimination. The case, Tompkins v. Peninsula Grill, is a reminder that accommodation strategies fail not in policy documents, but in the practical application at the frontline level, according to Samfiru.
For Samfiru, effective accommodation policy has to begin with the idea that anyone with people-management responsibility must be trained and aligned with the overall organizational strategy. “Everyone that has responsibility — [managers] must know if there's an obligation to accommodate, what's expected, and must be aligned with what has already been agreed to with the employee,” he says. “There can't be any miscommunication.”
Samfiru sees it as a core strategic lesson for accommodation — an organization can’t allow each manager to interpret the duty to accommodate in isolation. “You want this to be an organization that makes the decisions, not frontline people making decisions...
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