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“How was I to know they were offended by my jokes? They never told me they were uncomfortable.”
Jokes between colleagues can be an important contributor to positive workplace culture. Unfortunately, some employees are subjected to jokes and teasing that is offensive or demeaning.
I recently investigated a case where I needed to assess whether the discriminatory conduct that I found contributed to a poisoned work environment (PWE). This topic was explored in a previous blog post by RT, but I felt it was time for a more recent and in-depth look.
Québec case law often goes unnoticed in the rest of Canada and remains inaccessible to most workplace investigators across the country, primarily due to linguistic reasons. This situation is quite unfortunate since Québec courts, tribunals, and adjudicators render interesting and innovative decisions every year in various areas of interest, including human rights and labour law.
La jurisprudence québécoise passe souvent inaperçue dans les autres provinces canadiennes et demeure inaccessible pour la grande majorité des enquêteurs et enquêteuses en milieu de travail du pays, et ce, pour des raisons principalement linguistiques. Cette situation est malheureuse, puisque chaque année, les tribunaux québécois rendent des décisions intéressantes et innovatrices dans plusieurs domaines d’intérêt, dont en droits de la personne et en droit du travail.
In 2017, Rubin Thomlinson conducted the Workplace Bystander Survey to gather insight into workplace bystanders (individuals who personally witnessed, heard of, or heard about harassment and discrimination in their workplaces).
The rights and freedoms of trans people currently dominate certain news cycles, and for good reason. The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 118 anti-trans health care bills in the U.S., along with a variety of trans athlete bans, public accommodation bans, and education gag orders about gender identity and expression.
Slurs, name-calling, swearing, yelling, taunting, eye rolling, profane jokes and innuendos, sexual harassment, violence to property or person: these are easily recognized as the types of behaviours which run afoul of workplace codes of conduct and anti-harassment policies.
Social media can be a great way to connect with friends and family, especially those people we don’t often get to visit in person. Unfortunately, social media can also be a venue in which workers make demeaning, threatening, and insulting comments about colleagues and supervisors.
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