A random question occurred to me the other day, “Could disciplining an employee due to their body odour be a form of discrimination?” This question occurred to me when I did a double take reading the headline of the Washington Post article, “Lawsuit says American Airlines kicked 8 Black men off plane, citing body odor.”
My colleagues Christine Thomlinson and Lori-Ann Green recently wrote about how an organization’s respect at work policies, often written to comply with its legal obligations and to correspond with legislative requirements, may use legal and technical language which can be difficult to interpret, and may, from the perspective of those whom the policy is designed to protect, not be easy to navigate.1
Janice Rubin and I recently completed a two-part webinar series on workplace restoration. During the sessions, we received several interesting questions, all of which we did not get the opportunity to answer. The questions were excellent and thought provoking and represent some of the questions that we are frequently asked when engaging in this work.
I remember it like it happened yesterday. My colleague and I were packing our briefcases at the end of a long day. Another colleague approached and offered to carry my colleague’s briefcase. She declined his offer, and he offered again. She refused again, and he said, “But you’re such a little thing.” I remember this incident so clearly, even though it happened several years ago. It was disorienting and awkward.
This is the third and final post in a series of blog posts that I wrote on data and investigations.
To recap, workplace investigations are also an invaluable source of data that organizations can use in a variety of ways – outside of the investigation process – to help their workplaces get into the zone – the optimal workplace that is characterized by respect, civility, tolerance, inclusivity, and no, or few, employment-related legal problems.
In most of our workplace investigations, the organization that retains us asks us to measure our findings of fact against one or more of their policies. This means that, once we have made findings of fact, we must decide whether the respondent’s conduct has breached a policy or policies that the organization has asked us to apply.
We often hear horror stories about workplace complaints being handled poorly — instances where employers don’t act, investigators miss the mark, and so on and so forth. I’ll now be the bearer of good news and share what the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (“Tribunal”) recently found to be reasonable handling of a complaint in Salanguit v. Parq Vancouver and another.
Under Ontario’s human rights jurisprudence, when an employee raises a complaint of discrimination, the employer has a duty to address that complaint. The employer’s response to a complaint, including the investigation it undertakes, must meet a standard of “reasonableness.”
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