Canadian Employment Law Today

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Emplo y ment Law Today Canad ad a ian www.employmentlawtoday.com How would you handle this case? read the facts and see if the judge agrees YOU MAKE THE CALL 8 Slaughterhouse employee gets cut THiS iNSTAlMENT of You Make the Call involves a meat processing plant employee who was fi red for not ensuring food animals were killed humanely. e company operated a food production plant in British Columbia. Legislation and company regulations were clear and specifi c about how the animals should be handled and killed in a humane way. Animals were sorted by size and pro- cessed on a conveyor that went through a se- ries of automated stations that fi rst stunned and then slaughtered them. e stunner was an electric plate in a saline solution that had to be adjusted depending on the size of the animals in each lot. e company had a stan- dard that required less than one per cent of the animals to miss being stunned properly. e humane treatment of the animals was a priority in the operation and this was made clear in company policies. e employee was an electrician who had worked for the company as a maintenance mechanic since 2007. On April 26, 2012, he was on the night shift on part of the produc- tion line where the animals entered the line. During the shift, the production manager noticed the stunner was too high and radi- oed the employee. e employee claimed the reception was poor and he was in a noisy area, so all he could make out was "lower stunner." He couldn't fi nd the manager, so he went to the stunner and saw it was as he had left it, so he moved on without doing a count of unstunned animals. e produc- tion manager disagreed that reception was poor on the radio call. e production manager found the employee at another station and asked him if he had adjusted the stunner. e employ- ee responded loudly, "Why? I do my job the best I can." e employee claimed the manager answered "Because I told you to do so" in an angry tone. e manager pointed out the animals dragging at the stunner and said it would have to be lowered. e employee grabbed the adjustment button and, rather than slowly lowering and checking to see the ef- fect, just kept lowering it. e manager said to stop and the employee replied, "Now you want me to stop?" Once the manager was satisfi ed, she left. e employee did a count and found the number of unstunned animals was outside the acceptable limit. However, he decided not to adjust the stunner on his own. e manager later did a count and found it was within the limits. However, she was surprised to see the employee had recorded high numbers on his last count. She testifi ed when she asked the employee, he said he knew his job and if the number of unstunned animals was too high, he would adjust the stunner. e employee testifi ed he said he was afraid to adjust the stunner and didn't know what to do. e production managers decided discipline was warranted because of the employee's attitude, lack of co-operation, and violation of company policies by fail- ing to adjust the stunner when the count was too high. e employee was given a written warning indicating further inci- dents would result in discipline "up to and including dismissal." e next day, the plant manager called a meeting with the employee and the produc- tion managers. ey discussed the events of the previous shift and the employee changed the number of unstunned animals he had recorded in his account. He said he wished he "had had the guts" to adjust the stunner but said he was afraid to do any- thing and obey what the manager ordered. At the end of the meeting, the employee was dismissed for failing to inform the man- ager of the unacceptable number of uns- tunned animals, take corrective action, or document accurate information. e employee contested the dismissal, adding that another reason he didn't want to adjust the stunner himself was that the manager was "experimenting" to see the re- sults of the diff erent stunner settings and he didn't want to mess it up. yoU makE THE CaLL Was dismissal too harsh? OR Was there just cause for dismissal? if You SAid dismissal was too harsh, you're right. e arbitrator found the em- ployee neglected his duty by not adjusting the stunner when he knew too many ani- mals were going unstunned, and failing to contact anyone else to alert them. e arbitrator found the employee be- came angry after being ordered to adjust the stunner more than once and felt he was be- ing told how to do his job as he was "a skilled and experienced tradesman" who didn't didn't like others interfering. He adopted an attitude where he would only do something if he was directly told if that was the case. However, this approach had "negative re- sults" that violated company policy. e arbitrator found the employee's at- tempts to justify his behaviour were ex- cuses. His claim the production manager was experimenting was simply "a recent fabrication" and didn't make sense given the priority the company had with the humane treatment of the animals, said the arbitrator. However, the arbitrator determined the employee had already been disciplined for his conduct with a written warning. ough the employer claimed the dismissal was for inhumane treatment of animals and the warning was for failure to follow proce- dures, the arbitrator found their objectives were related. Hence, the employee was dis- ciplined twice for the same misconduct. e arbitrator allowed the grievance, but found trust and confi dence could not be restored to the employment relationship, ruling out reinstatement. e two sides were ordered to negotiate the amount of ap- propriate damages. See XYZ Co. and U., Re, 2013 CarswellBC 3598 (B.C. Arb.).

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