The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has thrown out a complaint claiming a Nanaimo non-profit discriminated against an employee who said she had PTSD.
According to the Oct. 16 ruling, a tenant support worker alleged the Vancouver Island Mental Health Society discriminated against her due to "mental disability, sex, and gender identity or expression." In three complaints, she accused the society of ignoring her claim that a client harassed her, and that she experienced bullying and harassment through unfavourable work evaluations and discipline.
The complainant, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the court document, complained to the society that residents under her care from 2018-2020 had "acted inappropriately," and that her employer didn't react meaningfully.
She filed the three complaints during 2021. She alleged that in 2018, a resident commented on her clothing and a co-worker told her to go home and change. In May 2020, she was given a work evaluation and an investigation was subsequently conducted examining whether she copied and removed "confidential information" from the workplace and engaged in non-work activities during work hours, according to the court document.
In August 2020, a third party looked into the bullying and harassment claims and in a report released that December, it found the society had not committed any violations.
In January 2021, a colleague claimed the complainant had said, B次元官网网址淚f they put that [expletive] idiot [worker] in the meeting with me I will probably kill her."
The complainant was put on paid leave as the validity of the death threat was probed. In a pair of meetings, she denied making the statements and it was determined she "did not pose a threat to herself or others" and was invited to return to work; however, she subsequently went on long-term disability and didn't return.
The tribunal dismissed the dispute in its entirety, partly because of a one-year deadline for filing a human rights complaint. If the alleged violations were "part of a continuing contravention," the complaint could be considered, noted Edward Takayanagi, presiding tribunal member, but the tribunal disagreed that the grievances exhibited a pattern of behaviour.
The complainant claimed the investigation, the manner it was conducted and way she was disciplined were "retaliatory." Her discipline, the warning for taking confidential information, participating in conduct not related to work and being put on leave during the death threat investigation, were "disproportionate and supports a reasonable inference of retaliation," according to the document.
"On the whole of the evidence, the society is reasonably certain to prove that its decision to investigate and discipline was based on wholly non-retaliatory considerations, and that a reasonable complainant, apprised of the facts, would not consider the conduct to be retaliatory," the tribunal decided.
