The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed a discrimination claim by two Caucasian workers in the face of multiple reasons for reduced hours and a failure to recall them from layoff in favour of Chinese workers, and a lack of evidence showing any relation to a protected human rights ground.
“The tribunal looked at the whole puzzle rather than the individual pieces, and that’s why the decision was made that it wasn’t discriminatory,” says Trevor Thomas, co-founder and partner at Ascent Employment Law in Vancouver. “The company had a legitimate reason for hiring Chinese-speaking servers back, as they could speak a language that catered to the clientele that they were trying to bring into the business.”
The two workers were a server and a lead server who worked at a Vancouver nightclub called Levels owned by Finale Entertainment. Both were hired as part of the initial round of hiring for the opening of Levels in May 2019.
