“We’ve seen an evolution of societal norms in the last six or seven years with social movements changing public perception and, more recently, trickling into court decisions where they’re finding that racial slurs, sexual harassment, and discrimination are egregious as a starting point.”
So says Justin Turc, a labour and employment lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault in Calgary, after an Alberta arbitrator upheld the suspension of a worker who used a racial slur in a workplace disagreement.
“The arbitrator said, there’s no place in the modern workforce for the use of the N-word, full stop,” says Turc. “And that really gets at the broader issue of last few years, where there’s been a fairly significant shift in terms of what’s acceptable in the workplace, not only on racial slurs, but with inappropriate comments about genders or sexual orientation – they’re being treated much more severely and the courts [and arbitrators] are much more ready to see these offenses as supporting significant discipline, if not termination.”
