“Employers need to be cautious about microaggressions, comments, and incidents that occur in the workplace, and try to maintain an awareness of whether those microaggressions and conflicts have the potential to create a poisoned workplace.”
So says Nathanael Bowles, a labour and employment lawyer at McLennan Ross in Calgary, after the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal dismissed a worker’s complaint alleging employment discrimination by a private school stemming from a conflict with co-workers.
The worker, who was an Arab woman originally from Tunisia, started working for Al-Mustafa Academy and Humanitarian Society (AMA), a Muslim private school in Edmonton, in September 2018 as a teacher’s assistant. Two years later, the worker moved into an administrative assistant role in the school office. Her four children attended school or daycare at AMA during the worker’s employment without paying school fees.
