“It’s a high bar on an employer to show that it has taken all reasonable and practicable steps to accommodate an employee’s disability to the point of an undue hardship. Factors that will be considered in determining whether an employer has met that threshold would include whether or not accommodation would substantially interfere with the rights of other employees.”
So says Scott Dallen, an employment lawyer at Ascent Employment Law in Vancouver, after the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal granted an employer’s application to dismiss a worker’s discrimination claim based on the worker’s inability to wear a face covering at work during the pandemic.
The 17-year-old worker was hired as a part-time service clerk in July 2019 by Buy-Low Foods, a grocery store company operating in Western Canada. His job duties involved checking out groceries for customers and taking payment.
