“If an employer is approached by an employee who’s complaining about something in the workplace such as harassment or violence, you want to treat these things seriously. But even if someone doesn’t specifically bring a formal complaint under a harassment policy or health and safety legislation, you still want to be proactive as an employer and not just react to things.”
So says Chris Justice, a labour and employment lawyer at Samfiru Tumarkin in Toronto and Ottawa, after the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) dismissed a worker’s claim that restricted duties were a reprisal for a safety-related work refusal.
The worker was a secondary school teacher for the Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board (DPCDSB) at an Oakville, Ont., school.
