An Ontario arbitrator has upheld the firing of a worker who was caught working a part-time job while claiming to be totally disabled from work.
Working for another employer while on sick leave is often just cause for dismissal, with some exceptions, according to Madeleine Loewenberg, an employment lawyer at Loewenberg Psarris in Toronto.
“If the [other job] is within the worker’s restrictions and those restrictions prevent the employee from working for the home employer, that may be an exception,” says Loewenberg. “But if [a worker] is saying, ‘I’m completely unable to work and there’s no accommodation you can provide me that will get me back to the workplace,’ then they must be very certain that the duties of the second job can’t be done for the home employer.”
