Published on December 20, 2007 by Donna Seale
CBC News is reporting today that a group of unionized hospital workers with the Nova Scotia Capital District Health Authority have succeeded in a grievance against their employer regarding their toxic work environment. The grievance seems to have centered around the manner in which the employees were treated by their manager, who is no longer employed with the health district. The president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees’ Union indicated that the manager’s behaviour involved sexual harassment, inappropriate comments, making staff uncomfortable and threatening their job security. The news article points out that the arbitrator:
"….found the workplace environment so bad that she ordered the CEO of the health authority to write a letter of apology to the employees involved and awarded the group $10,000 in damages."
Although the CBC report characterizes the behaviour of the manager at the centre of the story as "bullying", it would appear that the grievance addressed both violations of human rights legislation and allegations of personal harassment. Sexual harassment is prohibited workplace behaviour that is captured by human rights legislation and human rights legislation is often incorporated into collective agreements. Personal harassment, often characterized as "bullying" or "abuse of authority" or "psychological harassment" is a type of harassment not associated with any protected characteristics under human rights law. It is conduct in the workplace that undermines a person’s self-esteem and self-confidence, causes undue stress and can result in a hostile or poisoned work environment. While bullying can be committed by persons in authority in the workplace, which is what appears to have occurred in the Nova Scotia case, it can also occur between co-workers or by employees against their supervisors.
In Canada, only Quebec (since 2004 under its Labour Standards Act) and Saskatchewan (since October of this year under its Occupational Health and Safety Act) provide legislative protections against personal harassment in the workplace. But, more and more, common law courts are addressing the issue of personal harassment in the workplace by emphasizing an employer’s duty to provide civil and respectful places to work (see Sulz v. Attorney General et al. for a good example of this). As a result, even if you do not live in Quebec or Saskatchewan, an employee may still have a remedy against an employer if the empoyer fails to provide a healthy environment to work in. Personal harassment may also be addressed by employers in their workplace policies and by employers and unions in collective agreements. I certainly recommend to my clients that they incorporate both human rights-based and personal harassment in documents governing employee conduct in their workplaces. Training regarding the differences in these types of harassment, how to identify these behaviours in the workplace, and how to address complaints that arise is also critical.
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Donna M. Seale B.A., LL. B.
Human Rights Lawyer
and Educator
