A human rights ruling that gave a former Flin Flon health care aide her job back, along with full back pay and $10,000 in compensation, has been met with skepticism in the public sphere.
In the comments section below CBC’s online article on the decision, readers used terms such as “very bad ruling” and “plain wrong,” and questioned whether alcoholism should count as a disability, as the ruling affirmed.
Such criticism misses the point.
As The Reminder and other media outlets reported, the ruling revolves around the 2012 dismissal of Linda Horrocks from her position as a health care aide at the Northern Lights Manor.
According to evidence presented at the hearings, Horrocks was initially fired in 2011 after a manager deemed she had attended work after consuming alcohol. Horrocks got her job back after reluctantly signing an agreement saying she would abstain from alcohol at all times, even during non-working hours. Although she was rehired, she never actually got the chance to return to the workplace.
That’s because in May 2012, Horrocks was fired for a second time. The reason? Someone told the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority (now part of the Northern Health Region) that Horrocks appeared to have been drinking when she was spotted at a grocery store. Moreover, a NOR-MAN employee suspected Horrocks of being under the influence when reached by phone.
Horrocks denied both of these allegations, but NOR-MAN terminated her anyway on the grounds that she had violated a signed agreement. She later took the matter to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, where she prevailed last week.
Disabled-rights activists will no doubt paint the decision as a victory. The ruling found that NOR-MAN had failed to properly accommodate an employee with a disability, that being the alcohol problems Horrocks had previously acknowledged she had.
But this case isn’t really about alcoholism. It’s about an employee being fired based on allegations that a) were never proven and b) presented her with no means of defending herself.
If an employee signs an agreement with her employer saying she will stop drinking, and then someone tells her employer it appears she had been drinking, should she automatically lose her job? Should she be guilty until proven innocent? Should hard evidence not be required?
The case also raises questions over how far employers should be allowed to go in regulating employees’ behaviour outside of work. What reason existed for NOR-MAN to insist Horrocks abstain from alcohol in her personal life, not just her professional life?
When the Winnipeg Free Press reported on the ruling, it used the headline, “Woman unjustly fired over drinking: ruling.”
That’s not accurate. Horrocks was actually fired over alleged drinking and given no method of proving her innocence. And the alleged drinking that prompted her termination occurred outside of the workplace.
Human rights commissions in Canada are known for absurdity. Next month, for instance, pot-stirring journalist Ezra Levant will be prosecuted for critical comments toward the Alberta Human Rights Commission.
As Levant asked in a Financial Post piece, “Have you ever heard of a journalist being prosecuted for being disrespectful towards a government agency? A journalist in Canada, that is – not in China or Russia.”
That said, the Horrocks ruling makes sense strictly from the perspective of preserving a standard of fairness. If an employer is going to fire an employee for a contractual violation, it should require proof, not anecdotes.
Had NOR-MAN acquired such proof, the ruling may very well have gone the other way.
