Telus has won the latest round in a battle to fire a worker for chronic tardiness.
The telecommunications company dismissed the employee, who had worked at its Burnaby call centre from 2011 to 2014, after she racked up 169 minutes’ worth of late arrivals to work and 570 minutes of time returning late from breaks, according to a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling last week.
Over the course of three years, she had been late 194 times, according to court documents.
After accumulating a lengthy disciplinary record, mostly because of her tardiness, she was fired on Nov. 12, 2014.
But her union, the Telecommunications Workers Union, grieved the dismissal, and an arbitrator ruled the employee should be punished with an unpaid three-month suspension with no loss of seniority instead of being fired.
The arbitrator concluded the employee’s health problems, including chronic neck pain, headaches, anxiety and depression, hadn’t caused her lateness, and that Telus had been justified in imposing discipline, but the arbitrator ruled the termination had been “excessive in the circumstances,” according to court documents.
Telus applied for a judicial review of the decision, but that application was dismissed by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
In a 2-1 decision last Friday, however, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled to allow Telus’s appeal to have the arbitrator’s decision reviewed.
Justices Peter Willcock and Gregory James Fitch agreed the arbitrator had inconsistently dealt with the duty owed by Telus to the tardy employee.
The judges therefore set aside the original arbitrator’s decision, and the case will now go back to arbitration for reconsideration.
