An Ontario employer cannot fire an employee while she is on maternity leave simply because she is on maternity leave. Ontario law protects the employee’s position while she is away. But, what happens when an employee who has been on maternity leave returns and is then terminated?
Should I stay or should I go? Without question, the single most difficult case that walks through my door is that of harassment or bullying by managers. This post will focus on general hostile working environments. Working environments that are toxic by reason of violations of the Human Rights Code are treated differently.
The fact scenario most commonly presented is that of the employee who simply cannot take any more from his or her manager and/or subordinates. Pulled in a hundred different directions, often with no support from above, the worker’s well-being starts to suffer.
What is an employee, faced with this situation of unbearable stress, to do?
Some facts are simply too fantastic to make up. Is a manager’s failure to specifically prohibit an employee from using a forklift to raise a wheelchair-bound co-worker to a mezzanine just cause for the manager’s termination from employment?
As incredible as those facts may seem, that was the issue that the Honourable Justice Peter Lauwers of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice was asked to resolve in the case of Barton v. Rona Ontario Inc., 2012 ONSC 3809 (CanLII).
