Mail carrier accused of throwing bundle of admail into ravine
This instalment of You Make the Call features a Canada Post letter carrier who was accused of throwing admail away rather than delivering it.
Harjot Grewal was a letter carrier in Georgetown, Ont., with two years of service for Canada Post. On Nov. 20, 2009, he covered a route for another carrier on vacation and then did overtime delivering mail on a split of two other routes, including 149 pieces of admail for Chrysler automobiles. In order to facilitate his delivery, Grewal was given a van.
Grewal started the route shortly after noon and returned to the station at 2:30 p.m. About ten minutes before he returned, a woman on his route telephoned Canada Post to complain that she saw a Canada Post van stop at a ravine near her house, the driver get out and throw a pile of flyers into the ravine.
On Nov. 23, a supervisor learned of the complaint and went to investigate with another supervisor. They interviewed the woman, who described the driver and mentioned the van had windows. The Georgetown office had only one van with windows, which Grewal was using on the day in question.
The supervisors checked out the ravine and found 119 Chrysler flyers. They concluded it must have been Grewal and obtained a written statement from the woman. Though she couldn’t give an exact description of the driver, his features were similar to Grewal’s and when she viewed the van, she immediately identified it as the one she saw.
Canada Post decided to suspend Grewal, pending an investigation, on Nov. 24, 2009. It canvassed the houses on his route, finding that 14 of 46 residences checked had received the flyer, 15 did not and 17 were unsure. Grewal conducted his own survey of the route, finding seven confirmations of delivery. However, one of those was a household already identified by Canada Post as not having received it. Another carrier had delivered the remaining flyers before Grewal’s survey.
On Nov. 27, Grewal was interviewed, and he denied throwing away the flyers and claimed he had delivered them all. Canada Post believed he was lying and terminated his employment.
Grewal claimed the evidence against him was circumstantial and there was no direct proof of any misconduct warranting dismissal. He argued the woman wasn’t reliable and his survey showed contradictory information that raised doubts about Canada Post’s survey.
You Make the Call
Did Canada Post have enough for just cause for dismissal?
OR
Was more needed to justify such a serious level of discipline?
If you said Canada Post had enough for just cause, you’re right. The board found the most important evidence was the account of the woman who filed a complaint and she was confident and consistent in her account. She identified the van Grewal was driving and the fact was it could only be Grewal driving it at the time. She wasn’t prompted by anyone and she identified someone who looked like Grewal as well, said the board, which made the circumstantial evidence fairly strong.
“There must be something more than the assertion of unfounded possibilities or fanciful theories” to counter circumstantial evidence, said the court. “Very simply, no other employee can be credibly linked to the window van which (Grewal) was driving.”
In addition, the woman’s complaint coincided with the time Grewal would have been in the area. The flyers discovered in the ravine further cemented the case, said the board.
