Worker had made derogatory comments and harassed co-workers in the past
An Ontario municipal employee’s firing for threatening remarks has been upheld because of his lack of acknowledgement of the seriousness of his misconduct as well as his disciplinary history make reinstatement unreasonable, the Ontario Arbitration Board has ruled.
The 50-year-old worker was a civic employee for the city of London, Ont., for seven years. On Nov. 22, 2005, he deliberately parked a city truck behind a co-worker’s pickup truck, blocking the latter’s exit route. He took the city truck’s keys and left, making it very difficult for the co-worker to leave. The city deemed the worker’s conduct inappropriate and breached its code of conduct. The worker later acknowledged his behaviour was “childish.”
Three days later, the worker made a sexually suggestive and derogatory comment about a co-worker’s wife. The co-worker complained and the city once again deemed his behaviour to be inappropriate and a breach of both the employee code of conduct and the city’s workplace harassment prevention policy. The worker admitted he shouldn’t have made the remark and apologized.
Around the same time, the worker was involved in another incident where his mouth got him in trouble. He had to go to a meeting at city hall and was concerned it was because another co-worker had complained about him. He asked another employee if he knew what was going on, but the employee didn’t know. The worker then said, according to the other employee, “I feel like sometimes shooting somebody.”
The next day, the worker told the other employee not to take him seriously and he shouldn’t have made the shooting comment. However, the employee told the other co-worker who had been suspected of making a complaint, and the issue was brought to a supervisor.
The worker denied making the comment to the employee and said he had made a careless comment about shooting politicians to co-workers reading about shootings in the paper.
On Feb. 16, 2006, the city terminated the worker’s employment for making a threatening comment at work as well as his past disciplinary record, which also included a 20-day suspension for a series of discriminatory and offensive comments about homosexuals and other races in 2004.
The board found the worker’s comments were threatening in nature and his explanation they shouldn’t be taken seriously wasn’t credible. They were said in the context of another worker making a complaint about him and trying to “get after him,” which could be construed as a threat against the other worker. Though the worker explained the next day he shouldn’t have made the comment, he didn’t specifically say he didn’t mean it.
“By his threatening words, (the worker) has engaged in very serious misconduct,” the board said. “Moreover, I am troubled by the absence of a frank acknowledgement regarding what he said. Instead (he) acknowledged that his comment on another occasion was inappropriate.”
