Reduction of worker's hours may have been legitimate, but timing suspect
The BC Human Rights Tribunal has rejected an application to dismiss a worker’s complaint of discrimination stemming from a reduction in hours after she announced her pregnancy.
T&T Parts is an auto parts company in Maple Ridge, BC. In March 2019, it hired the worker as a full-time driver. Part of the worker’s duties as a driver involved loading and unloading deliveries.
A couple of months later, the worker requested a temporary reduction to part-time hours due to a medical issue. T&T consented and the worker made the shift to fewer hours.
By September, the worker was back on full-time hours. She started working in the company’s Maple Ridge office three days per week on a temporary basis to help the accounts payable employee with invoices while still working as a driver two days per week.
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Pregnancy announced followed by shift reduction
In January 2020, the worker informed T&T that she was pregnant and her doctor had advised that she should limit her physical activities. She met with her manager and said that she could not lift heavy objects and needed to reduce her stress level.
According to the worker, the manager told her that T&T didn’t need her in the office anymore and could only offer her one, eight-hour driving shift per week. He said that other employees could only help her with heavy lifting if they were available and suggested that she could go on medical leave, be laid off, or quit her job.
The worker believed that the manager told her to get three separate medical notes from her doctor – one confirming her pregnancy, one stating her lifting limits, and one saying she needed to go on medical leave. The worker felt that the manager was trying to get rid of her because she was pregnant, as he indicated that her schedule would be limited to driving duties at severely reduced hours, even though she had been working full hours at the office three days per week.
The worker submitted three medical notes on Feb. 3 and texted the manager that she had been advised to take paid medical leave. The company granted her request for medical leave, supported by the doctor’s notes. However, she didn’t qualify for paid medical leave.
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Discrimination complaint
The worker filed a complaint alleging discrimination in employment based on sex and/or physical disability. She said that T&T forced her to go on medical leave by cutting her office shifts and reducing her driving shifts, rather than accommodating her.
T&T applied for a dismissal of the worker’s complaint on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success, because she didn’t provide evidence that T&T forced her to go on medical leave. The company agreed that it reduced her office shifts, but said that her pregnancy had nothing to do with it. It pointed out that the office work was temporary and it told her that it would end when the accounts payable employee caught up with her work, which happened in January 2020.
T&T also claimed that it was the worker who requested only one driving shift per week. It maintained that it was willing to accommodate the worker by helping load and unload her car, but it never had the opportunity because she went on medical leave unexpectedly.
The tribunal found that the worker had a protected characteristic under the code and the cut in her shifts followed by unpaid medical leave was a loss of employment income that created an adverse impact. As a result, the first two parts of the test for prima facie discrimination were met, said the tribunal.
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Possible connection between adverse impact and pregnancy
The tribunal also found that, although T&T argued that the office work was temporary, the fact that it informed the worker that they were being cut at the meeting in which the worker revealed that she was pregnant raised the possibility that there could be a nexus between the adverse impact and the worker’s pregnancy. The same could be said for the reduction in her driving shifts to one per week, said the tribunal.
The tribunal determined that the possibility that the cutting of the worker’s office shifts and the reduction of her driving shifts were related to her pregnancy was “out of the realm of conjecture” and would have to be assessed in a hearing.
The tribunal also determined that a hearing was needed to assess whether T&T met its duty to accommodate, as the worker claimed that she didn’t willingly go on medical leave. The company’s application to dismiss the worker’s complaint was denied. See Baldini v. T&T Parts Ltd., 2023 BCHRT 48.
