Correctional officer denied yelling or swearing but three workers reported the same behaviour in incident
There is a fine line between strong leadership and abuse of authority. A New Brunswick corrections supervisor crossed that line with his aggressive behaviour that served as just cause for his employer to terminate his employment, the New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board has ruled.
Mike Lewis was a correctional officer for the New Brunswick Department of Justice and Public Safety. He was hired in 1991 and moved up to a level with supervisory duties in September 2005. Lewis worked at the Saint John Regional Correctional Centre.
Over the course of his tenure at the centre, Lewis took several training courses dealing with topics such as staff development and defensive tactics. He also took courses in verbal conflict crisis intervention, conflict resolution, leading and coaching, and team building when he was given supervisory duties. He had no formal discipline on his record, though management had to intervene and reach settlements with a mediator on a few occasions where there was a problem with Lewis’ interaction with staff. Disciplinary actions were removed from personnel files after 18 months under the collective agreement.
In May 2010, Lewis completed a training program to help him be more effective in his position. An action plan stemming from the program identified “strengthening my leadership” as an area in need of improvement.
An evaluation assessment in June 2015 indicated Lewis had “effective communication with his staff and the offenders when in a crisis situation” but improvement was needed in terms of him and his staff concentrating on their own work and not worrying about other shifts. The assessment referred to an incident where Lewis spoke to a subordinate officer rather than have the officer’s own supervisor speak to him.
On April 10, 2015, Lewis went to the control room of the Saint John Correctional Centre’s unit 5 at the beginning of his shift, looking for the shift admissions officer. Once in the control room, he told the shift admissions officer that there was a “problem with the count” — the inmate population counted on the ePop board, an electronic system that kept track of the number of inmates. Lewis didn’t have formal training yet on the new ePop system — which had been in use for a year — but identified the problem as the board counting weekend inmates on temporary absences twice.
Lewis acknowledged that he presented the issue by saying “the count is f---ed up” but denied yelling at the shift admissions officer or acting aggressively towards two other correctional officers who were on duty in the control room. Because an accurate inmate count is important for public safety, he said he treated the matter urgently.
After some discussion, Lewis accepted that count sheets of inmates had been collected and that count was right, but still believed the electronic system was incorrect so he put things on hold until the morning when he could speak to an official. The next day, the official confirmed that the ePop had a glitch that counted weekenders on temporary absences twice.
A couple of days later, Lewis had what he termed “a light conversation” with the shift admissions officer — but the officer was looking for an apology for Lewis’ aggressive behaviour. Lewis said “well, I was right about the logs so maybe we should apologize to each other.”
Employees disturbed by incident
On April 13, the two correctional officers who had been on duty in the control room reported the incident to their superiors, who then notified the centre’s superintendent. The superintendent opened an investigation and requested statements from both officers and the shift admissions officer.
The two correctional officers reported that Lewis used an “aggressive tone of voice” which made them feel uncomfortable. One of the officers said he was outside the control room bubble and could hear Lewis’ voice, as could inmates watching television below the observation windows. They felt Lewis was undermining the shift admission officer’s authority with the inmates, but Lewis told one of them to “stay out of this” after she tried to defuse the situation.
One of the officers also said she had been belittled by Lewis on another occasion. She reported that after the April 10 incident, Lewis asked her if she wanted to leave the shift and implied that she had been in the wrong. Both officers said that if they hadn’t been requested to make a statement, they wouldn’t have formally submitted a complaint because they feared retribution.
Lewis was informed of the complaint against him and the statements of the corrections officers involved. He was placed on a paid leave of absence for two weeks “to enable you to reflect on your career and focus on moving forward in a positive manner” and then reassigned to other duties while the investigation continued. In addition, the deputy minister of public safety sent Lewis a letter outlining his responsibilities and the importance for correctional officers to be “focused, ever vigilant and not be distracted.”
The HR director for the department met with Lewis to discuss his leave and reassignment and found Lewis to be “quite agitated and preoccupied” as well as frustrated he couldn’t perform his regular duties. Lewis wanted to be put back “on the floor” in his old position, but the investigation wasn’t complete.
On Oct. 8, Lewis was given an investigator’s report and asked to comment on it. Lewis offered to apologize to the shift admissions officer — as was suggested in the report — but was told that was not “good enough" and his employment was being terminated. The termination letter stated that “there have been numerous occasions when your behaviour toward management, co-workers and subordinates has not modeled the values of the Department of Public Safety” and, despite attempts to address these issues, the department saw no substantial improvement since his 2010 action plan.
Lewis grieved the termination, arguing there wasn’t just cause dismissal, nor was progressive discipline followed as required under the collective agreement.
The board found Lewis took the attitude that he did no wrong and his meeting in the control room went as usual with no yelling or aggressive behaviour. However, he admitted to using profanity and the three officers in the control room all separately told a different story. The two corrections officers were impacted enough by the incident that they individually told their superiors, said the board.
The board also noted that Lewis said he was relatively unfamiliar with the ePop system, but it had been around for a year. Therefore, he must have received many counts based on the system and would have been informed if there was a problem with it by officers who used it. His claim that he discovered a problem with the program without being formally trained didn’t ring true for the board — not to mention the fact he didn’t order a lockdown and manual count of inmates, which he should have done if he really thought there was a problem, said the board.
“The more logical interpretation is that Lewis decided to use the ePop program… as a pretext to assert his authority in relation to a junior (correctional officer),” said the board. “Why else would he have commenced the ‘conversation’ with the assertion that the count is ‘f---ed?’ A calm, logical conversation on the point was not his aim.”
The board found Lewis was guilty of harassing subordinate employees in an attempt to assert his authority — including personal harassment against the shift admissions officer — that was in violation of the harassment policy and an abuse of authority.
Because Lewis’ conduct not only constituted harassment but also undermined the officers’ authority with inmates and was witnessed by other employees — and his service was “not stellar” though it was lengthy — the board found there was just cause for dismissal.
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