Abrasive manager's poor conduct not deemed harassment: Board

An Ontario manager’s management style was disrespectful and hurtful but didn’t rise to the level of harassment, the Ontario Grievance Settlement Board has ruled.

Shamaran Yousif worked for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General in Newmarket, Ont. In early 2020, the ministry reorganized office space at the Newmarket courthouse to improve social distancing. It needed one person to move to the back of the office and Yousif volunteered. She was placed at a desk in the back that didn’t have email access.

Yousif was still expected to check her email, so she briefly sat at her former desk and checked her email when there weren’t many people around, keeping her face mask on. However, the manager of court operations at the courthouse saw Yousif at the desk and shouted angrily, “Why are you there? That’s not your desk!”

Yousif explained why she was there, but the manager told her forcefully and in front of some colleagues, to go back to her desk. Yousif was embarrassed.

A few months later, in July, Yousif was helping a male colleague with filing. Occasionally, they had to move within six feet of each other. The manager of court operations came up to them and mockingly suggested that they were getting so close to each other, they might get married. This shocked Yousif, as she was married and was worried that the comments could lead to workplace rumours. She was also offended by the insinuation that she was behaving inappropriately.

On Oct. 1, Yousif was alone in the filing room. She was wearing a mask but, since there was no-one else there, she unhooked it from one ear for a short breather. The manager of court services happened to walk by at that moment and asked her where her mask was, although she still had it hanging around her other ear. He told her to put it on and walked away before she had a chance to say anything.

Later that day, the manager emailed Yousif — copied to her supervisor — with a form stating that she hadn’t been wearing a mask. Yousif met with the manager and a female union representative but the manager was nearly an hour late. During the meeting, the manager was rude and dismissive while frequently glaring at her. When she attempted to explain things, the manager got angry and stormed out.

Both women were upset about the manager’s behaviour. Yousif began experiencing anxiety the next day and went home. She was off work for three months.

Yousif filed a grievance, claiming that the ministry violated the collective agreement — which stated that both the employer and the union were “committed to a workplace free from workplace harassment, including bullying, by other employers, supervisors, managers, any other person working or providing services to the employer in the workplace, clients, or the public, in accordance with the law.” The agreement went on to define workplace harassment as “engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct against an employee in the workplace that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.”

The board accepted that the incidents happened as Yousif claimed. However, it found that the manager’s behaviour did not constitute harassment, which had been established in previous jurisprudence as involving “an element of persistent conduct or a course of activities that involves hostility, importuning, badgering, intimidation or bullying that causes a person distress that is inimical to a safe and positive work environment.” This didn’t include the exercise of normal management rights or issuing discipline, said the board, adding that not every “employment bruise” causing discontent was harassment.

The board recognized that the manager’s conduct was “hurtful and disrespectful to employees” and a “recipe for conflict,” but found that it didn’t rise to the level of workplace harassment. The grievance was dismissed.