Alberta worker fired for trying to resell employer's mattresses

An Alberta worker who was caught trying to resell company product online after buying it with an employee discount deserved dismissal, an arbitrator has ruled.

The worker was employed with Simmons Canada, a company that manufactures and sells bedding sets, working as a finishing foundation coordinator at the company’s Calgary bedding plant, working the night shift.

Simmons had a bedding purchase policy that allowed employees to buy up to five bedding sets per year. The policy prohibited “making bedding purchased from the company available for re-sale.” The worker signed an acknowledgment of the policy in 2001, a year after he was hired.

The purchase policy didn’t refer to CCRs, which were customer warranty returns of bedding product. CCRs didn’t carry a warranty and were deemed to be used product. However, there was an unwritten policy limiting employees to three CCR purchases per year as part of their five annual purchases. CCRs were stored in the finished goods area and the “law tag” — a unique identification number sewn onto the mattress or box spring that is required by law — was removed so the warranty could be voided in the company database.

On Nov. 25, 2017, another employee was on his phone during a break and checked a local marketplace group on Facebook. He noticed an ad for Simmons mattresses for sale with a 10-year warranty that included photos that appeared to have been taken inside the Simmons plant. He showed the ad to his supervisor, who was able to make out a law tag number by zooming in on one of the photos. He entered the number into the database and the purchase order number identified the worker as the purchaser.

A senior operator entered the phone number from the ad into his phone and the worker’s name appeared from his contacts. Another employee recognized a second number in the ad as belonging to the worker’s brother.

Simmons conducted an investigation that included interviews with the employees who saw the ads and recognized the phone numbers. It found that the pictures in the ad traced back to the worker and the Facebook profile that created the ad belonged to the worker’s son.

Simmons terminated the worker’s employment on Dec. 1 for breaching the purchase policy and the code of business conduct and ethics. The worker claimed that he had conformed to the purchase policy with five bedding purchases in 2017, including three CCR sets. He denied offering them for resale.

The union contested the dismissal, arguing that the advertisement wasn’t under the worker’s name and there was no evidence that he took the photos or placed the ad. In addition, there was no evidence of an actual sale at the time of the worker’s termination, said the union.

The arbitrator noted that the purchase policy emphasized that employee purchases were for personal use only and the worker, as an experienced employee, understood the policy. The undisputed evidence was that the law tag on one of the mattresses was from a purchase that the worker made and his own cellphone number appeared in the ad with photos taken in the Simmons plant. This evidence was strong enough to conclude that the worker was linked directly to the attempted resale of bedding product from the Simmons plant, said the arbitrator.

The arbitrator also noted that the worker was aware of the ads, but he didn’t report them or that he received any calls related to them.

The arbitrator found that the worker attempted to compete with Simmons by posting ads online with the intention of selling company product at a profit. His denial proved that he couldn’t be trusted to follow the policy in the future, said the arbitrator in dismissing the grievance.