B.C. employer's manual containing termination clause provided after worker starts job
A British Columbia worker was not bound by a termination clause in the company’s manual that he received a few days after he started work, the B.C. Provincial Court has ruled.
Dean Snider, 42, was employed as a construction labourer at Reotech Construction, a general contractor in Coquitlam, B.C. He initially interviewed for a permanent job with Reotech on Jan. 31, 2018, after working on Reotech’s jobsites as day labour for several months. Reotech viewed Snider as a good worker and offered him the position as a permanent general labourer working four days a week, to start on Feb. 5.
Before Snider started work, Reotech informed him that he would have to sign some documents for payroll purposes and a package would be sent to him shortly.
The package arrived a few days after Snider started work. It included payroll documents as well as the company’s Policies and Procedures Manual. The manual contained a provision that limited compensation for termination without cause to two weeks’ salary.
Snider skimmed the documents but didn’t fully read the manual. He returned the documents with a digital signature by email on Feb. 8.
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Over the next couple of years, Reotech gave Snider a raise and an annual bonus of $500. According to Snider, he sometimes took on extra responsibilities including directing other workers.
In early 2020, a representative of Reotech told Snider that there would be opportunities for advancement as the company wanted to grow from within. The representative added that if Reotech wanted to be promoted to supervisor, he would have to make some improvements. He suggested that they revisit the matter in six months.
On March 18, Snider wasn’t feeling well and called Reotech to say he was concerned about COVID-19, as he had a medical condition that made him vulnerable. The company told him to quarantine at home.
The next day, Reotech informed Snider that he was being temporarily laid off for 16 weeks and issued a Record of Employment with an unknown return-to-work date.
Nearly three months later, on June 11, Reotech wrote to Snider to tell him that it could not guarantee any work in the weeks ahead. Snider replied that if he wasn’t recalled by the end of the 16-week layoff period, he would consider himself to be constructively dismissed. Reotech could only say that it couldn’t guarantee any work by July 8 and his benefits would end on July 31.
Snider sought new employment, but the pandemic made things difficult and he was unsuccessful. He eventually sought retraining and certification in other field related to previous jobs.
Severance pay 6 months after dismissal
On Sept. 30, Reotech paid Snider two weeks’ salary after Snider sought the assistance of legal counsel. Snider then sued for wrongful dismissal, claiming entitlement to five months’ pay in lieu of notice, his annual bonus, and $20,000 in punitive damages for “bad faith and high-handed conduct” on the part of Reotech.
Reotech argued that its manual limited compensation for dismissal to two weeks’ salary, which it paid. It also claimed that construction industry standards don’t require payment to general labourers for without-cause termination.
The court found that the termination without-cause provision in the employee manual wasn’t binding or enforceable for Snider as he had been offered the job and he accepted it without any mention of that provision. In addition, Snider didn’t receive the manual until after he had started his employment.
“I find that the terms of [Snider’s] contract of employment crystallized before he started his job on Feb. 5, 2018,” said the court. “There is no evidence that [Snider] agreed to a variation of the original contract or that he entered into a new contract with the [company] after he began his employment. The [company] did not advance any new consideration.”
The court also noted that the termination provision used “permissive language” indicating that a dismissed employee “may be eligible for written working notice,” compared to more definitive wording such as “are” and “shall” elsewhere. This didn’t preclude the employee from seeking something else, the court said.
The court also found that Reotech breached the terms of the contract by waiting six months before even paying Snider the two weeks’ salary, and that was only after he sought legal help. Because of the company’s own breach of the contract, it couldn’t rely on it, the court said.
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The court rejected Reotech’s argument that there was a construction industry standard that general labourers were not entitled to reasonable notice. There was no independent evidence of that and Snider reported that he has received two weeks’ working notice from another local construction company.
The court determined that Snider was entitled to four months’ notice for his nearly two-and-a-half years of service, plus an additional two weeks “based on the challenges posed by COVID-19 and the availability of similar employment.” Reotech was also ordered to pay Snider compensation for the loss of his annual $500 bonus.
The court declined to award punitive damages, finding that Reotech adopted “an aggressive litigation strategy” but that was within its right. While Snider may have felt he was treated unfairly and the company didn’t deal with him in a timely manner, the evidence indicated that Reotech “didn’t ascribe the same priority in dealing with these matters” and it wasn’t due to any malicious intent, the court said. See Snider v. Reotech Constructino Ltd., 2021 BCPC 238.
