Teaching assistant eyes shorter commute

Worker who had eye condition that prevented her from driving claimed discrimination when she was transferred farther from home

This instalment of You Make the Call looks at a teaching assistant (TA) who was unable to drive and claimed discrimination when her job was moved farther away from home. Sue Anne Snow of Sydney, N.S., worked as a TA for special needs students with the Cape Breton Victoria Regional School Board. Snow didn’t have any disciplinary problems with the board during her employment.

Snow had failed a driver’s licence test when she was younger due to vision problems which continued to deteriorate. When she applied to the school board for casual work in 1997, she indicated she didn’t have a driver’s licence but didn’t say she had any physical or health limitations. In an interview for a permanent position two years later, she told the board she was willing to work in Sydney Mines or North Sydney, which were some distance across the harbour from Sydney.

In late 2001, budget cuts forced the board to reassign TAs between schools. Snow had to go to a job picking event where they would pick new placements according to their seniority. Snow had the least seniority and ended up with a position at a school in Sydney Mines.

Snow wasn’t happy with the reassignment and wrote a letter to the board saying the new position made it difficult for her to commute because of “transportation and scheduling hardship.” She asked to be accommodated with a position in the Sydney area. She didn’t mention her condition but did tell her union about it.

Snow didn’t report to the new position, instead calling in sick and claiming she was experiencing anxiety from the job picking and reassignment. A doctor’s note described a “medical illness” and said she was unable to drive to work but didn’t elaborate further. The board told Snow her inability to drive wasn’t within its responsibility and it said there could be discipline without more information on her illness.

In January 2002, Snow was diagnosed with a condition where the cornea of the eye becomes misshapen and distorts vision. On March 1, she provided an unsigned note written by her doctor’s assistant describing her condition along with a Canadian National Institute for the Blind request for services. The board said Snow could start work a half-hour later to accommodate the schedule of the single bus that traveled from Sydney to Sydney Mines in the morning.

Snow claimed forcing her to work farther away was discrimination based on her vision problems since she couldn’t drive and requested accommodation with a job in Sydney.
You Make the Call

Did the school board discriminate against Snow when it reassigned her to a job farther away?
OR
Was Snow’s inability to drive outside the board’s duty to accommodate?


If you said it was outside the duty to accommodate, you’re right. The board of inquiry found taking public transportation for a longer commute was not in itself a hardship for Snow.

“Commuting to and from work is a life experience in which there is a wide variety of burdens, hardships and choices among the population at large,” the board of inquiry said. The board of inquiry also said accommodation requires good faith from both the employer and the employee. Snow didn’t tell the school board about her condition until three months after her reassignment and refused to accept any option other than a position in Sydney, despite the fact the school board “was prepared to accommodate Ms. Snow by relaxing the normal hours of work in order to make her hours conform conveniently to the bus schedule.”

“The employee has a duty to work in good faith with the employer to attempt a workable accommodation, and not to reject a proposed accommodation simply because it is not the one preferred by the employee,” the board said.

For more information see:

Snow v. Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board, 2006 CarswellNS 640 (N.S. Bd. of Inq.).

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