Texts criticizing company sent day before settlement meeting
A fired British Columbia worker who sent critical texts about his employer the day before he was reinstated deserved to have his reinstatement retracted, an arbitrator has ruled.
Brian Trackl, 40, began working for delivery company UPS in 2008 at its centre in Kelowna, B.C. He received and signed his acknowledgment of several company policies, including the Honesty in Employment Policy, which stated that dishonesty would result in “immediate dismissal and possible criminal prosecution.”
In April 2020, UPS suspended Trackl for two days for failing to follow safe driving methods and having a preventable accident. A month later, he got into an argument with a female Pharmasave employee about whether he had to accept and take packages that the woman wanted to return. The woman put a package on the truck and Trackl removed it. Trackl ended up shoving the woman, she tried to punch him, and Trackl responded by punching her in the face and then grabbing her arms. The altercation was captured by surveillance cameras.
UPS investigated and decided to terminate Trackl’s employment for violating its Professional Conduct Policy. Trackl filed a grievance and reached a settlement on June 16 resulting in his reinstatement with a time-served suspension. At the settlement meeting, Trackl expressed remorse and management believed he was “willing to turn it around.”
However, about one week after his termination, Trackl had obtained a job with FedEx. On June 15, the day before his reinstatement, he texted a friend who used to work at UPS. The text included a photo of Trackl wearing a FedEx uniform with the caption “F--k UPS.” Trackl later said that he intended it to be funny but also that he wasn’t going to let them “try to starve me out and ruin me financially.” He also sent texts to a UPS employee with the photo and the message “UPS is toxic.” He sent the photo to two other UPS employees.
The former UPS employee forwarded the text to the operations management specialist and she also heard employees talking about the other texts. She informed the supervisor, who then passed it on to the company’s division manager for B.C. However, the division manager didn’t see it until the morning of June 17, the day after UPS had reinstated Trackl.
The division manager believed that the comment about UPS being toxic showed that Trackl had been dishonest about his remorse, which was a breach of the dishonesty policy. UPS retracted the reinstatement.
The union filed another grievance, claiming that Trackl was genuinely remorseful at the settlement meeting and the texts were private communications. It added that at the time the texts were sent, Trackl wasn’t an employee so he couldn’t be disciplined for them.
The arbitrator noted that “honesty is of critical importance to UPS” and was at the core of the employment relationship. In addition, Trackl was aware of the honesty policy and had signed off on it.
The arbitrator found that the texts sent just one day before the settlement meeting were “simply not consistent with a sincere expression of remorse” and indicated that Trackl faked his remorse so he could get his job back — which was higher-paying than the one with FedEx. Although Trackl claimed it was a joke, he sent two different texts with the “toxic” comment.
The arbitrator also found that although the texts were intended to be private messages sent when he wasn’t an employee, the reason for dismissal was Trackl’s conduct at the meeting, not the texts themselves — the texts were evidence showing that he was dishonest.
Although Trackl had 12 years of service with UPS, the arbitrator found that the seriousness of his dishonesty combined with two additional recent instances of discipline for failing to follow policies provided grounds for termination. The grievance was dismissed.
