Labour board looks at possibility of unfair labour practice, retaliation
A Manitoba landscaping company that put a family member in charge of HR coordination has been ordered to pay damages after firing them within hours of resolving a dispute over unpaid overtime.
In a decision dated July 20, 2026, Manitoba Labour Board vice-chairperson M. Beaumont found that Alternative Landscaping Ltd. of Brandon breached the Labour Relations Act when it dismissed an HR coordinator.
The board ordered the company to pay $2,000 in damages, while declining to award further compensation for lost income.
Dispute over overtime with new hire
A relative of the company's two co-owners, the employee joined Alternative Landscaping as HR coordinator in spring 2025, reporting to the office and HR manager. Within weeks, two employees handling workplace safety left, and some of their duties landed on the coordinator's desk, including a weekly early morning safety meeting that cut into core HR work.
Early starts and late finishes became routine, and the company banked those hours as flex time at a one-to-one rate, matching the offer letter. That was below the Employment Standards Code minimum, which sets banked overtime at one-and-a-half hours per hour worked. Alternative Landscaping conceded before the board that it had not compensated the overtime correctly.
A call to the provincial employment standards branch in September 2025 confirmed as much. The employee testified they learned then that the one-to-one arrangement fell short of the legal minimum, and began turning down overtime that wasn't paid at the higher rate. The board later pointed to that stance as central to what followed.
Dismissal after disagreements
Through the fall, the employer documented performance concerns: two instances of falling asleep at work, which the employee acknowledged, and an October written warning over task prioritization and follow-through.
At an Oct. 21 follow-up, the supervisor told the employee "You have nothing to worry about," and the board heard no evidence of further issues in the month that followed.
Tension resurfaced when the employee returned from vacation in late November and was scheduled until 6 p.m. on consecutive days. They declined the extra hours both times, leaving early the second day without telling the supervisor, who was in another meeting.
Asked the next morning why they had left, the employee said they would work overtime once it was paid at the legal rate, and offered to call the employment standards branch together to confirm it.
An owner confirmed the overtime wasn't required. Within hours, the supervisor wrote the employee up for a hoodie they'd worn for a month. When the employee pointed out the supervisor's own jeans broke the same dress code, she said she'd stop wearing them "if it bothered the employee so much," put them on probation, and told an owner it was time for the employee "to be let go."
The employee was dismissed without cause that day on one week's pay in lieu of notice; the owner asked the letter cite "not the right fit," to protect job prospects and benefits.
Retaliation despite performance concerns
Under section 7 of the Labour Relations Act, dismissing an employee for exercising a right under provincial employment law is an unfair labour practice, and once a basic connection is shown, the burden shifts to the employer to prove otherwise. The board found the short span between the dispute and the dismissal established that connection, even though the dispute had just been settled when the firing happened.
The employer argued the real cause was performance concerns and a pattern the supervisor called pushback, not the overtime dispute. The board rejected the employer's other explanations, including concerns about time off and workplace friendships, for lack of evidence.
It found the performance concerns genuine but eased in the weeks before the dismissal. The timing of the dress-code discipline, coming hours after the overtime matter was resolved, pointed the other way, toward retaliation.
The board ordered Alternative Landscaping to pay $2,000 in damages under the Act's unfair labour practice provisions. It declined compensation for lost income, finding the employee hadn't shown they looked for work in the months right after the dismissal, though it credited job-search efforts from February 2026 onward.
