Long-serving employee fired after time theft allegation for Christmas Day
A 71-year-old aircraft mechanic with 14 years of service and a clean disciplinary record lost his job, and any chance at getting it back, because of time theft.
On May 14, 2026, arbitrator Jesse Nyman ruled the April 2024 firing would stand.
The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association had grieved the dismissal of the licensed aircraft maintenance engineer at L3Harris MAS’ Trenton Air Base operation in Ontario, arguing the penalty was too harsh and seeking his reinstatement.
However, Nyman dismissed the grievance, finding L3Harris had just cause.
Missing workers on Christmas Day
When the acting manager stopped by the hangar around 3 p.m. on Dec. 25, 2023 to pick up paperwork, only one mechanic was there, and he was on the afternoon shift. Hoover and three colleagues had each signed a timesheet showing a full holiday shift servicing the military CC-150 aircraft the crew maintains for the Department of National Defence (DND).
The base sits behind secured gates. On a statutory holiday with no commissionaire on duty, at least one person in any vehicle must swipe a pass to get airside. The swipe records showed no single day-shift employee had badged in that morning.
Hoover later told the company's investigator he thought he had gone home around 2:30 p.m. but could not recall anything else, whom he worked with, what he did, or how he got onto the base. He guessed a guard had waved him through, but the evidence showed this was not possible that day.
Swipe records and time sheets
Asked to correct the record, Hoover revised his hours twice but kept insisting he had worked. On one version he wrote "Merry Xmas" beside his name. The union pointed to a long-standing Christmas practice of being paid a full shift once the work was done, summed up in a supervisor's instruction to "Just make it work."
According to the manager’s testimony, Hoover said that “the $10 gift certificate to Tim Hortons for working on Christmas Day just doesn’t cut it anymore.” Hoover denied ever making the remark and said the manager had intimidated him by shoving a clipboard at him and telling him to change the sheet.
The union also challenged the swipe records as hearsay and the investigation as flawed. Nyman agreed the records had weaknesses but admitted them anyway, noting the union had accepted the evidence earlier and only objected in its final argument.
He rejected the claim that the investigation was biased, calling it reasonable even if it could have gone further.
Spotless record not enough
Nyman did not believe Hoover. He found it implausible that someone who remembered nothing about the day, yet still took "a poke" at his manager on the timesheet, had simply forgotten an unusual shift he was quizzed about within days.
Company memos in 2022 had told staff to record hours accurately, with no exception for the holidays.
The arbitrator concluded that Hoover had not been at work and meant to claim pay he had not earned. His refusal to budge, Nyman wrote, was "deliberate dishonesty" and "evidence that he intended to commit time theft."
Age and a spotless record could not save the job. Nyman weighed them against a serious offence in a safety-sensitive role and an employee who never took responsibility. Reinstatement was off the table: the work demands "a high degree of honesty and integrity," he concluded, and "lives are at stake with the work they perform."
