Long-time employee deletes emails, shreds documents
Hours after losing out on a promotion, and just before starting medical leave, a Saskatchewan co-op worker shredded the only copy of a key company document, deleted hundreds of work emails, then was untruthful about it.
And recently, the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board decided that Meadow Lake Co-operative Association had just cause to terminate the individual.
On May 21, 2026, chairperson Kyle McCreary dismissed her appeal and affirmed an adjudicator's ruling. The decision left the worker without the $8,177 wage assessment the Director of Employment Standards had originally ordered in her favour.
Misconduct at work
The adjudicator's May 8, 2025 ruling found the worker had engaged in misconduct by shredding a document important to the employer, deleting work emails while on leave, and being untruthful about these actions. She had worked for the co-op since 2009, starting as a clerk, and had no prior discipline.
The worker held a Credit Collections and BRIC role since 2019, with specialized knowledge of how to adjust petroleum prices whenever the Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) recommended changes twice a week.
The adjudicator noted she had trained the last three petroleum managers and had written a step-by-step guide for the process, apart from a generic FCL document.
Shredded guide, false statements
The adjudicator found that, shortly after the worker learned she had not gotten the petroleum manager job, and hours before she saw a doctor to obtain a note for medical leave, she shredded the only copy of that step-by-step guide. The document was co-op property and detailed critical processes for setting prices at the retail operation.
As the employee most proficient with the price-setting processes, the individual knew the incoming manager would need the guide, the adjudicator found: "She made a choice to destroy it."
There was more, the adjudicator found. The worker falsely told managers she had photographed the document and emailed the photos to her work account, then deleted hundreds of emails from that account while on leave and was untruthful about that too.
Destroying the guide, the adjudicator wrote, was conduct that "could damage the trust an employer has in an employee to the point where just cause has been established."
The worker had a medical condition requiring accommodation, and the adjudicator found the co-op had provided several accommodations with no evidence they fell short, and no direct connection between the accommodations and the conduct said to justify dismissal.
She had separately raised concerns about a Workers' Compensation Board claim and disclosed she had begun a human rights complaint against the co-op, on which the adjudicator made no comment.
No legal error from adjudicator
On appeal, the worker argued the adjudicator had mishandled the evidence on the deleted emails, the shredded document, a paystub, contradictions in the record, and credibility. She argued, for instance, that documentary evidence showed only three emails in the inbox on Nov. 2, 2023, and that a petroleum manual existed separately from the notes she was said to have destroyed.
The board found most of those grounds raised questions of fact rather than law, and that it had no power to reweigh evidence the adjudicator had already considered. It found no legal error in how the adjudicator identified or applied the just cause test, or in placing on the employer the onus of proving just cause.
A procedural fairness argument that claimed a medical condition had affected her ability to participate in the hearing came too late because it was raised for the first time on appeal. The board dismissed the appeal and affirmed the adjudicator's decision.
