Worker didn't get promotion she felt she was better qualified for
This instalment of You Make the Call involves a grocery store employee who complained she was discriminated against when she didn’t get a promotion.
Laura Case was a general clerk at a Save on Foods grocery store in Kamloops, B.C. She worked in various areas of the store, but most often in the deli department.
In April 2016, Case began taking a series of courses and training programs offered by Save on Foods as part of what it called Team Excellence Levels. The courses included safety-related topics, best practices, and other information that were designed to help employees become more successful at their current jobs and prepare them for advancement. Each course concluded with an exam.
Case completed all of the courses by August 2016 and talked to an assistant manager, who — according to Case — told her if she completed additional development courses online to go with the Team Excellence Levels, she could enter the Retail Leadership Excellence Program. This program was a 12-week training program designed to identify and assist eligible employees in being successful in managerial roles. The program ran irregularly according to demand and had run in 2012, 2015 and 2016.
However, after Case took the additional development course, the assistant manager told her the Retail Leadership Excellence program had already been offered in 2016 — posters had been posted in the store earlier in the year and email communications had been sent out with the application deadlines — and there were no plans to run it in 2017.
Case later found out that a co-worker in the deli department had received a promotion to the position of department manager. The co-worker — who was a different race from Case, a First Nations person — didn’t complete the Team Excellence Levels and Case felt she was less qualified with less seniority. Case was also told by other employees that the co-worker had been offered the leadership program, though this was apparently not the case.
Case filed a complaint of discrimination in employment based on colour and race. She said Save on Foods failed to notify her about the Retail Leadership Program when it was offered, though her manager had approved her goal for the program. The store then promoted someone else who was less qualified and hadn’t taken as much training but was of a different race.
Save on Foods argued that neither the assistant manager nor manager had any input into when the Retail Leadership program was offered and senior management at the corporate level made those decisions. The deadline for receipt of applications was neutral and had nothing to do with race or any other factor, and this deadline had been communicated clearly through posters and emails in the store.
You Make the Call
Did Save on Foods discriminate against the employee when she was denied entry into the leadership program and the promotion given to the co-worker?
OR
Was there no discrimination?
If you said there was no discrimination, you’re right. The tribunal found that Case met two of the three elements for prima facie discrimination — she was of First Nations origin, a potential prohibited ground for discrimination; and she received adverse treatment, which was the denial of an opportunity to participate in the Retail Leadership Excellence program and get a shot at a promotion. However, on the third element required for discrimination — a nexus between the prohibited grounds and the adverse treatment — the tribunal found there was no evidence to support it.
The tribunal found that while there was some dispute on what the assistant manager told Case regarding the leadership program, there was no doubt about the fact the application deadline for the program was back in February 2016 and it was too late for Case to apply for that year's program.
The tribunal also found credence in the company’s assertion that the decisions on what employees were accepted into the program and when it was offered were made at the corporate level by upper management who didn’t know the applicants. No one who was involved in the decision knew that Case wanted to apply or that she was of First Nations background. Only management at Case’s store knew her colour and race, and they had no input into the leadership program, the tribunal said.
The tribunal determined Case’s complaint had no prospect for success and dismissed it.
For more information see:
•Case v. Save on Foods, 2017 CarswellBC 1674 (B.C. Human Rights Trib.).
