Public servant wins over ageism
Policy analyst denied benefit from retirement incentive program
A federal civil servant has been awarded $25,000 for age discrimination because her manager presumed she might soon retire — she was 62 — and denied her the chance to take part in a retirement incentive program.
Diane Legros, a policy analyst, left the government in 2016 at the age of 66 without ever benefiting from the program, known as “alternation.”
The program was introduced after the government of thenprime minister Stephen Harper launched a plan to reduce the size of the bureaucracy and balance the budget.
“Speculating that the griever (Legros) would retire shortly … was discriminatory because it was based on a stereotyped view, unsupported by the facts,” concluded Marie-Claire Perrault, a member of the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board.
“In fact, the griever waited four years before retiring.”
In a ruling released this week, Perrault also found that managers ignored directives that made it clear Legros should be considered for the program, an act that the adjudicator called “wilful and reckless” age discrimination.
Robyn Benson, national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, welcomed the “significant damages” in the case. Age discrimination cases are relatively rare in the public-service grievance system.
“It’s important that in cases like this, where managers so blatantly and recklessly discriminate against an employee, that there be a consequence for that,” Benson said. “Hopefully, lessons will be learned from this case.”
In 2012, as part of the government’s workforce-reduction plan, civil servants were given the chance to take part in an earlyretirement incentive program known as alternation. It was designed to free up positions for qualified federal employees who would otherwise be laid off.
Legros, then a 62-year-old analyst with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), wanted to take advantage of the program to make her early retirement more financially viable.
But her manager, Rachelle Beaudry, adamantly opposed the idea since she believed that more job cuts were coming and that Legros’s position could be eliminated once she retired. Beaudry said she didn’t want to hire someone into a position that would likely disappear.
Legros contacted a union representative, who insisted she was eligible for the program. So Legros posted her résumé on two government notice boards set up to facilitate the alternation process. (Civil servants declared surplus could then find a match for their skill set and apply for the posted jobs.)
But CBSA management, still opposed to the idea, pulled Legros’s posting from one federal website.
Legros grieved that decision, one of dozens of labour complaints generated by the downsizing process.
One such complaint that reached the federal labour relations board touched on Legros’s situation. In that case, the board ruled that the government could not refuse an alternation based on speculation as to what might happen to a given job in the future.
Human resources officials told Beaudry the board’s decision meant she had to consider alternation for Legros and review the résumés of “surplus” civil servants who wanted her job.
But Beaudry added a job qualification that made the position unattainable for anyone who did not have experience inside the CBSA, and she rejected all applicants.
As a result, Legros filed more grievances. She alleged that CBSA had discriminated against her based on age, in violation of the collective agreement and the Canadian Human Rights Act.
In her ruling, Perrault said age discrimination was at the heart of the case.
Beaudry, she said, did not meaningfully attempt to fill Legros’s job. “Ms. Beaudry did everything in her power to prevent one (alternation) from taking place,” Perrault charged. “The evidence shows blatant bad faith with respect to reviewing the proposed CVs .... Her evaluations of the CVs were superficial, even wrongful.”
Perrault awarded Legros $15,000 for the pain and suffering she endured by being denied an early retirement benefit because of age discrimination, and $10,000 for Beaudry’s wilful disregard of her rights.