Sex act in office leads to firings

Two from B.C. fire department fight to keep jobs

VANCOUVER •Twoemployees of the fire department in Vernon, B.C., are battling to keep their jobs after a videotape showed them having sexual relations in the interim fire chief ’s office.

The pair, who are not named, were fired two days after the incident earlier this year, but their union is grieving the dismissals.

It argued the camera was hidden and its footage amounts to “an illegal collection of personal information” that should not be used against the employees.

“The union does not deny the two employees engaged in the activity recorded in the footage, which the union characterizes as ‘a deeply personal and compromising interaction,’ ” says the decision.

But it says the union did not agree to an admission of the activity as part of the arbitration process, asserting the employer has a legal onus to prove each employee engaged in activity that justified their firing.

The camera had been installed several months earlier after David Lind, who was the interim chief at the time, became concerned that someone might be accessing his locked file cabinet, which contained sensitive staffing and budget documents.

Video didn’t show a staff member accessing the file cabinet and the union applied to have the pictures excluded as evidence in the termination proceedings, but an arbitration ruling issued on Oct. 30 disagrees.

A majority ruling by two of the three arbitration panel

THE CAMERA HAD BEEN INSTALLED SEVERAL MONTHS EARLIER.

members found the “surreptitious surveillance” was both necessary as part of an investigation of alleged employee misconduct and a “reasonable exercise of management authority.”

Union grievances of the firings were scheduled to be held last week, with the video permitted as evidence.

In reaching their decision, arbitration panel chair James Dorsey and employer nominee John Mckearney found the video footage was not a serious invasion of privacy. But Lorne West, the union nominee on the panel, wrote in a dissenting opinion that consideration is needed of the troubled labour management atmosphere in the fire department, where Lind had arrived as part of a complete turnover of department leadership barely a year earlier.