Worker who flouted COVID rules has firing overturned
TORONTO— For a Toronto-area hospital, the final straw in its Covid-related troubles with an employee came one day this past July.
First the worker ignored the entreaties of a screener and brought pizza into the facility for a party with other union members, a social gathering that violated Trillium Health Partners’ pandemic rules.
Then he intervened in defence of an outside contractor who insisted on entering the hospital without a mask, blasting the screener in a rant peppered with obscenities.
The episode followed another contentious coronavirus incident in March, and the facilities transport representative was fired.
But in a recent grievance ruling, an adjudicator overturned the dismissal, saying it was too harsh. Another transgression, though, would justify sacking the unnamed worker, warned arbitrator Norm Jesin.
His ruling offers a rare inside look at the labour-relations tensions within facilities on the COVID-19 front lines, where it seems not everyone agrees with safety protocols.
Trillium runs three hospitals in Toronto and neighbouring Mississauga, two coronavirus hotspots where caseloads are rising almost daily.
“The incidents … reflect an ongoing pattern of disrespect for the hospital’s authority to manage the workplace during an extremely difficult time,” wrote Jesin in a decision released last Thursday. “The grievor again exhibited a resistance to the authority of the hospital in its effort to control spread of the virus.”
Most other labour disputes around COVID have involved health-care workers’ demand for better protective equipment, though in a case decided last month, an arbitrator ruled against a union grievance that challenged mandatory testing every two weeks of staff at a retirement home.
Neither Trillium nor the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represented the fired worker, would comment by deadline on the latest decision.
The affair began, ironically, with the worker complaining that he was not being sufficiently protected against COVID-19.
He was required to carry nasal swabs for virus testing from one part of the hospital to another, and insisted that he should be provided with medical scrubs to do so safely instead of his usual uniform.
The hospital said no special precautions were necessary, as the swabs were placed in a tube, which was packaged in a plastic bag. The point was driven home at a meeting between the worker and management.
Shortly after the session, the True North news website published a story — accompanied by a partial recording of the meeting — that indicated the man was being deprived of proper personal protective equipment because of Trillium’s allegedly cavalier attitude toward COVID-19.
But Jesin said the information provided to the website painted a “misleading and inaccurate picture,” while the employee refused to admit any part in secretly making and leaking the recording.