Hrmg 3105 Assignment #2

HRMG 3105 Assignment 2

Facts

Mr. Jason Miles was employed as a customer service representative in ACT Vancouver’s office for six months before he was dismissed, right after he had disclosed he had epilepsy and asked his supervisor for assistance in case he had attacks on the job. Based on a discussion with HR specialist and the management team in Operations, Sage Takata, Director Customer Service, terminated Mr. Jason Miles the next day after the employee’s disclosure.

Throughout the application and hiring process, Mr. Miles did not reveal to the company that he suffered from epilepsy. As a basis for the termination, the management specified, that the customer service rep position required someone who could function at 100% in written and verbal skills as the job involves speaking directly to customers. The termination was being carried out under the six months probation period.

Mr. Miles hired a lawyer to represent him based on wrongful dismissal, claiming that his limitation should have been accommodated.

Analysis

By deciding to remove the unwanted employee from the workplace, ACT members of HR branch and the Operations managers failed to consider the duty to accommodate disability in the workplace to the point of undue hardship. The duty to accommodate is a fundamental legal obligation in the Canadian Workplace, and the primary responsibility rests with the employer, because it has the ultimate control over the workplace.

Apparently, such a big hi end computers company as ACT did not have any policies with respect to the accommodation of disabilities, and managers and HR specialists had not any training on workplace disability matters. Based on all the evidence, there was no specific discussion at the meetings with the HR specialist and the management in Operations about the nature of Mr. Miles’s condition and his specific needs related to his condition. Nor was there any suggestion, that his matter at the company should be put on hold until the supervisor and the HR specialist gathered more information about epilepsy in general and Mr. Miles’s condition in particular and took legal advice on any possible obligation towards someone in Mr. Miles’s situation.

As part of the accommodation process, the company should have educated itself on the nature of epilepsy before it determined that accommodation was not an option. Instead, the company rushed to judgment without a full assessment of the disability or its ability to accommodate the employee.

If ACT had taken legal advice before it dismissed Mr. Miles, a lawyer would have told it of the possibility that this could amount to discrimination on the basis of disability (namely, epilepsy) violating sections 5(1) and 17(2) of the Human Rights Code, and if the disability was the basis