LABOUR RELATIONS
Guilty of improper management behaviour
An arbitrator ruled that an employer had abused his management rights by not acting with respect and in good faith. In the employer’s estimation, an employee working in the emergency room (who was represented by the APTS) was not giving enough priority to the objective of returning patients to the community. Without any investigation, the disgruntled employer ordered the employee to be immediately withdrawn from his assignment in the emergency room, where he had been working for the past eight years. The employer then let 40 days go by before informing the employee of the reasons for removing him from his assignment.
The arbitrator pointed out that a reasonable employer would have never acted like that, with no consideration for the psychological or monetary impact of such a decision. The arbitrator also pointed out that the ensuing investigation found nothing amiss on the part of the employee.