Harassment not fault of labour shortage
Editorial appeared in Fort McMurray Today August 30, 2006
The Fort McMurray Factor gets blamed for a lot of things: staff shortages, astronomical rents, a lack of selection of local goods and shops (and the high prices of what is available in town), and the frequency of budget overruns on any project, large or small. In a lot of cases, the blame is well-placed.
But in a local human-rights case, the supposed worker shortage was unfairly blamed for the behaviour of a local restaurant employee.
Diane Carr, a cook at Humpty's, was awarded $6,300 in lost wages after she left a job because of harassment by another employee. Another kitchen worker, Chris Troake, routinely cursed her, made sexually charged comments towards her and, on one occasion, stuck a sausage in the fly of his pants, waved it at Carr's sister, invited her to bite it, and chased her with it.
Troake's actions were reprehensible by any reasonable person's definition. But in Fort McMurray, we're all familiar with instances of subpar service, of less-than-competent workers who maintain their employment simply by virtue of the fact that local businesses are in dire need of workers. A bad worker is better than no worker, one might say.
At least, that was the argument put forth by Humpty's. A supervisor for the restaurant told the panel they had to put up with Troake's behaviour because of McMurray's labour shortage.
Nonsense.
If anything, the labour shortage should have meant Humpty's booted Troake, for fear that his behaviour might drive away good workers. After all, if a bad employee can simply get another job somewhere else, so can good ones, right?
Thankfully, the panel ruled in Carr's favour. We hope Humpty's learned a lesson -- and other local businesses did, too.
© Copyright 2006, Fort McMurray Today.
The Fort McMurray Factor gets blamed for a lot of things: staff shortages, astronomical rents, a lack of selection of local goods and shops (and the high prices of what is available in town), and the frequency of budget overruns on any project, large or small. In a lot of cases, the blame is well-placed.
But in a local human-rights case, the supposed worker shortage was unfairly blamed for the behaviour of a local restaurant employee.
Diane Carr, a cook at Humpty's, was awarded $6,300 in lost wages after she left a job because of harassment by another employee. Another kitchen worker, Chris Troake, routinely cursed her, made sexually charged comments towards her and, on one occasion, stuck a sausage in the fly of his pants, waved it at Carr's sister, invited her to bite it, and chased her with it.
Troake's actions were reprehensible by any reasonable person's definition. But in Fort McMurray, we're all familiar with instances of subpar service, of less-than-competent workers who maintain their employment simply by virtue of the fact that local businesses are in dire need of workers. A bad worker is better than no worker, one might say.
At least, that was the argument put forth by Humpty's. A supervisor for the restaurant told the panel they had to put up with Troake's behaviour because of McMurray's labour shortage.
Nonsense.
If anything, the labour shortage should have meant Humpty's booted Troake, for fear that his behaviour might drive away good workers. After all, if a bad employee can simply get another job somewhere else, so can good ones, right?
Thankfully, the panel ruled in Carr's favour. We hope Humpty's learned a lesson -- and other local businesses did, too.
© Copyright 2006, Fort McMurray Today.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home