An employee who received worker's compensation benefits for "psychological injury due to harassment" has had her union harassment grievance, against her employer and supervisor, adjourned.
The employee claimed that her supervisor had harassed her at work by "singling her out, questioning her abilities, criticizing her use of sick leave, threatening her job, refusing to provide her equivalent training provided to others, making serious allegations with respect to her work performance, and accusing her of killing patients, in circumstances in which the employer knew or reasonably ought to have known these events were occurring."
In her union grievance, she asked the labour arbitrator to remove her supervisor from the workplace, and claimed damages totaling $100,000 from him and her employer.
The arbitrator noted that the Saskatchewan Workers' Compensation Act provides that "No employer and no worker or worker's dependant has a right of action against an employer or a worker with respect to an injury to a worker arising out of and in the course of the worker's employment". The Act also provided that the Workers' Compensation Board had exclusive authority to decide whether, in any particular case, an employee did not have the right to sue the employer in respect of the injury.
The arbitrator, relying on a previous court decision in another case, decided that the WCB, and not the arbitrator, had authority to decide whether the employee could advance the union grievance claiming damages for the psychological injury allegedly caused by harassment. The employer had already applied to the WCB for a decision on that issue. The arbitrator urged the parties to seek a "timely decision" from the WCB. The arbitrator adjourned the grievance arbitration until the WCB had decided whether the employee had the right to claim damages at arbitration for her workplace psychological injury.
For more information, visit our Occupational Health & Safety Law blog at www.occupationalhealthandsafetylaw.com
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