A recent court decision makes it clear that management must maintain a healthy workplace culture. In this decision, a supervisor was dismissed for cause because he was disrespectful to women—even though he didn't make inappropriate comments directly to them.

The Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench recently found just cause for dismissal based on an employee's disrespectful behaviour that created a hostile work environment. In Gillam v. Waschuk Pipeline Construction Ltd., the employer, a pipeline construction company, terminated an employee who had worked in a supervisory role as an equipment transport co-ordinator from 1996 to 2008. The office at the work camp where the plaintiff employee worked was staffed by three women, among others. The plaintiff used foul language and inappropriate comments to refer to the three women employees, but he did not use this language in front of them—he used it in front of other employees, including employees who reported to him as their supervisor.

The court held that the plaintiff's conduct created a hostile working environment and his behaviour amounted to sexual and/or personal harassment. The court noted that even if "rough" language was to an extent acceptable on a pipeline, the plaintiff's language went beyond this.

Broadened application of harassment

This case extends the normal application of harassment in the workplace to include not only those cases of direct harassment, but also those situations where the culture of the workplace has developed in such a way that it is in and of itself harassing.

To prevent human rights complaints and also ensure that employees are clear on appropriate behaviour at work, employers must ensure that the definition of harassment in their policies and procedures manuals includes inappropriate remarks and comments, and take active steps to eradicate workplace "banter" and employee behaviour that may create a hostile work environment and thus constitute indirect harassment.

This case was a claim for wrongful dismissal by the offending employee, but a complaint could have been made against the employer by the workers who were subjected to the hostile culture—for a human rights violation, a claim of constructive dismissal—or the culture issue could be raised by an employee to explain allegations made against him or her: "This was the workplace culture tolerated or encouraged by management."

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