A labour arbitrator has overturned the dismissal of one of three employees for a parcel delivery company caught on camera tossing packages while offloading a plane at the Prince George Airport.
Robert Smith, a depot sorter for Purolator, was fired after a person recorded his actions on cellphone and turned the video over to CTV, which posted a story on its website and aired one on its newscast the next day.
Two days later, on March 18, Smith and two of his coworkers were dismissed. Within two weeks, the other two were reinstated pursuant to settlement agreements but Smith remained without a job at the company.
During a hearing in October before arbitrator Joan McEwen, a Purolator regional manager said Smith was not reinstated because he had previously received a one-day suspension for a similar transgression and because he failed to apologize.
The manager, Patrick Symons, testified that when he visited Prince George in November 2014, he made it clear that unloading could occur only with the aid of a belt loader which conveyed the goods from the plane to the ground, from where employees carried them to the van.
If the loader was not working, he said they were supposed to rent one and, if that could not be done, they were supposed to return the freight to Richmond.
Symons said he also reminded employees they work in a "fishbowl" and that their actions could be recorded by anyone with a cellphone.
"I conveyed in strong terms, not for the first time, that employees must never unload freight without using the belt-loader," Symons is quoted as saying in McEwen's decision. "The rule would have been well-known to everyone."
However, Symons agreed he did not recall a single time when freight was returned to Richmond and acknowledged that in Prince George, the practice for employees facing a malfunctioning belt loader, may be to take it up with their unit managers.
In a decision issued Nov. 9, McEwen found that the unit managers' attitude towards using a belt loader was "much more laissez faire."
She said Smith's one-day suspension was for failing to store the belt loader away properly, instead of leaving it out in the elements. Yet the video, taken three months later, showed it off to one side and still not stored away properly.
Likewise, she said employees failed to complete daily inspection forms, used to alert fleet operations that a problem needed fixing and management failed to hold them to account on that matter.
McEwen also found that the person who took the video wrongly claimed there was no one in the back of the truck that the employees were loading with the packages from the plane.
Smith testified he waited until the employee in the back of the truck was ready before he tossed the next package and that nothing was dropped. He said they did not walk back and forth between the plane and the truck because there were patches of ice on the tarmac, although the heavier packages were walked over.
The video also showed Smith dumping the contents of a Canada Post bag onto the ground. Smith said another bag was laid down first for protection and it was standard practice whether the belt loader was working or not.
"Items would be dumped out – either on the ground or, in the case of inclement weather, in the truck – so that employees could sort out the packages from the mail, thus lightening the workload of the warehouse employees," McEwen said in summarizing Smith's testimony.
McEwen concluded that although management focussed on the crew's failure to use the belt loader, "it is clear that the three employees were discharged because their throwing of freight was broadcast on national TV. How else to explain the rush to judgment that occurred?"
McEwen reduced Smith's penalty to a three-day suspension.
