Tag: #BCTF

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Workplace Stress – Bad Boss – Not necessarily discrimination

Matheson v. School District No. 53 (Okanagan Similkameen) and Collis, 2009 BCHRT 112

[14]           Stress, in itself, is not a disability for the purposes of the Code.  In particular, workplace stress resulting from an employer investigating alleged performance problems, or from a problematic relationship with a supervisor, is not alone sufficient to constitute a disability for Code purposes.  The stress alleged by Ms. Matheson was reactive to her workplace situation, and she does not say that, at any point, she notified her employer of an ongoing mental health issue.

[15]           Despite the respondents’ submissions questioning Ms. Matheson’s allegations of mental disability, Ms. Matheson did not provide any evidence or further information in support of her alleged mental disability in her response to the application.

[16]           On the materials before me, I am satisfied that Ms. Matheson has no reasonable prospect of establishing that she had a mental disability which was either known, or should have been known, to the respondents during the course of her employment.  Nor does she have a reasonable prospect of establishing that they were under a duty to inquire whether she had a mental disability.

[17]           Further, on my review of the entirety of the materials, it is clear that Ms. Matheson’s real concern is based on her belief that Mr. Collis ill-treated her.  She alleges that he “micro-managed” and “hounded” her, “thrived on gossip” and “enjoyed making inappropriate comments about” her, and was otherwise unprofessional and unethical in his dealings with her.  She refers to having “distrusted” him “immensely”.  Mr. Collis denies these allegations, and I make no findings with respect to them. 

[18]           If Ms. Matheson’s allegations about Mr. Collis’ behaviour are true, they would not provide a basis for a complaint of discrimination contrary to the Code.  The Code does not prohibit all bad behaviour, including all bad management behaviour.  It prohibits discriminatory behaviour on the grounds prohibited in the Code.  Here, Ms. Matheson’s allegations, if true, suggest personal harassment and mismanagement, matters potentially grievable under a collective agreement.  They do not suggest discrimination on the basis of mental disability, because they do not suggest any connection between the alleged bad behaviour and Ms. Matheson’s mental disability, real or perceived.

[19]           For all of these reasons, I am satisfied that Ms. Matheson has no reasonable prospect of establishing that the respondents discriminated against her in employment on the basis of mental disability.

IV      conclusion

[20]           The complaint is dismissed.

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You have to have a protected ground first. This person didn’t have that. As always, I encourage you to read the case in full.

There are other ways to deal with bad bosses. Your school district will have workplace bullying and harassment procedures, and filing a complaint with WorkSafe might be an option. You may also need to be in contact with your union and file a grievance with your union before you even consider a human rights complaint.

School districts jump when WorkSafe is involved. You can submit a mental health injury claim.

From the WorkSafe website:

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Benefits for an accepted mental health injury claim

If we accept your claim, the type and duration of benefits you receive will depend on the medical and psychological evidence and the nature of the mental health injury.

Benefits may include the following:

  • Support for returning to work
  • Compensation for lost wages
  • The costs of treatment by a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist
  • The costs of treatment for a mental health program
  • The costs of prescription drugs needed to treat the condition

If you are experiencing bullying or harassment

If you are experiencing bullying or harassment in your workplace, please review our bullying and harassment information to see how to report it and learn about your next steps. 

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Employment issues in school districts can be challenging to navigate; I highly suggest you consult with a lawyer if you are considering filing a human rights complaint. One thing I do want to highlight is that there are laws on whether employees are allowed to record their colleagues or not. There has been a lot of law stating no, and that you could lose your job over this. Some other case law has said depending on the context. The one-person consent rule is very different in an employee context, and I HIGHLY suggest you contact a lawyer if you are considering recording anyone at work. Consulting a lawyer could save your job. There are certain issues that ChatGPT is not going to help you with, and this is one of them. Don’t just do your internet research. This topic is one you need legal advice for. I can’t stress this enough.

There is another very important case related to stress in the workplace and how it needs to meet the legal test of discrimination: this case.

I highly encourage an employee to read this blog regarding employment and stress. You must be negatively impacted in your employment, not your life. There is going to be a lot of unfairness or wrongness that could be happening at work. It doesn’t mean it’s going to meet the legal test of discrimination in an employment situation.

I also suggest you read the blog: Does a Single Comment Violate the Code? It may save you from the experience of navigating a system you don’t need to be.

I have read A LOT of school district employee human rights decisions. Not all work issues are going to be resolved with state intervention via the BC Human Rights Tribunal. This is just one avenue among many. There are a lot of things to consider. When it comes to employment and if you are still working in the district, I don’t suggest this be your automatic knee-jerk reaction go-to. Consult with an employment-human rights lawyer and think about it. I suggest you also read a lot of school district employee human rights decisions. You can look through them all from BC here.

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Systemic Impacts of Scarcity in Education

I’d like to bring up the subject of scarcity and the concept of applying the impacts of limited resources in the education system. It could be physical, social, emotional, or mental scarcity.

Limited resources change how people interact and behave at the most primal survival levels. There are already many scholar reports on how scarcity affects decision making and neuropathways.  Scarcity is when there are limited resources and people are not getting what they need.  Animal and human behaviour will change in these environments. When something is scarce, people will put a higher value on it. People will use social capital, aggression, secrecy or whatever strategies they can to obtain those limited resources for their own unfulfilled need. This is evolution and not a personality deficit.

Whittling the education system to bare bones and creating an environment of such limited resources will turn Mary Poppins into Cruella Deville in just a few months. Work environments can become toxic. Communication and information among staff can be used as a source of power.  Confidentiality among staff can be used as a social manipulation tool to build a sense of belonging or exclude.  Subgroups become even more exclusive. People are being set up to fail. It’s not personal. It’s systemic design. Evolutionary instincts will kick in, and not the kind ones. Stress bubbles will burst. People will snap. Children included. Recruiting and retaining quality educators for any length of time, will be challenging. This will have more of an impact on students with disabilities and those in marginalized communities. I repeat. This will have MORE of an impact on students with disabilities and those in marginalized communities.

Understaffing is a form of scarcity. When there aren’t enough people to fill the job duties that are required for functioning, and people need to step over their own job description boundaries to fill in for other people’s work, that has multiple direction points of impact. If it’s chronic, then you’ll see the ripple effects of scarcity.  Work environments will become “unhealthy” and over time people will become very dissatisfied with their work, ultimately pushing them out of the system and creating a deeper wedge in the cycle and it just goes on and on.  Underqualified staff just filling “the body” in the role, is not the solution.  Take a look at the number of job postings for school districts and take a look at the ones that are just continuously on repeat.  The districts are all in the same basket. They are even competing with each other trying to coax staff out of each other cities with advertisements.

School districts are extremely complex human systems. The number of connections and moving parts is overwhelming to me when I try to put this system into a visual representation. It looks like a large spiderweb post wind storm. Not only do I look at all of the individual parts when I look at a system, but it’s the connections and relationships and what is generated out of those connections that also makes my head spin. Now put this very complex system in a situation of scarcity. This has disaster written all over it.

The alarming fact is that the direction the current climate of education in this province is heading, will require people to become even more competitive over the limited resources. Money won’t solve all of society’s problems; however, chronic underfunding is definitely the fuel to this education fire…amongst other things.

Brainstorming exercise:

Let’s list all of the resources that someone seeks in the education system. (I will list a few, but really, I am hoping to encourage the conversation and for people to start making their own lists)

Resources in education. (Staff and students)

  • Social relationships- support, sense of belonging, attention, power, purpose
  • Mental stimulation, communication, information, choice, adequate training, knowledge, context & meaning…blog about context and meaning for students coming in the near future!
  • Physical space, food, water, access to washroom, fresh air, safety…and yes all of this applies to staff too!!
  • Access to tools to complete tasks/goals with success
  • Time to process, time to complete work, alone time, enough sleep – proper work hours (homework or class planning)
  • Currency – (staff) to access resources in their personal life and avoid scarcity

Now take all of those resources to function. Put someone in the situation of abundance. All the time in the world, lots of attention, all the communication and information they need to understand their environment. Now take the minimal of what you need and cut it in half.  Survival mode kicks in. You will have very different people on your hands.

If people have options, they will leave the system. We all have our breaking point.

Who is controlling the resources to this system?

It’s not the school districts. They may be managing…I mean struggling, with the system, but they aren’t the Wizard of Oz at the end of the road. The Ministry of Oz is hiding amongst ambiguous unanswered questions in their huge castle.

Provincial systemic issues, are going to need a provincial intervention approach, and will require a provincial response.  Let’s start with some resources, shall we? Adequate funding please.

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New Teachers Regulation Branch Consent Resolution – Physical Contact

There is a new TRB consent resolution posted, and unless there is something that I think is relevant, I don’t blog about it.

BUT this one is VERY interesting

And here is why. Get a load of this!

From the decision

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14. In determining that a reprimand and coursework is an appropriate consequence, the Commissioner considered the following factors:

a. Schubert’s actions in physically blocking Student A escalated the situation.

b. Schubert made physical contact with Student A when it was unnecessary for safety.

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Hold the phone.

We are being told by the TRB that if any teacher uses physical contact that escalates a situation and it was unnecessary for safety, they could have a successful TRB complaint against them?

Good to know!

There are situations where adults are physically intervening when safety is not the issue, but as a way to control behaviour, and situations escalate because of it.

Here is your advocacy tool that supports this as wrong, against the Teacher’s Standards and subject to discipline.

Save this decision!

Save. This. Decision.

https://teacherregulation.gov.bc.ca/documents/FormsandPublications/ProfConduct/DisciplineOutcomes/SCHUBERT_CRA_20250911.pdf

For more information on the TRB process and other case examples of where teachers have been disciplined for not following the Teachers Standards when interacting with disabled students, read my TRB page.

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A HR Decision for School Employees

There is so much to learn about human rights law when we read decisions.

This decision is not an education case, but it is 100% relevant for school employees filing complaints for disability.

There are people who have gone through the human rights tribunal system and have left quite frustrated. Their experience didn’t pass the legal test of discrimination. Their experience could have been horrible, unfair, and wrong. The tribunal isn’t making a moral compass decision or an unfair wrongness decision. They are the ones who decide if discrimination has occurred. The complaint needs to pass the legal test for discrimination which includes analyzing the accommodation PROCESS.

There is so much to learn from this case. I am going to highlight the learnings that stick out to me, but as usual, I encourage everyone to read the case in full.

Worker A v. Fraser Health Authority, 2025 BCHRT 250

[3]               There is significant evidence to support that Worker A’s mental health was negatively affected by her work during the pandemic, with terrible consequences for her and her family. However, respectfully, the evidence could not support a finding that Fraser Health discriminated against Worker A. This is because Worker A has not identified any disability-related adverse treatment or impacts in her employment. This is necessary to trigger any corresponding duties by Fraser Health to inquire about and/or accommodate her disability-related needs. Even if those duties were triggered, Fraser Health is reasonably certain to prove that it gave Worker A an opportunity to identify any disability-related needs and she did not do so. In those circumstances, its duties in the accommodation process did not arise.  The complaint is dismissed.

[48]           To trigger the protection of the Code, Worker A is required to point to disability-related adverse treatment or adverse impact in her employment. Here I emphasise that the “adverse impacts” must arise in the complainant’s employment and not in their life generally. Adverse impacts in employment include, for example, termination, discipline, differential treatment, or working conditions that unfairly exclude a person from completing work they are otherwise able to do: Hydro-Québec at para. 14.

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Key Takeaways from these two paragraphs”

  • People MUST disclose their disability-related needs.
  • Adverse impacts have to be connected to their employment and not their life generally.

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[49]           Without more, an employee is not adversely impacted in their employment when they are assigned work or subject to management oversight. I agree with Fraser Health that “employers have the fundamental right to manage the workplace and make operational decisions they see fit, subject only to certain legal obligations”: Kondolay v. Pyrotek Aerospace Ltd, 2020 BCHRT 208 at para. 125. Employees may not agree with those decisions, and they may be bad ones that make an employee’s work harder or less efficient. However, absent some negative treatment or job-related consequence for an employee, they are not matters for this Tribunal.

[55]           As I have said, the duty to inquire is triggered when an employer is contemplating action that will negatively affect an employee in their employment (i.e. discipline) and has some reason to believe that the underlying behaviour may be related to disability: Gardiner v. Ministry of Attorney General, 2003 BCHRT 41 at para. 162. In that circumstance, they are required to inquire about the reasons underlying the behaviour. This is intended to put an employee on notice and give them the opportunity to bring forward information that could support an accommodation: Central Okanagan School District No. 23 v. Renaud, [1992] 2 SCR 970. As with any obligation under human rights law, perfection is not the standard.

[58]           In my view, Fraser Health is reasonably certain to prove that it fulfilled any duty to inquire when it gave Worker A the opportunity, in the October 20 meeting, to explain why she was not completing certain work. Worker A was accompanied in that meeting by a union representative. To the extent the next stage may have been disciplinary (which is purely speculative), Worker A had the chance to explain that she could not complete the work for disability-related reasons. Leaving aside the prospect of discipline, this was also an opportunity for Worker A to tell the Manager that she had a disability and needed accommodation. This information would have triggered Fraser Health’s obligations in the accommodation process: Renaud. However, there is no evidence that, at any point before her long-term medical leave, Worker A told the employer that she had a disability or that she required accommodation. In this circumstance, Fraser Health is reasonably certain to prove that its duties in the accommodation process were not triggered, and so any disability-related adverse impacts were justified.

[60] …….

Mr. Vanderveen’s argument that he asked for accommodation by telling Heritage that he was receiving too much work is not persuasive. Many employees may ask their employers to relieve their workload, and such requests may be warranted and entirely reasonable. However, the term “accommodation” is a term of art in human rights law. It refers specifically to the process of removing barriers in employment that relate to personal characteristics protected by the Code – in this case, disability. According to Mr. Vanderveen’s own evidence, he did not tell Heritage that the reason he needed relief was related to his disabilities. As such, the request to relieve his workload could not properly constitute a request for accommodation. [para. 38]

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That is very interesting.

“accommodation” is a term of art in human rights law.”

“the process of removing barriers in employment that relate to personal characteristics protected by the Code – in this case, disability.”

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[63]           This is a sad case. There is a lot of evidence that Worker A took great pride in her work, and her life has been completely altered since her mental health declined in 2020 for reasons related to her working conditions at that time. However, the evidence could not support a finding that Fraser Health discriminated against Worker A in her employment. Her human rights complaint is dismissed.

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This case is similar to an education case that I think is really important for staff to be aware of. Stress and anxiety caused by your workplace is not a disability protected by the Code. The blog by the Human Rights Clinic explains this well.

Stress, Anxiety and the Duty to Accommodate

“In a case called Matheson,[4] Ms. Matheson filed a human rights complaint alleging that she was subjected to abusive behaviour from a supervisor. She had a history of anxiety and panic attacks as well as depression. On two occasions during her employment, Ms. Matheson informed her employer that she was suffering from “stress.” However, she did not provide any medical information that said she had a mental disability.

The Tribunal dismissed Ms. Matheson’s complaint, stating that “an essential element of a complaint of discrimination in employment on the basis of mental disability is proof that the complainant either had a mental disability… or was perceived to be mentally disabled by the employer.” The Tribunal also said that “workplace stress resulting from an employer investigating alleged performance problems, or from a problematic relationship with a supervisor, is not alone sufficient to constitute a disability for Code purposes.”

The takeaway: by failing to provide her employer with proof of a mental disability, Ms. Matheson was unable to establish that she had a mental health condition beyond “the commonly experienced emotion” of stress. Therefore, the employer did not have a duty to accommodate her.”

These decisions are so helpful for the rest of us. They really are gifts of learning, and because of these decisions, people can learn what they need to do to navigate the duty to accommodate process and decide if filing a human rights complaint is an option for them.

  • We need to disclose disability-related needs to trigger the duty to inquire

If you don’t want to disclose your disability to your workplace, cool. That is your right to not do so. Just don’t file a human rights complaint.

  • Be prepared to provide documentation of your disability from a professional.

For more information on the Duty to Accommodate, here are some important topics to be aware of.