HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL CONFIRMS EMPLOYER NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE “PERFECT ACCOMMODATION”

July 13, 2009

An Application was filed with the Human Rights Tribunal alleging that the various accommodations provided by the Respondent Employer were insufficient to meet the Applicant’s medical needs and that the Applicant was harassed by the Respondents as a consequence of his disability, age and accommodation requests.

The Tribunal, in dismissing the Application in its entirety, found that the Applicant’s disabilities had been reasonably accommodated; each limitation identified by the Applicant’s physician had been addressed by the Employer through modification of the Applicant’s essential duties. 

Further, the Tribunal found no evidence of harassment or discrimination under the Code. Specifically, there was no evidence the Applicant had been treated unfairly based on his disability or age by the Employer when it formulated his accommodations and, particularly, when it modified the Applicant’s job duties.  Indeed, the job duties the Applicant employee complained of were job duties assigned to all other Caretakers – the Applicant was not singled out for these specific duties as claimed. It was essentially irrelevant that the Applicant did not like the job duties assigned post injury.

In referring more generally to the purpose of the Code and underlying complaint of the Applicant employee, the Tribunal made the following particularly noteworthy statement: “it is important to remember that the Code is not a catchall for everything that goes wrong in society, for every ill befalling an individual. A successful claim under the Code must be based upon the right it protects.” In the Tribunal’s view, the Applicant’s fundamental but unspoken complaint was that he could not “design his own job”. According to the Tribunal, “the Applicant wanted to change his hours of work, decide which responsibilities he would assume and which he would not.” Simply, the Applicant must tie his/her complaint to a ground for discrimination of harassment under the Code – being dissatisfied, or feeling harassed or discriminated against as a result of a decision by an Employer unrelated to the protected ground under the Code does not constitute a Code violation.

The Employer’s Obligation

Under the Human Rights Code, employers must provide, to disabled employees, reasonable accommodation based on the medical information provided. There is no obligation to provide an employee with the “perfect” accommodation or the accommodation of the employee’s choosing where other reasonable accommodations are available which better suit the Employer’s needs. Further, accommodation does not entitle an employee to benefits not enjoyed by other employees (i.e., the right to pick and choose his/her job duties and hours of work). The employee can, of course, express a preference for a certain accommodation but, ultimately, the decision in respect of the accommodation rests with the Employer.

Case Resolution Conference Decision - May 21, 2009

For more information on this case or for any inquiries relating to the duty to accommodate, please contact any member of our Labour Department.