One step forward from the abyss and one step back, in a pair of rulings from the B.C. Court of Appeals on whether employers are entitled to fire drug-addicted workers. You'd think that's a no-brainer: if an employee is stealing drugs from your supply room, or toking up on primo B.C. bud every day before his shift as an, um, OPEN PIT MINER...then yes, in fact, you the employer are entitled to let him go. Period.

But not in Canada, eh?

Today's Vancouver Sun has more:

Peter Gall, who represented two companies seeking to appeal arbitration decisions to reinstate dismissed employees....said that up until now the issue of dealing with drug-addicted employees seemed to be "one-sided," with many arbitration decisions leaning towards reinstatement." (We know) (now) that an addicted employee also has a responsibility to take all reasonable steps to deal with his or her addiction," he said.

Yes, in Canada, it takes court intervention to establish that employed drug addicts share some responsibility for keeping themselves drug-free and employable. But even then, the conduct has to be pretty flagrant to provoke a bout of court-ordered rectitude, and overriding an absurd earlier ruling by an arbitrator.

In one of the two written rulings, Chief Justice Lance Finch upheld an appeal by the employer's association at Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital, finding in essence the hospital was right to dismiss a nurse who was stealing drugs to feed his addiction. An arbitrator had initially found the hospital was wrong to dismiss Ron Bergen, a registered nurse who had been addicted to drugs since 1996. In his ruling, Finch overturned that decision, saying the arbitrator did not properly consider the responsibility Bergen had to participate in his own rehabilitation.

Radical concept, judge dude. But the world of employment is still safe for on-site doobie-puffing open pit miners, so long as once they're caught, they accept a suspension withut pay, do "treatment," and stay clean upon return.

In the second case, which was heard at the same time as the first, Finch upheld an arbitrator's ruling to reinstate an employee of Kemess Mines Inc. The mining company dismissed Mark Gardiner from his job at an open pit mine in after he was found smoking marijuana in his room at the mine site. The company has a documented "zero-tolerance" policy....Gardiner had worked at the mine in alternating two-week shifts for almost seven years, and would take enough marijuana each time he went to work to last his entire stint. In Gardiner's initial appeal, an arbitrator found that Gardiner should be suspended from his job at the mine for 10 months without pay but not dismissed. In that decision, the arbitrator said the company should take back Gardiner with several conditions -- including that he remain abstinent and complete a treatment program -- because it had not fulfilled its duty to accommodate him and his addiction.

So the appeals court upholds the arbitrator's ruling that a company has a duty to accomodate a worker and his addiction. No, sorry. I'd say they should have the option of accomodating an employee's drug addiction. Or not. Especially if the addict is working in an open pit mine.

The therapizing of drug addiction as a "sickness" more than a personal choice - which is what it really is - absolves the decision-maker from responsibility; keeps the treatment industry fat and happy; and too often leaves the addict still addicted because he has been let off with a note from the doctor.

TECHNORATI TAGS: CANADA, B.C. COURT OF APPEALS, FIRING, DRUG ADDICTS, ARBITRATION, LANCE FINCH, KOOTENAY BOUNDARY REGIONAL HOSPITAL, MARK GARDINER, KEMESS MINES

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 15, 2006 10:42 PM