Good Evening All:
I have taken this posting from the Airline Employee Forum and is written by a gentleman that goes by Dagger. Over the years I have enjoyed his postings as he writes very clearly and has been in the industry.
Please read what his thoughts are on this matter.
“In today's employment law, and considering the FA was not unionized in Canada Labour Code sense (which would be the case at AC, AT, etc.), there is nevertheless be an onus on an employer to 1. thoroughly investigate the incident, as impartially as possible, and 2) provide professional assistance to the parties to deal with the impact of the action. A company today must have a robust policy of sexual and other harassment.
Actually, this is one rare occasion where WS would have been far better off it the flight attendants were unionized. I have a generally poor regard for CUPE but it would have conducted a vigorous review of her complaint before even filing a grievance with the company, and this would have been settled for better or worse in-house. In the absence of a union and proper grievance procedures, this has been allowed to fester, the company may have mishandled aspects of it, and the FA is well within her Code and employment law rights to sue. Whether she is a feminist or not, a pain in the ass or not, these issues have little relevance to the lawsuit. In fact, I'd say Pilot M is almost an afterthought in this case, based on what is out there in the public domain - in fact, he might be re-tired by now, or close enough to be packaged off, made to disappear so to speak. From here on in, it's the company and its handling of the case that are the central part of the story.
There are many questions that will have to be dealt with in this legal case:
1. Did the incident as described by plaintiff happen as described, or in some lesser or greater form that would constitute sexual assault?
2. Did she file her complaint (not the lawsuit, her internal complaint) in a timely manner?
3. How did the company handle the flight attendants' complaint? If it was anything less than fair and scrupulous to the flight attendant concerned, this will look bad on WestJet even if the actual complaint is exaggerated or groundless?
4. If it wasn't sexual assault, did the incident rise to the level of sexual harassment?
5. Did this pilot have a "prior" on his company record, i.e. was the first alleged assault known to the company?
6. If the pilot did behave improperly, on one or more than one occasions, what discipline or corrective action was undertaken by the company?
7. Seeing it had a problem with one pilot, did the company take remedial action of any kind to help insure that there wouldn't be more such incidents, i.e. did it tighten its policy, assure staff of confidentiality to encourage them to come forward, etc.
8. Did the company protect the pilot more than the FA in pursuing its investigation? i.e. did he have friends in high places. The Old Boys network?
9. Was she fired with reasonable cause?
I can think of many more questions, but don't want to bore you all. An incident like this, unless proven to be entirely an exaggeration - i.e. a gentleman who sought sex but when rebuffed, was entirely gentlemanly - is going to hurt WS more than a certain spying case against a rival airline many years ago. It will hurt in hiring staff, it will hurt in the marketplace, it will make relations between the two employee groups a little more intense - are there still these morale-building mixers on the road? It tars all WS pilots, which is unfair and unfortunate. Every employee group at every company has a couple of people who cannot control their impulses. What the company does when they fail to control their impulses now becomes the public's business.”