Adding Insult to Injury

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., content editor, First Reference Inc.

An injured employee may see the employer’s accident-reporting forms and processes as a waste of time and secondary to their seeking medical treatment, but the collection of such information is critical to the employer keeping its safe workplace obligations. When a British Columbia employee knowingly ignores the accident-reporting rules and puts up barriers to the employer finding out what happened, discipline is not far off, as the employee learned in 2023 CarswellBC 2094.

Background

The employee was a worker for one of Canada’s biggest elevator companies. On a Thursday, while he and a colleague were lifting a heavy cable spool, his colleague dropped his end, causing the employee to tweak his back and feel what he said was the worst pain of his life. He said he didn’t initially know how badly hurt he was, so he didn’t immediately report the accident as he should have.

He testified that the next morning, he fell out of bed and defecated on the spot. Claiming he was unable to use his legs at all, he had his wife drive him to the hospital, where he said he wasn’t allowed to use his cellphone.

Staunchly adhering to his misguided notion that working hours did not include weekends, the employee made no effort to communicate with the employer until Monday, and even then, the employee put up roadblocks: he refused to let the employer deliver certain required forms to him at the hospital, he refused to tell the employer what hospital he was at, he insisted the employer deal with him through his union and he refused to complete the requested forms.

As a result, the employer gave the employee two verbal warnings: one for failing to abide by the safety policy’s reporting requirements, and the second for the employee’s insubordinate approach after the employer learned of the incident.

The arbitrator’s decision

To the arbitrator, there was no doubt the employee worked in an extremely safety sensitive workplace that had good reason to expect prompt accident reporting under its policies: It needed to investigate incidents to prevent them in the future, and, in fact, investigation was a legislative requirement that could result in penalties if not complied with. No one, not even the union, claimed the policies were unreasonable.

Credibility played a role, too. The arbitrator found the employee’s story was marked by hyperbole and inconsistency. For example, the hospital discharge notes tended to show that his condition wasn’t as bad as he said it was, noting he denied any incontinence and was experiencing mild to moderate distress. This contradicted the employee’s testimony that he was in too much pain to complete the forms, and it didn’t explain why the employee was capable of contacting WorkSafeBC to open a compensation claim. Also, the employee tried to minimize the extent to which he was trained on the policies.

It all added up to discipline-worthy conduct in the arbitrator’s estimation, who accepted the employer’s invitation not to fine tune the two verbal warnings.

Key takeaways

A lot is at stake in the realm of workplace accidents, even with near misses like this one. The issues around health, safety and liability are simply too important to be ignored, and the law puts obligations on all stakeholders to report and deal with dangerous workplace situations when they arise.

This case shows that it would be a mistake for an employee to try to minimize the seriousness of their reporting duties, and that employers are well justified in enforcing their safety policies, even if it means imposing progressive discipline to ensure they are consistently adhered to. Otherwise, if employees in a safety-sensitive workplace gain the impression that compliance is optional, the employer could end up with an even bigger problem.