A mechanic who never came back left his employer with a bill it didn't see coming
A mechanic who kept telling his boss he didn't want to be a mechanic stopped showing up after the holiday break and never came back. His employer was sure he had quit. Ontario's labour board saw it differently, and the shop is on the hook.
In a June 2, 2026, decision, Ontario Labour Relations Board Vice-Chair Maheen Merchant ruled that Dustin Hawley did not quit his job at Mike's Mobile Mechanics Inc., and that the shop had instead terminated him. The finding, in Mike's Mobile Mechanics Inc. v Dustin Hawley, leaves the employer responsible for $3,261.06 in termination pay it had been ordered to hand over more than a year earlier.
A holiday shutdown and a no-show
Hawley had worked on and off as a mechanic at the shop for several years, with his most recent stretch beginning in May 2020. His last day on the floor was December 22, 2023, just before the business closed for its annual Christmas and New Year shutdown. When the shop reopened on January 2, 2024, Hawley did not show up. He never returned.
The employer treated the absence as a resignation. In its view, staff were expected back the day the shop reopened, and Hawley's failure to appear amounted to a voluntary quit. It directed its bookkeeper to prepare a record of employment in mid-January, and the document was filed in early February.
Hawley told the board a different story. He said he and one of the owners had agreed before the break that he would come back once business picked up, since January is slow, and that the owner would call him when he was needed. An employment standards officer had already sided with him, issuing an order in March 2025 that directed Mike's Mobile to pay termination pay.
What the text messages showed
The board heard from three witnesses for the employer, including the two owners, who are married and run the shop together, and a service writer. Their recollections did not line up neatly. The owner Hawley pointed to could not recall the conversation about returning when business improved, while the service writer said he had expected Hawley back on the first day.
Much of the case turned on what was, and was not, in the record. There were no messages or calls from the employer between late December and mid-January, and it was Hawley who phoned one of the owners on January 11. The board noted Hawley had a history of lateness and absences, and that the two sides had routinely been in contact about it. Given that history, the board reasoned, an employer expecting him back would likely have reached out when he did not appear, and this one did not.
In his own January messages, sent while he arranged to collect a truck the shop had given him as a Christmas bonus, Hawley wrote that he had not quit and asked whether he was being fired. One of his messages read, "But I don't wanna be a mechanic anymore."
Why the board found a firing, not a quit
Merchant returned to settled principles on what it takes to quit a job. A resignation, Merchant noted, requires both a subjective decision to leave and an objective step to act on it. It is the employee's choice alone, and an employer cannot simply declare that a worker has quit.
The employer had pointed to Hawley's attendance record, his performance, and his repeated comments about not wanting to be a mechanic as proof he intended to leave. The board was not persuaded. "The Employer cannot simply infer such an intention to quit from poor or declining work performance," Merchant wrote, adding that the point held with particular force because the shop had never disciplined Hawley over any of it.
The owner himself testified that he had not taken Hawley's complaints about the job seriously, given how often and how long he had made them. And because the employer never reached out after the shop reopened, the board could not treat the absence as abandonment. "It is not possible to conclude that Mr. Hawley quit in the face of clear statements by him to the contrary," Merchant found. The application for review was dismissed, and the order to pay was affirmed.
See Mike's Mobile Mechanics Inc. v Dustin Hawley, 2026 CanLII 57727 (ON LRB)
