Did new management cause office clash? Court investigates claim
The Court of King’s Bench of Alberta recently dealt with a constructive dismissal case from a worker who said the appointment of a new supervisor led to his forced resignation.
The court acknowledged that there was “a clash of personalities” between the two, but the employer maintained that “[no] management conduct was calculated to cause [his] resignation.”
Office politics with the new supervisor
Kambiz Pashaei Fakhri worked for Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) for almost eight years before his resignation.
According to records, “the problem started when a ‘Mr. Viana’ became his supervisor in February 2018. Fakhri claimed that he had a good working relationship with his previous supervisors, which was reflected in past performance reviews.”
Fakhri alleged that Viana “slapped his hand on the desk during meetings in an intimidating and humiliating manner.” Viana, for his part, denied that this was the intent. “If he did it at all, it was meant to be emphatic,” he said,
The worker added that Viana “would cross the room and come into [the former’s] office to stare at his computer screen in an intimidating manner,” but the new supervisor said that “looking at the [worker’s] computer screen was part of his job.”
The worker also referred to after-hours contacts and requests. Additionally, he argued that “he was unfairly passed over for promotions and was blocked from transfers to other positions in other departments.”
He went on to say that “he found working under his new supervisor a hostile working environment, with no action taken to address his complaints. He refers to an undocumented serious medical condition suffered earlier in his employment, that made him susceptible to stress and was made worse by his job environment.”
After a while, Fakhri resigned “after a (qualified) favourable performance review in October 2018,” with the “expectation” that “in resigning he could get contract work with CNRL, having been blocked from transferring to other positions.”
However, the contract work did not materialize, and the court noted that Fakhri “elected to quit on a mistaken assumption.”
Employer denies blocking worker’s career advancement
In answering the worker’s allegations about clashing with management and his claims that he was “blocked” from progressing in his career, CNRL argued that the [worker] would “have to improve his leadership, collaborative and communication skills in order to advance, or to be a suitable candidate for other positions within the company.”
It said the worker was “habitually defensive and condescending to colleagues and did not welcome constructive criticism, or function well as part of a team.”
It also denied that “Mr. Viana blocked internal job applications, or that his transfer or advancement was impaired on any basis other than merit and fit.”
“There is no evidence that management conduct was calculated to cause Fakhri’s resignation,” it added.
Did the new supervisor’s appointment lead to the worker’s resignation?
In its decision, the court said that “there is very limited detail (times, places and circumstances) about Mr. Viana’s conduct that would allow the court to conduct an objective assessment of Fakhri’s subjective complaints.”
“In other words, the absence of detail prevents the court from assessing whether Mr. Viana’s conduct was, on some occasions, emphatic or threatening.”
The court said that “Fakhri simply did not respect his superior in terms of his knowledge, or qualifications, or his ability to manage or supervise the projects that [he] was working on in the IT department.”
“I am unable to see that the circumstances of the [worker’s] employment, following Mr. Viana’s appointment as supervisor, was such that the terms of the [worker’s] contract of employment were unilaterally changed to [his] detriment, or that the employer’s conduct demonstrated that they no longer intended to be bound by the terms of the employment contract including the Code of Conduct,” the court said.
“There is [also] no evidence that CNRL blocked or denied transfer or promotion on any improper grounds,” it added. Thus, the court favoured the employer and summarily dismissed the worker’s constructive dismissal claim.
