(Montreal) An employer will have to pay $115,000 to a worker who was fired after working for him for 25 years.
The Administrative Labor Tribunal has thus just ruled on the amount to be paid to the complainant, after a first decision of the Tribunal in 2022 had upheld her complaint of dismissal without just and sufficient cause.
The worker was fired at the age of 70 in 2018; she had worked for this employer since 1993 and part-time since 2015.
Before the Tribunal, when determining the amount to be paid to the complainant, the employer had claimed that he had been “clumsy”, but he maintained that he had been sufficiently sanctioned by the cancellation of the dismissal. He argued that the eight weeks’ paid notice was sufficient compensation.
The employer had also qualified as clearly insufficient the complainant’s efforts to find another job after her dismissal, which would have minimized the damage resulting from her dismissal.
But the Tribunal “finds on the contrary that the employer has not demonstrated that the plaintiff failed in its obligation to minimize the prejudice resulting from her dismissal”.
He also points out that an employer representative admitted that he considered the complainant’s age to terminate her employment.
“It should be recalled that the employer tried on several occasions to induce the plaintiff to retire and that her effective retirement was only a pretext to get rid of her”, writes the administrative judge in her decision.
“The employer wanted to get rid of her under the guise of retirement and administrative reorganization. He did so in a cavalier and ungrateful way,” the court ruled.
He adds that the Complainant testified credibly about the effects of the dismissal on her physical and mental health: loss of balance, tremors, eczema, insomnia, isolation, loss of self-esteem and loss of self-confidence. She felt betrayed and felt shame at being fired after 25 years of service.
He therefore ordered the employer to pay him $115,768, which includes $5,000 in moral damages and $5,000 in punitive damages.
