rstruthe

An absolutely ridiculous ruling. If this is the case, then the employee should be required to maintain there household to workplace standards including letting there employers health and safety committee inspect it whenever desired. They should also be responsible for keeping it up to accessibility standards (elevators etc.).

It is no longer a private house, it’s a workplace.

Remove all sharp knives unless the person has chefs training, they should not be allowed to cook unless trained in safety.

RangerNS

"an Air Canada customer service agent" .... "was due to fact she was bound to a work schedule imposed by Air Canada." .... "with mandatory and specified health and lunch breaks "

If AC treats their WFH CS agents 1/100th as strictly as the best call center agent anywhere else in the known universe, Gentile-Patti had the clock running on her lunch break.

There is a very good chance her performance metrics are "time to answer", "time to terminate", and "% non-responsive" or such other easy to measure (if pointless, soul destroying, and anti-service triggering) metrics. Or, reading those "mandatory" breaks a different way, a union enforced (and also pointless, soul destroying and anti-service triggering) fixed schedule (which AC negotiated to).

Gentile-Patti's ability to casually, on her own terms and with her own personal safety in mind, take a break was non-existent. Her paid break was a paid break. Her union mandated break was a mandated break.

AC is as responsible as much as if it was a flying coffee pot to the head.

canadiancow

My employer forces me to go home every day. They do not allow sleeping in the office.

So if I fall down the stairs in my place, are they liable?

Your argument seems to be yes.

The Quebec argument seems to be that only between "home" (however that's sanely defined that covers for WFH) and work are covered.

I'm honestly not sure how that would apply to things that happen after you're forced to clock out.

RangerNS

Your employer forces you to leave their office at the end of the day. They don't particularly care where you go. If its your regular office, off site is your problem. Returning to their control and responsibility is some truly leisurely 16 or so hours later. And neither of us work in a job where we are punching a clock.

But, and it should be pointed out strongly here, if you are, say, a traveling consultant and your client "forces" you to leave their office at the end of the day, and you break your ... at the Category 16 Marriott you are put up at, your employer is responsible for that. Even if during your 16 hours of non-billable time they are forcing you to be somewhere.

Its materially significant here that this was not the end of the day. Buddy wasn't rushing because they poorly managed their personal time and had to get to a thing. It was on a mandated, paid break. There was a place to be 15, 30 minutes later. They were not held late, and got stuck in traffic their regular scheduled had them avoid. They were not forced into OT and commuting in an ice storm. They had exactly some short amount of time - paid time - to not take calls, and were expected within some strict number of rings to get back to the job.

Good reasons or not, if WFH is mandated, then other things must change besides "just work from home". That includes the tribunals (and my) logically reasonable, if practically absurd, reasoning here. Pilots get pods, and mechanics get yelled at to lift with their knees. Humans are fallible sacks of meat and management is responsible for ensuring their workplace safety. Call center agents shouldn't be expected to run up and down rickety stairs to get back to their job to answer calls. AC preemptively bought the extra kit on the Boeing death traps because they care about safety, but also never inspected the stairs they simply expected to be serviceable, because they don't. So which is it? Should we foster a culture of collective systematic safety, or do we expect heroic - impossible - levels of inhuman perfection always?

Things don't change unless it costs real money. And insurance - even government sponsored workers comp - is a force for both quantifiable risk and safety.

Fiordland

The obvious question for a frequent flyer is how does it apply on a business trip. From when you leave home until you get to your hotel? When your sleeping in a hotel away from home?

I think the principle should be to/from work and while working. What ever work is defined as.

songsc

Found the court document online: Décision

It’s in French. I suggest people giving it a read if you want to better understand what this case is actually about and how the judge made this decision.

canadiancow

But that's my point.

Business trips are quite different than this case.

The article suggests that "in transit to work" is now covered.

But my employer has no say over how I get to work. Maybe I'll get on a company shuttle (where they do have full control), maybe I'll take TTC, or maybe I'll drink a few Bacardi Spiced and Coke Zeros, and then hop in my 1998 Civic (with no safety features).

And while I would "blame them" if there were an issue on their provided shuttle, I wouldn't for the other two scenarios.

But "transit" takes on a very strange meaning these days.

Normally the company is in control of everything between the desk and the coffee machine. Not right now.

But would the result be different if this had been between waking up and getting to the desk, compared to being on a break between desk and desk, as the article suggests?
@RangerNS, the gist of your argument is "the company forced the worker to leave their desk for a break". But the ruling said "if you experience an injury during your transit to and from your workplace".

I agree that if an employer forces you to do something, they're liable for injury. But the ruling talks about transit to work. If I work as an AC check-in agent at YUL and take the 747 from downtown, and it crashes, who's liable? STM or AC? Because you're suggesting it's AC.

And if it's STM, then in the general "transit" case, I'd say it's "the individual" for anyone WFH.

YYCNoob

If the agent was working back in her office and during her lunch break she decides to go outside and walk a block down to grab lunch then return to her office, once she is off company property she slips on the sidewalk. Is she entitled to worker's compensation in that case? She is on a mandated break, but off company property. Had she slipped in her building where the employer has full control, I would agree that she would be entitled, however, she was the one that chose to go outside and risk the slip on a slippery sidewalk, I don't see why there is entitlement for worker's compensation.

This will sound like a ridiculous take, but she chose to go downstairs to get food and fell in the process. AC might have mandated her breaks but AC didn't mandate her to go down the stairs for said break, she chose to do that, and she should bare the risk of falling down the stairs as it is always a possibility.

RangerNS

The google translate doesn't have the word "transit".

"Within this schedule, Air Canada allows him to take breaks and a period of time for lunch. These breaks are therefore part of the work organization determined by the employer. In fact, without the imposition of a work schedule, the existence of a health break or even a lunch break would not be part of the organization , or even of connection with work. In addition, there is temporal proximity , even concomitant, between the disconnection with the employer and the fall."

One can see how this might extend to, for example, the slipping on ice on the direct straight line 3 icy sidewalk blocks between an office and the subsidized but cash paid employee parking lot, but not the chosen 6 blocks to the free parking at the mall, but we don't need to consider the next case. In this exact case, between the place AC made someone be and the closest available place one might take a "break", AC put them where they tripped, between where they worked for AC and where they took a mid-shift break from AC. AC chose not to explicitly delegate (or pay for) that physicality to be safe.

songsc

From the court document:
This case isn't about whether AC is responsible for worker's injury, it's about whether the employee is eligible for worker's compensation, which the employee will qualify if the injury is an unforeseeable event during work.The argument is about whether the fall from stairs was considered "work".

The document cited the following criteria on what is considered "work":
Paragraph [18] to [20] explains why court considered this event occurred at "work".

And the conclusion was:
In nowhere did the court mention that AC should be responsible for the employee's injury, it only stated that the employee suffered "occupational injury" therefore she was entitled to worker's compensation.

Fiordland

I have to admit I never looked it up before but in BC the employer is responsible for the safe work environment when someone is working from home. That includes provisions for work-alone and workplace ergonomics. (WorkSafeBC is our equivalent to WCB in other parts).

https://www.worksafebc.com/en/about-...king-from-home

They are not responsible for travel from home to the workplace, but travel from the workplace to other places where the worker has to attend meeting etc.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/c...overage-claims

This is going to keep lawyers busy across the country for years to come.

MSPeconomist

This suggests that if a WFH employee is requested to attend an in-person meeting (i.e., at their former office), transportation accidents would be covered under workers' compensation. I wonder whether hybrid work arrangements would be considered versus whether every employee would a main place of work (home or office but not both) for this purpose.