Read on Twitter
If you're a staff member in Dufferin-Peel Catholic, you're immunocompromised & you're being told to either show up to work or retire/resign/go on unpaid leave, PLEASE mobilize & contact Ontario Human Rights Commission. Employment discrimination based on disability is illegal.
If you're a chronically ill person who has never considered themselves disabled before this moment, rest assured that chronic illness counts.
Link for those for whom this is news: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-unions-decry-ontario-catholic-school-boards-covid-19-sick-leave/
And here is the @OntHumanRights policy on the duty to accommodate disabled people, including reference to employment: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-ableism-and-discrimination-based-disability/8-duty-accommodate
Here's the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal page for applications and the hearing process: http://tribunalsontario.ca/hrto/
Oh, additionally, this goes against the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)'s requirement that workers be appropriately accommodated in their workplaces: https://www.aoda.ca/accommodating-invisible-disabilities-in-the-workplace-2/
Our boards may cry "UNDUE HARDSHIP!!"
But that's not the case.
We've known about the pandemic since January. We've been shut down since March. The Ministry of Education's refusal to act until the last second does not constitute undue hardship.
But that's not the case.
We've known about the pandemic since January. We've been shut down since March. The Ministry of Education's refusal to act until the last second does not constitute undue hardship.
Now, the Ministry refusing to give us an actual working plan EVEN NOW means that boards have been left in the lurch. No question. But not ensuring appropriate access to employment supports (like working remotely) is a violation of AODA and Ontario Human Rights Code.
And I would argue that it's not just Dufferin Peel Catholic School Board that needs to be named in an application to OHRC, but also the Government of Ontario itself, who manufactured a huge chunk of this crisis.
