Sunday, October 5, 2008

"Human Rights" Commissions — Great Tool For Revenge

Want to get back at someone you don't like? Want to give your former boss a hard time? File a "human rights" complaint against him. It's free for the complainer and it ensures a few years of legal turmoil, as well as thousands of dollars in legal and travel expenses for the defendant:
The employee in question was terminated within 2 weeks of his start date (well within the 90 day probationary period as set forth by the ESA), was consistantly late for work (as was proven by his signed and dated time cards), had been caught lying regarding a doctors appointment he needed to leave for (was a job interview with another company), was disruptive around other employees drawing complaints from no less than 3 co-workers for bothering them and the list goes on and on. So it seems that the complaintant might have filed the complaint in retaliation for being called out on his bad behavior.
...
I have spent a minimum of 50-60 hours of my time preparing my response, gathering his employment information and attending a mediation he didn't show up for (not to mention the overwhelming stress of having this government body prosecuting me) and this is the kind of person that is allowed to file frivilous complaints. How much of my time and energy has been wasted by this individual over this? Best of all there is no mechanism to punish this individual for doing what he has done and no mechanism to compensate me for my time and energy.
The HRCs were originally set up to resolve human rights disputes in housing and employment - just like this one. And yet even here, it's too easy for a "human rights" commission to become a tool of willful harassment. Even if it's obvious for the clerks that the complaint is there just to give the old boss a hard time - they're powerless to dismiss it outright.

Since this is not a "hate speech" case, repealing section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act won't let the anonymous businessman off the hook. The real solution would be rewriting the Human Rights Act altogether, rather than striking out sections of it. HRCs must be abolished and disputes on human rights and constitutional freedoms should be resolved in the court of law.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would agree agree with your last paragraph.
But, I have had some very bad employers that should spend the rest of their lives fighting off these of kind of complaints before these monkey courts.
These Kangaroo courts are made for them.

Leonard said...

Except how could we make sure those kangaroo courts are only used against "bad" employers, but not against the "good" ones? And how can you be sure that nobody considers you to be the "bad" one - one who "deserves" to be intimidated by a quasi-judiciary tribunal like the HRC?

Everyone must have a right to a fair trial in the court of law. It's just common sense.