In another victory, an employee of Via Rail, fired for noncompliance with the company’s vaccine mandate, was ordered to be given their job back when arbitrator Graham Clarke determined that the company had acted in direct contravention of labour laws. He stated, “VIA did not have just and sufficient cause” deciding “on its own initiative to add disciplinary consequences for non-vaccinated employees” noting that no member could be fired “without a fair and impartial hearing.”

When thousands of federal employees were being placed on leave without pay for the same violation, Louison Tessier, a VIA engineer, was fired Jan. 24, 2022; the first and only disciplinary action taken against him for this violation.

In his decision, Clarke ordered VIA to rehire Tessier and “remove from his file any reference to the termination of employment.” There was no compensation for lost time included in the order after negotiations between Teamsters and VIA.

With respect to the 2560 plus employees placed on leave without pay, Attorney General David Lametti remains stalwart in his position, saying that the disciplinary measures were legal. “We are on solid legal footing,” he said. “I always believe that when we promulgate a law, we’re on solid legal footing.”

Giving employers legal control over an individuals’ bodily autonomy, and the ability to rewrite employment contracts after being legally acknowledged by both parties is clearly a gross overreach of the intent of our laws. There are processes that are meant to be followed in all such situations, all of which have been neglected in recent years.

We applaud this success and look forward to many more as we fight to truly regain the ‘return to normal’ that we were promised when this all began. Stand with us in support of these small victories and in the hope that they will lead to bigger victories as we move forward.

To read the Toronto Sun article written by Kevin Connor, click here