Woman fired for racist comment wrongly dismissed, says judge

TORONTO -- A Toronto woman fired for making remarks deemed racist by her colleagues has won a wrongful dismissal case, a victory that underlines how vigilant employers must be when terminating a person without notice or severance pay.
"Employers have to be very, very careful," said Kenneth Alexander, who represented the employee, Karen Butler-Lynch. "She may have hurt the feelings (of co-workers) but it doesn't amount to just cause."

The case, which is the first of its kind in Ontario, centred on statements Butler-Lynch, who is white, made during a meeting with her non-white colleagues at Dr. Roz's Healing Place, a shelter for battered women.
The long-time employee said it was "a challenge for me to work here as a white woman with all these black women and women of colour."

That poisoned the work environment and was enough to justify firing the 48-year-old woman without notice last year, the defence argued.

In her ruling, Justice Gloria Klowak of the Ontario Superior Court agreed that employers should have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to racist comments.
But Butler-Lynch's remarks were "ambiguous," and may have been in response to the shelter's executive director talking about the challenges faced by black women, the judge noted, awarding Butler-Lynch about $28,000.

http://www.canada.com/globaltv/ontar...23dcdd&k=67663

When you want to get rid of an idiot you need to do the severence pay thing.

It's only $28,000 anyway.

The employer was wrong in this case..easier and more effective to go the official route in getting rid of an unwanted worker.
The smallish amount awarded shows there was some reason to terminate her.

lol... I can't believe they fired her as racist, for her having pointed out that being the minority was tough for her. At first glance, black and white text, I smell racism all right, and it's not all coming from her remark.

Body language and tone, not to mention past history of ignorance, may speak much greater volumes as to what she meant. But in text it comes across as a funny little bit of hypocrisy.

I wonder if a black person or other person of colour had made the same comment, would still be a big (small?) deal?

it would have been a perfectly acceptable thing for a black woman to comment that it's tough to be a visible minority amongst your working peers. It also would have been perfectly acceptable for a woman in a male dominated work force to say such a thing.

but, like I said... tone/body language/past history may account for much of it. I don't know.

There's always a lot more to the story that we will never know.

Wow, you'd think a place like "the healing place" would have more "empathy" then that. White is not the colour to be in this day and age.

If someone of colour said "it's hard to be the only person of colour among all these white people", is that the same? Where is the racist remark? I don't get it. At least the courts got it right for once.

I think she was just being honest, and stating what minorities have felt for years.........She was on the outside looking in. Some people just look for racism. This lady was the only white in the company and she was driven off. Imagine the hue and cry if she had been the only black person.