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Grievance Handling Case Study

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Grievance Handling Assignment – Case Study

By Lee Zahayko

Student#0146832

August 29, 2015

Jessie is an animal lover that booked off 3 vacation days to attend to her 12-year-old dog that needed to be euthanized. When Jessie returned to work after the 3 vacation days she asked her employer to reinstate her 3 vacation days and instead treat her time off as family related leave in accordance with Article 30 of the MGEU collective agreement. Jessie’s employer denied the request stating that the intent of Article 30 related to human family members only – not pets.

The question now is should Jessie be entitled to family related leave?

In Article 30 of the MGEU collective agreement section a) states:
“The leave shall be for the purpose of attending to family responsibilities which are real, immediate and unavoidable and which necessitate the employee’s absence from work.” An interpretation of Article 30, based on the section above, is that Jessie does have reasonable cause to ask for family related leave. Anyone who has owned a pet, or even knows of someone who owns a pet, knows that a pet is a responsibility. The animal needs: food, water, exercise, attention and shelter to survive. Those are the same things that a human needs as well. At the same time, an animal cannot provide those things for its self during any stage of its life, but a human grows, evolves and learns to provide for its self over time. In this case as well Jessie owned the dog for 12 years and obviously became very attached to caring for it over the years and considers it a family member. Article 30:01 states:
“An employee shall be entitled to up to five (5) days of leave with pay in each fiscal year to be granted on the recommendation of the Employer as follows and charged against the employee’s sick leave credits.” Jessie did not discuss the situation with the employer before hand to see if she could use the family related leave. Therefore it cannot be granted on the recommendation of the Employer, if they do not know the situation. Article 30 can also be interpreted as relating to human family members only because many people do not consider animals to be family members. To adopt a pet means that the person or family has willingly taken on the responsibility, by either paying for the animal or accepting it as a gift, things that are not done with humans. Many would say that a human’s life takes presence over a pet or animals life. Jessie had also made prior arrangements to euthanize the dog when she found out it was terminally ill. She could have made arrangements around work hours if she didn’t want to use her vacation hours. This is also something that is not done when it comes to human family members. In Article 29, just before Article 30, under compassionate leave, it states:
“An employee shall be entitled to compassionate leave for four (4) working days without loss of salary in the event of the death of parent, spouse or child.” Article 29:02 states:
“An employee shall be entitled to compassionate leave of three (3) working days without loss of salary in the event of the death of a brother, sister, ward of the employee, or relative permanently residing in the employee’s household or with whom the employee permanently resides.” Further more in Article 29:03:
“An employee shall be entitled to compassionate leave of one (1) working day without loss of salary in the event of the death of the employee’s grandparent, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, aunt, uncle, or grandchild. In the article just before family leave, it clearly states the amount of days associated with specific member of the employee’s family passing. Again there is nothing that refers to a pet or animal being considered a family member. If Jessie really considered her dog to be a member of the family, why didn’t she ask for compassionate leave? I believe it’s because Article 29 is more specific on who the leave can be used for while Article 30 is not. In saying that I believe the language of this clause is ambiguous. I’m sure members of the Union will be familiar with Article 29 and apply the same standards to Article 30. Based on the wording of Article 30, different people can interpret the Article in different ways. The manager who denied the request believes that a dog is not considered a family member. A member of the Union however might see it differently if they currently have or at some point had a pet for a long period of time. When the agreement is not clear, like in this case, in can be open to interpretation and therefore comes down to personal opinion. I personally believe that the leave should stay as vacation days and Jessie should not be granted family related leave. I do not believe that it was a real family responsibility that was immediate and unavoidable, and which necessitate the employee’s absence from work. Based on the information from the case study, I do believe the responsibilities could have been reasonably accommodated by some other person or in some other way or at some other time.

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