Accommodation : No financial guarantee

The employer applied for judicial review of the arbitrator’s decision who had ordered it to grant six advancement steps in pay grade to a nursing assistant who obtained a position as an administrative officer following an accommodation process. The arbitrator had upheld the employee’s grievance claiming the top step of her new salary range, in order to reduce the financial loss resulting from changing positions. According to the judge, the duty to accommodate does not include financial obligations requiring an employer to guarantee that an employee affected by an accommodation will have similar salary conditions to those he or she had before changing positions. The main objective of accommodation measures is to keep employees at work in a position that takes into account their disability, and not to provide them with conditions of employment that are identical or similar to those they benefited from before their disability occurred. The appeal for judicial review was allowed.

CHU de Québec – Université Laval c. Tremblay
2018EXPT-2044, 2018 QCCS 4458, Justice Pierre C. Bellavance