The owners of a hotel in Gillam have been ordered to pay a former employee more than $18,000 for failing to take steps to stop racial slurs directed at her by her co-workers.
The Manitoba Human Rights Commission ordered Michael Blahy and the numbered company that owned the Gillam Motor Inn, now operating as the Kettle River Inn & Suites, to pay $15,000 in damages for injury to the woman’s dignity and self-respect, $2,000 for the reckless nature in which her employment was terminated, $1,000 in lost earnings and $500 for costs incurred as a result of investigation.
Wanda Ross, who describes herself as part black and part Aboriginal, worked as a waitress at the Gillam Motor Inn for about six months in 2013, and testified that the general manager Darrell Nichol had used the expression “there’s no n***** in the woodpile” in conversation with her or in conversations with others while she was present. She said he also made comments about “drunken savages” and “drunken f****** Indians” when Indigenous people came into the hotel. Her coworker David Dunn, who sometimes served as substitute manager, began falsely telling customers that she was a drunk, a thief and/or a junkie and claimed that “all black people are thieves.”
“I am very relieved but this isn’t just going to go away,” said Ross in a Manitoba Human Rights Commission press release Jan. 19. “I have to live with this every day of my life. More has to be done to make sure people aren’t treated this way.”
When Ross complained to Nichol about Dunn’s behaviour, he told her she was imagining the situation. Ross also brought up the situation with Blahy, one of the owners, who came to Gillam every four to six weeks for a couple of days, but he testified that he couldn’t remember if she had mentioned racial slurs and insults being used during their conversation. Although the commission accepted Blahy’s testimony that he didn’t hold such views himself, he admitted hearing negative terms being used in reference to Indigenous people.
“Racial attacks and insults about a person’s ancestry cut to the very core of a person’s identity,” said Pinsky. “Left unremedied the corrosive effect of this type of working environment on the individual is heinous. There are also negative effects on society as a whole of permitting such comments to subsist. Permitting such commentary, if not normalizing it, creates or enables an environment in which decency, kindness, civility, productivity, and humanity are sacrificed.”
When Ross tried to resign from the hotel with six weeks’ notice, she was let go with one week’s pay and the rent she was paying to live in a trailer owned by the same company was unilaterally increased from $350 per month until she moved out. She did not receive her last paycheque.
“The decision also signals to employers that their employees, including those managed remotely, must be held to standards of dignity and respect in the workplace,” said human rights commission chairperson Brenlee Carrington Trepel. “Especially now, with the increased attention on harassment in the workplace, it is important for businesses to take a good look at what mechanisms they have in place to make sure their employees are included and respected.”
