PoCo moving company ordered to pay former employee $64k following repeated sexual harassment

Warning: Disturbing details.

More than five years after leaving her job due to repeated bullying and sexual harassment, Vicki Knowles was recently awarded $64,630 in a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal case.

The tribunal ordered the Ontime Moving Corporation to pay Knowles for lost wages and compensation for injury to her dignity, feelings, and self-respect, based largely on four incidents of harassment and the company’s failure to remedy the situation.

In one incident Knowles was kneeling down to fix a photocopier when an employee named Joe, “wiggled his belt buckle and said, ‘While you’re down there,’ insinuating that she should give him oral sex,” according to the decision.

In another instance Joe told Knowles “watch this” and dropped his pants.

He smacked Knowles on the butt and said, “OK, back to work.”

Joe also asked Knowles and another woman: “So, when is one of you ladies going to have sex with me?”

The incidents took place between June 2019 and April 2020.

Joe also routinely called Knowles infantilizing pet names like sweets” or “sweetie pie,” and sometimes yelled at Knowles, insulted her intelligence, and made racist comments, according to Knowles.

In making her case, Knowles produced text messages between herself and the CEO. In one exchange, she mentioned: “major issues” that needed to be addressed. The CEO responded, “Joe being an asshole again?” Knowles wrote back: “Yes.”

After a new CEO took over in 2020, Knowles reported Joe’s conduct, “including the verbal abuse and sexual harassment.”

Knowles told the CEO she didn’t feel safe at work and couldn’t keep working alongside Joe.

The CEO, after meeting with Joe, told Knowles Joe wouldn’t do it anymore. The CEO also said he’d be in the office more frequently to monitor the situation. Knowles was often alone with Joe.

After Knowles said she couldn’t work that way, the CEO asked if she could find someone to replace her before she left.

“He also indicated that the owner did not want her to tell anyone what had happened, because it could make the company look bad.”

Knowles said her “head exploded.” She left work in July 2020, got a note from her doctor, and didn’t return.

The company contended there wasn’t enough time to address the complaints before Knowles quit.

“Respectfully, I disagree,” wrote tribunal member Devyn Cousineau.

The company was aware of Joe’s conduct since at least the summer of 2019, Cousineau noted.

Ontime also didn’t have adequate policies to address sexual harassment, nor a clear policy for reporting sexual harassment, the decision stated.

The company argued that Knowles should have made her complaint through formal channels.

“It is unclear why she would have known to do that or what those formal channels would be,” Cousineau wrote.

When Knowles did report harassment, her complaints weren’t taken seriously, as a CEO told her to be strong and had what turned out to be an ineffective meeting with Joe.

“From Ms. Knowles’ perspective, she continued to work for Ontime in a workplace poisoned by sexual and other harassment,” Cousineau wrote.

In November 2019, after Knowles was “ready to leave the company because of Joe’s conduct,” she was promoted to president and given a raise. During a meeting with the CEO, Joe also “promised to stop with the sexual harassment, bullying, and yelling.”

But while Knowles was “theoretically above Joe in the workplace hierarchy,” she didn’t have any real authority over him, according to the decision.

Joe was on good behaviour for a brief period.

“However, it didn’t last,” Cousineau wrote.

Following an independent report issued in February 2021, Ontime disciplined and eventually fired Joe.

“However, by this time it was too late for these steps to restore Ms. Knowles to a healthy work environment,” Cousineau stated.

Cousineau also called the company’s defence “somewhat unusual,” as its representative and only witness, Derek Yuan, didn’t join the company until after Knowles had left.

“He had no firsthand knowledge of any of the facts at issue in the complaint. This meant that Ms. Knowles’ evidence about what she told her supervisors was effectively undisputed,” Cousineau wrote.

The hearing was held in June and the decision was published in August.