In 2010 the Ontario Government came out with Bill 168 which deals with abuse in the workplace.
Accordingly Bill 168 declares “ZERO TOLERANCE” regarding any form of abuse and/or harassment, physical, verbal, mental, sexual, which I fully agree with.
Violence is violence and harassment is harassment, abuse is abuse regardless of the form applied.
This bill of “Zero Tolerance” appears to suggest that both parties share equally in responsibility therefore both should be dismissed, but is this to be presumed as fairness?
The questions becomes though:
How should an incident be viewed?
Can evidence be provided to establish the innocence of one involved in an incident?
How should this law be applied?
What is fair to all parties concerned?
Scenario:
One employee lays hands upon another employee to do bodily harm, grabbing them by their clothing trying to wrestle them to the ground. Once they are successful they commence punching and kicking the employee. To protect themselves from harm the other employee tries to fend off the aggressive attacker but to do so must touch the other employee to push them away, and escape.
The problem becomes mired with Bill 168 because, according to this law, granted the one attacking deserves to be terminated for fighting, but the law calls for “ZERO TOLERANCE” which means technically because the second employee resisted the second employee too under this law could and should face termination.
It is this writer’s belief:
That an employee has a right to protect themself from an attacker instigating a confrontation. Obviously if possible one should try to walk away from an attacker and immediately report what has happened to management so that it becomes documented, but if the confrontation escalates, and one cannot escape their attacker, what is one supposed to do to prevent serious harm?
If there is no flexibility in Bill 168 to permit someone being attacked physically to protect and defend themself from an attacker, then this bill is unjust.