A woman with facial piercings refused to accept a job with Lion Electric because the company required her to remove her jewelry. “It’s a little heartbreaking, but I won’t change my appearance for a job. And I don’t think it’s right to ask that,” she laments.
Lianne Desroches, 32, has piercings in her ears, on the bottom and top of her lips and on her nose. For ten years, she had worked in a bus wiring factory and her drilling had never posed a problem. But last July, she wanted to try her luck in a similar job at Lion Électrique, a growing Quebec company that manufactures electric buses.
She had a first interview by telephone, then a second by videoconference. The hiring process was well underway when she was informed that she would have to cover her facial piercings due to a new internal policy. She asked if she could wear a mask instead and the answer was yes.
The next day, the talent acquisition advisor who was in contact with Mme Desroches sent him another email. “I revalidated with human resources and unfortunately, for the jewelry, for the moment, they must be removed 100%. We cannot cover them with a mask or bandages,” she wrote.
She adds that “the employees are currently bringing the point [au] labor relations committee in order to relax the rule”, but that she cannot promise him anything in this regard. “If the position no longer interests you, I would be happy to keep your application in the event that the rule is withdrawn,” she adds in the exchange that The duty was able to consult.
After reflection, Lianne Desroches decided to refuse the position, despite the good salary and the passion that drove her. She would have agreed to wear a bandage or a mask to hide her piercings, but the idea of removing her rings every day, with the risks of infection that entails, put her off. Her piercings are also an important part of her identity, she explains. “This is how I present myself to the world, this is how I see myself and I wouldn’t want to take them away.” »
In her last exchange with the talent acquisition advisor, she wrote that it “sorrows her not to take the position for a reason that does not concern the work as such”.
Security
Joined by The dutyLion Electric confirms that there is an internal directive on the wearing of jewelry, scarves and other accessories for all production employees.
“Production employees work in a risky environment, being a manufacturing environment,” indicates Nathalie Giroux, head of human capital at Lion Électrique. The health and safety of our employees is important to us and all these measures are taken with the aim of providing our employees with the safest environment so that they return home happy and healthy. All of our employees who work in this manufacturing environment follow these guidelines to ensure their safety. »
Lion Electric did not specify how long this policy has been in effect. The company also did not want to confirm that requests for flexibility had been made by employees.
Lianne Desroches never asked to see said regulations. She did not know if the instruction was related to a question of appearance or safety. But according to her, there is no safety issue in having facial piercings for this job, which involves cutting wires and connecting them to each other. “It’s in my face, there’s no way I’m going to get my face close like that to something while working,” she explains. There is also, according to her, no risk of a wire wrapping around one of her jewels or of one of them falling.
She has since found a new job, interesting, but less paying. But the more she thought about this missed opportunity, the more she found that “it just didn’t make sense”, which is why she contacted The duty.
Fundamental right
“It is a fundamental right that the right to piercings, it’s part of the rights to freedom of expression and privacy, it’s defined like that by the courts, but there are always exceptions. And the first exception is for security reasons,” explains lawyer Bernard Cliche.
He does not want to comment on this specific case, which he does not know, but he explains that in general, such policies can be contested and that, in such a case, it is the responsibility of the employer to prove that there is a real risk justifying the infringement of a right recognized by the charters.
Similar stories have ended up in court in recent years. In 2010, the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada (CAW-Canada) contested before the arbitration court a new regulation from the Siemens company, which had just banned the wearing of jewelry to all its employees in the factory for safety reasons.
“It is true that in itself, the Charter does not protect as such the right to physical appearance or image. But it protects the right to privacy, including image and physical appearance […] are attributes,” explains arbitrator Jean-Pierre Lussier, who ruled in favor of the union.
He agreed that the security objective was “legitimate and important”, but concluded that, in this case, there was “no rational connection” between the security objective and the general ban on wearing jewelry .
In 2017, the Court of Appeal also ruled in favor of a cook who wanted to keep his piercing at the brow bone.
When asked if the findings of these judgments were taken into account by the company before instituting a policy prohibiting the wearing of jewelry for its production employees, Lion Electric replied: “We constantly evaluate our policies and procedures in order to implement best practices for the health and safety as well as the happiness of our employees. »
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2023-09-09 05:35:24
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