After nearly 5 months of stress over this whole thing it is finally over. Although the owner never admitted any fault (he claimed he never answered me when I asked if he would have hired me had of he known about my arm when in fact his answer was "no" and when I went back to inquire about the schedule he claimed he said "we like to try other people" and/or (it changed several times) "try harder" as opposed to "we decided to try other people because of your arm". Apparently telling someone they are hired, training them one day, and then trying out others who were also told they were hired is standard practice, an audition of sorts. I call bullshit but whatever.
Anyways, as it was obvious we were not going to agree on what took place we deadlocked and moved to separate rooms. The mediator basically then asked what terms I wanted out of this whole thing.
In order of importance,
- An apology, published in the newspaper. If he felt he could humiliate me in public, I felt he could apologize in public.
- For him to develop a clear policy on discrimination
- Added during the session, a clear policy on hiring and training procedures (including the apparent audition process
- And finally monetary compensation for lost wages, the delay to my EI claim, and injury to feelings.
I'm getting the apology written but not published (thats ok, I have a blog! The mediator says apologies are actually pretty rare)
He will be working with the Human Rights Commission to develop his discrimination policy.
He will be working with his lawyer to develop the hiring/training plan.
Financial compensation = $1000.00, not as much as I had hoped but this was never entirely about the money.
I could have said no and let it go to court etc but that is time consuming and kind of a difficult process with no guarantees in the end. Financial compensation through the courts might not have not have been much better considering they take into account length of employment etc. I suspect it would have been just as he said/she said because during our talks to day it was said that he girl who was supposed to train me told him she couldn't because I only had one arm. This is not the same server who took my side so although I had a witness he very well may have had someone backing up his (bullshit *cough*) version of events.
Part of the agreement of course has a clause stating that the settlement in no way implies he is guilty or that he admits to anything, nor does it mean I pulled my complaint. Just that we agree to disagree on the events that took place.
In the end, I do feel like I "won" because now he is forced to rethink how he does things, says things, and treats future applicants.
I would like to thank you all who had my back during this time... I love you all!
