Earlier this summer, the Alberta Labour Relations Board rejected the bid of ATCO Electric Ltd to review a previous ruling that had awarded damages to one of its workers. The employee who received the award had joined ATCO Electric in August 2017. According to the decision, between 2018 and 2020, the ALRB noted that the worker was involved in several safety incidents, including “falling asleep while driving and crossing over the center line and entering a ditch, falling asleep while at a safety meeting, driving and spinning out over ice and damaging a power pole, driving over his laptop which he had left on the ground, and operating high voltage breakers without clearing safety risks.”
It was found that the worker was dealing with fatigue and focus deficits, and drug and alcohol test results all came back negative. Subsequently, ATCO Electric removed the worker from safety-sensitive duties and reassigned him to administrative tasks pending further assessment. Although a walk-in clinic resident found no medical reason to restrict him from operating vehicles or heavy equipment, the company still barred him from safety-sensitive work. The worker was unable to get a specialist referral without a family doctor, and consulted ATCO’s doctor, who limited him to non-safety duties, and then underwent a fitness-to-work assessment with Homewood Health while waiting to secure his own physician.
The psychologist’s report deemed the worker unfit for safety-sensitive duties, recommending therapy and a substance abuse assessment, which he accepted despite disputing parts of the evaluation, fearing job loss if he refused. Although the worker disputed a substance abuse assessment that diagnosed alcohol and cannabis disorders, he signed ATCO’s return-to-work agreement, which required two years of testing to regain his duties, after which his union filed a grievance alleging privacy and rights violations, and his new family doctor later identified possible ADHD and prescribed Adderall that improved his symptoms.
In 2021, the worker’s family doctor declared him fit for regular duties, yet ATCO enforced a return-to-work agreement that subjected him to two years of random drug tests and counselling, often removing him from his job and costing him overtime and on-call pay. Later, the arbitrator ruled the substance use diagnoses invalid and found the testing to be unjustified privacy breaches, awarding the worker $12,500 in damages in December 2024. ATCO appealed, arguing the arbitrator’s findings and damages were unreasonable, while the union also appealed, claiming additional privacy breaches should have been recognized. The Alberta Labour Relations Board dismissed both appeals, upholding the arbitrator’s decision and the damages award.
