Elsa Torrejon was awarded $20,000 after she was fired after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Six months after discovering she had breast cancer, and five months after being fired for it, Elsa Torrejon is still fighting.
She's already won a $20,000 judgment against her former employer in a case that highlights the plight of those who fall ill while working for small companies. Now, the 52-year-old single mother of two is ready to hear she's cancer-free as well. "My mind is that the tests will be clear," she said of the CT scan and ultrasound results she expects next week. "I want to work."
The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal announced on Tuesday that it has awarded Ms. Torrejon, who was a leasing agent at Weston Property Management for about nine months, compensation for lost wages and emotional distress because the company discriminated against her on the basis of a disability. Her managers were also ordered to undergo training on Ontario's human-rights regulations.
"We were both in tears when we heard we'd won," said Ms. Torrejon's lawyer, Michelle Mulgrave.
During the tribunal hearings, vice-chair Naomi Overend heard that after Ms. Torrejon was diagnosed in January, her managers, Doug and Geri McDonald, asked her to provide written notice of when she intended to leave. So, Ms. Torrejon scrawled the words "I, Elsa P. Torrejon, will be working till Feb 12/09," hastily across a piece of paper, thinking she was notifying them of an indefinite leave.
But after she rescheduled her surgery, Ms. Torrejon learned that the McDonalds had taken the note as her resignation, and told her not to bother returning to work.
"I couldn't imagine they would do this to me," she said.
Ms. Torrejon, who was earning $12 an hour at Weston and lives with her two teenaged children in a North Toronto apartment, did not know how she could support her family during cancer treatment and without an income.
She contacted the Human Rights Legal Support Centre and brought a case against the company.
"They harmed me," Ms. Torrejon said. "I don't know if they meant it, but they harmed me."
An employee at Weston said on Tuesday that the company would not comment on the case.
The Montreal-based company manages apartment buildings in Toronto, where Ms. Torrejon worked at a five-person office. Throughout the hearings, the McDonalds said they were unaware of their obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code to accommodate ill employees.
"Where you have larger companies with a sophisticated, mature human-resources department, those companies have in place policies and procedures for dealing with these issues," labour lawyer Michael Fitzgibbon said. Although he maintained that "ignorance of the law is no defence," he said that "smaller to mid-sized employers may not have the same level of resources or support."
Ms. Mulgrave said that, small company or not, employers have a duty to educate themselves. "If you're going to open a business in this province, there are laws you have to follow."
Ms. Torrejon said she's proud of what she did. "When there is something unfair, research and go fight it," she said. "Be strong and fight it."
Ann Hui