FIRED over #FHITP
FHITP? #ItsNeverOkay
A Hydro One assistant network engineer who earned over $100,000 a year is now losing his job over comments he made to a female reporter covering a Toronto FC soccer event. CityNews reporter Shauna Hunt confronted a group of young men after one of them said "F*** her in the p***", which has been a trend since last year. Hunt told a group of young men in the back who were also waiting to say the phrase it was "degrading to women," but they laughed her off.
Although the Hydro One engineer was not the one who initiated the incident, he enthusiastically supported it. He told Hunt, "You're lucky there wasn't a f***ing vibrator in your ear.. it's f***ing amazing."
The other young men in the video have been banned for "at least a year" from future Toronto FC games.
On social media, many said Hydro One's firing was completely justified, while a few thought it went too far.
"If I found out one of my employees was going to someone else's workplace and sexually harassing them, that would 100% be a firing offence," said @EvaHolland.
"He was not representing the company, a person is not defined by their job," tweeted @hausleitnarr. "What he said may be disagreeable."
Can an employee be fired for controversial comments to the media while off duty?
Several labour unions were reluctant to give comment, but Gary Engler from the Unifor Local 2000, the B.C. Media Union, said, "It really depends. On the one hand, we absolutely want to defend a harassment-free workplace. But on the other, we also we want to defend people from being wrongfully dismissed."
Birkbeck said she had made her supervisors aware of this trend, but that she'd heard from lawyers and from police in Montreal that "nothing could be done."
"I was pleasantly surprised when I heard Calgary police are taking this more seriously and that some perpetrators there might actually be charged," she said.
Julie S. Lalonde, host of “The Third Wave” a weekly feminist radio show on CHUO 89.1FM, said Hydro One had every right to fire the engineer.
"Hydro One has an Employee Code of Conduct and his actions clearly violated it," she said. "Hydro One was within their right to terminate his employment. Freedom of expression does not mean that one does not suffer consequences for their words."
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne weighed in on twitter, too: "Thanks @citynews for saying #ItsNeverOkay. Whether or not it’s caught on film, sexual harassment at work is no joke."
with files from Valentina Ruiz Leotaud