City Failed to Take Steps to Protect Community Centre Workers from Violence

Two workers for a community centre were shot and injured in the centre’s parking lot. They sued the city that ran the centre for violating the collective agreement and its duties under the OHS law. The arbitrator said the city knew the centre was in a high-risk neighbourhood and had had frequent violent incidents. The workers there considered it unsafe and the city was aware of their concerns. It had gotten recommendations on how to make the centre safer, which would have been easy to implement. But the city made only a few of the requested changes despite the fact its own safety audit indicated the risk of a workplace incident was high. So the arbitrator concluded that the city failed to take reasonable steps to ensure the centre was a safe working environment [Toronto (City) v. Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 79 (Charles Grievance), [2014] O.L.A.A. No. 34, Jan. 20, 2014].