Do You Have Anger Issues? Have Trouble Getting Along With Your Fellow Workers? Change Your Gender and You Will Be Rewarded

That's the experience of this individual, anyway:

A male labourer at a Mississauga paper box factory who was fired while undergoing sex change therapy has been awarded $22,000 and eight months pay by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.  

The case of Maria VanderPutten and Seydaco Packing Corp. is the first of its kind in Ontario looking at how employers must deal with issues related to transgendered employees. These include harassment by other workers and facilities where they can change discreetly as their gender changes from one sex to the other. 

The company has not appealed the decision. 

VanderPutten began working for Seydaco as a general labourer in 2003. The company makes boxes for such things as prepared foods, cakes and pies found in grocery stores and indoor plant bulbs, according to its web site. 

VanderPutten was dismissed in 2006 because of conflicts with co-workers. These included episodes where bundles of boxes were thrown in anger, nearly hitting co-workers. VanderPutten was rehired within several months when her supervisor left the company and the owner gave her another chance.  

In 2008, Vanderputten started the sex reassignment process at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. She began arriving at work dressed as a woman before changing into the unisex jumpsuit that all employees wear on the plant floor.

 

According to testimony at a tribunal hearing, once she started dressing as a woman other employees began verbally and physically harassing her. She was asked whether she was a man or a woman, shoved and shunned by other workers.  

A picture of a transvestite with her name on it was posted on a company bulletin board.  

The company also told her to continue using the men’s washroom and changing room.

Court documents reveal that Vanderputten was fired again in May 2010, after a co-worker alleged she threw a wooden skid at him. Vanderputten said at the hearing that she dropped the skid in shock when a co-worker called her a “faggot.”  

Vanderputten filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal claiming that she was fired due to discrimination based on sex. She asked for $25,000 in damages, plus compensation for loss of wages for the two year period between when she was fired and the date of the hearing in May 2012...

So the boss gave this less than stellar employee a second chance and ended up being punished for it? To get some of his moolah back, maybe he should change genders and file a "human rights" complaint, too.