Terminated Pilot Ruins His Reputation with Grievance
Bob was a senior captain with an airline with 16 years of unblemished service.
He and his crew had a two-day layover at a resort. At a crew dinner, he was sitting next to a female flight attendant and put his hand on her thigh and knee. At one point a piece of chocolate cake fell toward her breast but she caught it in time. Bob said, “If it fell on your boob, I would have ate (sic) it off of it.” She said she could take care of herself.
At a sports bar later that night, he came up to her while she was speaking to other people, put his arm around her shoulder and leaned in with his full weight. He squeezed her shoulder and said, “You’re so tiny and small.” When the crew engaged in a group hug in which the flight attendant was not participating, Bob brought her into the hug by putting his arm around her.
At the end of the evening, they were on a resort tram going back to their rooms and the flight attendant was sitting next to Bob on a bench. Bob lifted her up and pulled her toward him by the buttocks, saying that she needed to be closer to him. She said that he then put his arm across her chest and touched her right breast. She swatted away his arm.
The investigator hired by the airline found all of the above to be true and Bob was fired.
The union grieved Bob’s dismissal. It acknowledged that he had engaged in sexual harassment but given his clean record and remorse, lesser discipline was appropriate like a suspension without pay.
The union’s position with respect to Bob’s remorse was shaky. He told the investigator he touched the flight attendant’s knee because he thought they had sufficient familiarity. He recounted an occasion when he was talking to her when she was sitting on a bar stool and she had put her hand on his shoulder. He also said that he came from a “touchy” family and it was just his way. He didn’t remember the comment about the cake but admitted he might have said that.
He said he asked the flight attendant to give him more space on the bench on the tram. Then the tram driver hit the brakes suddenly and in the course of trying to brace himself brushed against her breast momentarily. He said he was shocked and embarrassed by the contact. In the moment, however, no words of apology came.
Ultimately, he told the investigator that he thought he and the flight attendant had a friendly relationship that included close proximity, including hugs and touching that was non-sexual. When Bob got to the arbitration hearing, he claimed to be a new man. He said he now understood that whether they were on the plane or not, he was always perceived as the captain and in a position of power. He said he had changed his habits around personal interactions.
Bob’s challenge was dealing with the fact that on three different occasions before this infamous layover, he had received sexual harassment training, including online courses that had to be completed page by page.
Like the investigator, the arbitrator believed the flight attendant’s version of events, including what constituted a sexual assault on the resort tram. The arbitrator was not convinced by Bob’s claim of conversion on the road to Damascus. His behaviour toward the flight attendant during that evening was continuous and became more aggressive.
What was unsaid in the arbitrator’s decision was that they likely thought Bob’s 16-year clean record was an illusion. Given his pattern of behaviour on that evening, how many other flight attendants had he harassed who had not come forward?
In the decision, the arbitrator wrote, “I accept the griever regrets his actions. Most employees who have been terminated for engaging in misconduct when there is no dispute that their actions in fact constitute misconduct, usually do.” It went on to note that throughout the arbitration Bob still tried to minimize the degree to which his actions were inappropriate.
Given that Bob’s most recent sexual harassment training had been two weeks before the layover, he had nowhere to hide. He lost his grievance and a well-paid job. Given that the arbitration decision can be found online, he has also lost his reputation. His behaviour would not now be public information if he had gone quietly into the night as he should have.
This article was originally published by The Hamilton Spectator.
