Trucking

“When we sit down with a Trucker trying to arrange or renew insurance, the first thing we have to do is ask for the LOE…you might be tempted toask, ‘Do they even exist?’” asked Scott Cober of BFL Canada. His rhetorical question got a big laugh from the room, but Derrick MacDonald of Driver Verified responded by confirming the challenge drivers face getting the letters, and also by proposing a solution.

“Let’s face it, if your employer fired you on Friday, asking him to provide you with an LOE on Monday is a non-starter,” MacDonald pointed out. “You are the lowest priority on his list.”

In these two awards, the Arbitrators applied a relatively low threshold for establishing that objections to taking a COVID-19 vaccine were covered by religion and creed protections. However, as noted above, these findings are only the first part of the analysis. Employers are only required to accommodate religious beliefs if doing so does not constitute undue hardship, and a key factor which may create undue hardship is health and safety risk. COVID-19 vaccine requirements are measures to increase workplace health and safety. These two awards did not have to consider how accommodating these religious beliefs could be reconciled with health and safety concerns, and that will likely be the key issue for employers who are faced with these claims in their own workplaces.