{"id":307254,"date":"2025-07-31T18:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T18:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307254\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T18:39:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T18:39:18","slug":"alberta-worker-fired-for-perceived-conflict-of-interest-despite-not-receiving-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307254\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta worker fired for perceived conflict of interest, despite not receiving anything"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worker sued for wrongful dismissal, denying that he participated in anything unethical, noting that he didn\u2019t actually receive anything from California Closets. He also argued that, even if he did, it didn\u2019t justify termination for cause<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The worker also sought payment for unpaid commissions plus punitive and aggravated damages. According to the terms of his employment agreement, commissions were earned and staggered over three stages \u2013 50 per cent at \u201cfirm sale,\u201d 25 per cent at \u201cstaking,\u201d and 25 per cent at closing. The worker argued that he was entitled to commissions for sales he began before his termination but were completed after.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The California Closets representative claimed that he never offered any incentive to the worker, saying that they only discussed an incentive program for condominiums, which the worker didn\u2019t sell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court preferred the California Closets owner\u2019s statement to Brookfield over the representative\u2019s claim that no incentives were discussed, noting that it wasn\u2019t credible that incentives for condominiums only were discussed and it came up organically. This evidence indicated that the worker was offered an incentive by California Closets, and he acted on this offer by initiating change orders for customers to use California Closets\u2019 products, the court said. In addition, the worker didn\u2019t mention to Brookfield that he had any discussions about incentive programs, said the court, noting the \u201crelative proximity\u201d of the worker\u2019s meeting with the California Closets representative and the change order requests for the company\u2019s products.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Breach of policy<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if the worker didn\u2019t receive any benefits prior to his dismissal, his actions created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest<\/a> of which he didn\u2019t advise management, in breach of Brookfield\u2019s code of conduct and anti-bribery policy, said the court, adding that the worker instead became \u201ca proponent for California Closets thereby increasing the appearance of a conflict of interest.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The worker sued for wrongful dismissal, denying that he participated in anything unethical, noting that he didn\u2019t actually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[112724,51,33128,897,112723,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-307254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-breach-of-policy","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-conflict-of-interest","11":"tag-jobs","12":"tag-termination-for-cause","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114949309283149727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}