Former commander asks to be backed after quitting over purported gender dispute

A former commander is seeking a Canadian Human Rights Commission to revive her “lifelong dream” to fly for a vital airline — an aspiration she deserted 5 years ago after she was allegedly discriminated opposite by an Air Canada co-worker since she’s a woman.

Jane Clegg fought behind tears and paused several times Monday during her testimony during a tellurian rights judiciary as she described a 2009 occurrence that eventually led her to quit a airline in Apr 2013.

Clegg, who wants a elect to sequence her reinstatement, was operative as a second officer when she pronounced she got into a exhilarated justification with a captain of a moody firm for Fort Lauderdale after she lifted concerns that a craft didn’t have adequate fuel.

“I believed a occurrence was encouraged by gender discrimination,” Clegg told a judiciary as she described being transposed on a moody for refusing to pointer a moody devise over concerns about safety.

When she was after reserved to work on another moody with a same pilot, and lifted concerns about it, she was effectively dangling though compensate underneath what’s famous as a airline’s “bidding around” system.

Air Canada, she said, shielded a masculine pilot.

‘Open season’

“It felt like open deteriorate on womanlike pilots,” pronounced Clegg. “This truly was a commencement of a finish of my career.”

Commission counsel Daniel Poulin told a conference a behest around complement “puts a responsibility on a victim” in cases where initial officers wish to equivocate drifting with another commander indicted of wrongdoing.

Poulin pronounced a allotment was reached Friday with Air Canada over concerns a elect lifted about a system. However, sum of that allotment were not approaching to be suggested until a judiciary releases a preference on Clegg’s case. That could take adult to a year.

Clegg emphasized in her testimony that she believes Air Canada is a good, protected airline.

Judy Cameron, a initial womanlike commander hired by a conduit in 1978, pronounced she saw no signs of a systemic gender disposition during Air Canada in her 37-year career, that finished with her retirement in May 2015.

“It wasn’t perfect, some things could be improved, though we never felt out of place, unwelcome, from a get go,” Cameron pronounced in an interview.

“The guys treated me like their daughter,” pronounced Cameron, adding that she was wavering to pronounce over concerns that her comments competence be seen as adverse a associate womanlike commander who faced opposite work experiences.

But Clegg pronounced hers was not an removed case.

Survey of colleagues

Wondering either she was alone in her complaint, a one-time Canadian Forces VIP squadron commander gathered a consult about gender taste and distributed it to other womanlike pilots.

“I wanted to establish if this was something removed or if this was something that my womanlike commander colleagues had also encountered,” she said.

“Eighty per cent of a womanlike pilots who had reported (back to me) had gifted incidents of harassment.”

Many of a respondents altered their work schedules to equivocate a perpetrators of nuisance and many pronounced they didn’t have certainty that their complaints would be scrupulously addressed, Clegg pronounced — evidence, she argued, that Air Canada needs to urge a gender nuisance policy.

But Clegg never related a issues she was carrying with one of a masculine captains to gender disposition until a airline found out about a scheduling dispute between a dual scarcely 3 years later, a counsel for Air Canada told a tribunal.

“Air Canada never had a possibility to residence a censure underneath a taste policies since no grave — or spontaneous — censure was ever filed,” pronounced Karen Sargeant.

Clegg also wouldn’t co-operate when Air Canada did launch an investigation, Sargeant added.

‘Disproportionate response’

In arguing opposite an sequence of reinstatement, Sargeant pronounced Clegg’s actions in quitting her pursuit were over a top, deliberation a allegations.

“Resignation was a jagged response,” she said.

Of a some-more than 3,500 pilots employed by Air Canada, 210 — reduction than 6 per cent — are women, a commission a airline described as standard of a attention worldwide.

The conference is approaching to final several weeks.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/pilot-jane-clegg-human-rights-commission-hearing-1.4631838?cmp=rss