Sensitivity to Cold No Reason for Injured Employee to Refuse Job

Since his old position was no longer available, an employee returning to work from a back injury was offered a job working a forklift in the cold storage building. He refused citing cold sensitivity in a hand he’d hurt on a previous job. The Human Rights Tribunal dismissed his disability discrimination complaint. The job was comparable to his old one and was offered as soon as he was able to return to work. As for the employee’s claim that he couldn’t work in the cold, he had done so before and the heated gloves his employer provided would have kept his cold-sensitive hands warm enough [Farmer v. Keltic Seafoods, [2013] BCHRT 42 (CanLII), Feb. 7, 2013].