Le traitement du harcèlement discriminatoire et du harcèlement psychologique en milieu de travail : continuité ou rupture?
The Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms prohibits harassment on the basis of a discriminatory ground. Since June 2004, the Act respecting Labour Standards (ARLS) prohibits harassment in the workplace. By this provision, the legislature intended to increase the availability of recourse for employees. Now, the employee who is victim of discriminatory harassment in the workplace has access to both remedies. Currently, the victims rely almost exclusively on the action based on the ARLS. Indeed, the Human Rights Tribunal (HRT) has only pronounced one decision on the matter after 2004. This new remedy has also modified the legal treatment of discriminatory harassment in the workplace.   Our study focuses on the impact of a Labour Act on the protection of employees as well as on the concept of constitutionalized Labour Law. We examine the continuance of discriminatory harassment in the non-unionized workplace from 1990 to 2010.  Our study is based on various qualitative methods: comparison of existing remedies; review of the doctrine and comparative study of seventy (70) law cases of the HRT and the Commission des relations du travail (CRT). Our results show that failures exist in the treatment of complaints of discriminatory harassment in non-unionized workplace since the provisions enforcement of the ARLS. Except from the court seized, discontinuities are identified in the constitutive elements of the harassment and the sources of law. This research provides an essential assessment to understand the efficiency of the recent recourses available for employees who are victim of discriminatory harassment in the workplace.
travail Commission des relations du travail Discriminatory harassment Psychological harassment Rights Workplace Human Rights Tribunal