It was too cold to make ice cream.
With the polar vortex swirling and giving much of Ontario a chill this weekend, Markdale-based Chapman’s Ice Cream has given its workers the option of staying home.
In posts on Facebook and LinkedIn, the family-owned company told employees shifts were cancelled Thursday evening and all day Friday.
“Due to the extreme weather, all afternoon and night shifts are cancelled for January 23. This includes the distribution centre. Please share with your colleagues,” Chapman’s wrote on LinkedIn. The company earlier posted a similar message on Facebook, but added that workers shouldn’t come in if they were concerned about driving conditions.
“If you are not comfortable driving to work in the morning, please stay home. Please share,” the post said.
While companies are legally obligated to keep workers safe, the requirement is a little fuzzier when it comes to getting to work, says David J. Doorey, an professor of work law at York University.
“Usually that rule is applied to the actual workplace and not the commute to it, but some jobs involve driving for example,” Doorey noted. “Is it a violation of the duty to protect the worker to insist that someone drive in dangerous wintery conditions? Maybe.”
For an injury on the job, workers can’t sue, and must file a workers’ compensation claim. But an employer could potentially be sued for an injury that happens during travel to and from the job, Doorey said.
“The time when a worker is travelling to and from work is not usually considered to be ‘in the course of work.’ This creates the possibility of a lawsuit against an employer that orders an employee to come to work when it is very dangerous to do so,” said Doorey.
The head of a workers’ rights organization praised Chapman’s for its decision, but also questioned whether the company would pay its employees for the cancelled shifts.
Chapman’s didn’t return emails seeking comment, and it was unclear from the company’s posts whether workers would get paid for the cancelled shifts.
“It’s a humane thing to do as an employer, if there’s a really awful storm coming,” said Deena Ladd, executive director of the Workers’ Action Centre. “The issue is whether people will get paid. If you need your paycheque, you need to go in.”
Ladd added that workers need better legislative protection in case they decide not to come in for a shift for health or safety reasons.
“Instead of a hope and a prayer you’ve got a decent employer, we need to have a baseline policy such as personal days off,” Ladd said.
Being a good employer and good corporate citizen has long been a key part of the independent company’s brand, said marketing guru David Kincaid.
“It’s bang on brand. When I talk about a brand, I’m not just talking about its marketing. I’m talking about how it operates. Most of that is under the water line,” said Kincaid, founder of Level5 Strategy and an adjunct marketing professor at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business.
Still, he questioned the company’s decision to post the shift cancellations on social media.
“It’s a small company, they have all their employee’s contact information,” said Kincaid, who suggested it wasn’t strictly a marketing nor an employee safety move.
“It might be a bit of column A, a bit of column B,” said Kincaid. “If it’s a PR stunt, they’re smart enough to know it’s going to backfire.”
Letting the world find out a bit more organically would have been a better approach, Kincaid said.
“If I were their marketing person, I’d try to keep in mind that these are the types of decisions that are best spread by word-of-mouth,” said Kincaid. “If the employees are proud of these things, let an employee — not the company — tell the world.”
