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At 3pm today. I walked into a meeting with HR, general manager, and personal training regional manager. They questioned me about personal training sessions I completed in our system. The sessions I completed were sessions from clients that had already completed their sessions a few years ago but were still in the system but they had been completed. These sessions were imported from an old system called PFP to our new system Datatrack. I also entered sessions from two members who emailed me saying I can give their sessions away. I did enter these sessions but no one actually trained them, there is no policy stating that I could not use them to my discretion and somebody needed to train them. In the meeting after I finished explaining this they said “this puts a twist in things” and needed to talk to Vice President of personal training and said to wait. When they finally met with me an hour later they said I was going to be on administrative leave until another meeting with them on Monday 12noon. I asked why and they said they needed to speak to their legal department and I asked what specifically are you inquiring about that need legal advice - they said looking towards termination because I fraudulently entered these sessions for my financial gain.

To make matters more complicated I have an email exchange from a few weeks ago that is between myself, regional manager and Vice President about me questioning their budget increases going into 2018. The regional manager called me to tell me the VP was upset with me and that he should talk to me and not her because he knows her too well.

I feel like even though there was no intent on my behalf to financially gain from this even though I have emails saying I can give the sessions away and the old sessions were complete(they also told me they have no way to prove these sessions were completed or paid out to a trainer) they are using this as a way to get me out the door because of personal feelings the VP has towards me and as such using this as way to not pay me any sort of severance because they “have cause” for termination.

Please let me know if you can help or if you can refer me to someone who can

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your question. My name is Jon Pinkus and your question falls directly within my expertise. I would be pleased to discuss this with you more during a consultation.

What it will come down to is whether the employer can prove that you did something dishonest. If they can prove that you entered these sessions fraudulently, then they will likely have just cause for dismissal. However, if there is proof that you did so honestly and in accordance with what you reasonably believed to be company policy, they will owe you severance.

Please contact me at jon.pinkus@stlawyers.ca for assistance.
The Lawyers at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP
Direct Tel (Toll Free): 1-855-821-5900     Email: webquestions@stlawyers.ca     Web: www.stlawyers.ca
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