Mississauga transportation department mistakes itself for fraternity

In what reads like an HR professional’s surreal nightmare, a manager at the city of Mississauga’s transportation department still has his job after encouraging hazing practices at work. Many images of the abuse were caught on a cellphone camera.

From the CBC:

Workers in the department allege they saw employees beaten, humiliated and physically punished in various ways for years and that the mistreatment was sanctioned and encouraged by the department supervisor, Domenic Galamini.

According to the Toronto Star, the city officials caught wind of the abuses last November, but a Ministry of Labour investigation wasn’t called for five months. The investigator found that, by then, the situation had been taken care of—which, in this case, meant allowing Galamini to keep his job, presumably because he’s such a great supervisor.

We know that during tough economic times, people will do anything to keep their job, but surely there is a point where employees ask themselves if they might be better off being metaphorically beaten by the labour market than literally beaten by co-workers. We would have thought that such a point would roughly be when one is being duct-taped to a colleague or when one’s genitals are being regularly bruised at office gatherings. This is the city of Mississauga, after all, not a fraternity. It won’t make anyone popular.

• Wall Street Journal
• Mississauga knew of abuse claimes months before ministry [Toronto Star]