| Issue: |
Sub-Issue 1: |
Sub-Issue 2: |
Sub-Issue 3: |
| voluntarily leaving employment |
just cause |
other employment |
|
Summary:
The claimant had quit his job at a call centre to pursue employment in his field, having a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering. He also argued that the job had been stressful due to customers who degraded him because of his accent and racial origin, that he had to travel to Pakistan for family reasons and that he had a hearing problem in one ear that made his work using a telephone headset difficult. The Court said that the Umpire had applied the wrong test - reasonableness may be "good cause" but it is not "just cause". The current scheme does not allow a claimant to leave their job with the sole view of improving their situation in the market place. While the claimant was successful in finding an engineering job shortly after leaving, it cannot be said that he knew what future employment he would have or the identify of his future employer and as such just cause on the basis provided in subparagraph 29(c)(vi) of the EI Act has not been established. None of the other reasons was accepted by the BOR or the Umpire as the basis for the claimant's decision to leave - the Court was not persuaded that there was any reason to interfere with their findings on that point.
