The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has ruled in favor of a long-serving kitchen employee who alleged that Hilton Vancouver Metrotown discriminated against him by failing to accommodate his physical disability1. In a decision issued on September 11, 2025, Tribunal Member Theressa Etmanski found that the hotel management focused too narrowly on returning the employee to his specific pre-injury role rather than exploring other available work he could perform. The Tribunal ordered the hotel to pay the complainant over $48,000 in lost wages and compensation for injury to dignity, feelings, and self-respect.
Mawunyo Komla Honoré Gbedze, a refugee from West Africa who began working at the Hilton in 2001, served as a Second Cook for over seventeen years. His employment record was largely uneventful until the night of November 28, 2018. While working a busy shift in the hotel’s commercial kitchen, Gbedze bent over to scoop ice and experienced sudden, severe pain in his right knee. Witnesses described seeing him on the floor in significant distress, unable to put weight on his leg. A coworker with massage therapy training provided first aid, and a manager sent him home via taxi.
Following the incident, Gbedze underwent a long and difficult recovery period involving surgery and complications that extended his absence from work for nearly a year. By October 2019, his Employment Insurance and short-term disability benefits had been exhausted, placing him under significant financial strain. Despite continuing to experience pain and mobility issues, Gbedze contacted the hotel in November 2019 to initiate discussions about returning to work. This initiated a series of meetings and communications that ultimately led to the human rights complaint.
On November 6, 2019, Gbedze met with the hotel’s then-Human Rights Director, Erin Malcolm, and Executive Chef David Ferguson. The accounts of this meeting differed significantly between the parties during the hearing. Gbedze testified that he arrived using a cane and asked if he could return in a modified capacity, suggesting he could sit on a stool to peel potatoes or perform other tasks the kitchen needed. According to Gbedze, management informed him that he needed to be “100% fit” to return to his duties.
While the hotel’s witnesses denied using the specific phrase “100%,” the Tribunal accepted Gbedze’s version of events based on the totality of the evidence. The Tribunal noted that contemporaneous notes from WorkSafeBC indicated the General Manager had stated the hotel needed Gbedze to be “100% to do the line cook job.” Furthermore, the documentation provided to Gbedze after the meeting supported his claim that the hotel was not offering modified duties.
Following the meeting, Malcolm sent a letter to Gbedze’s doctor inquiring about a Gradual Return to Work plan. However, the letter explicitly stated that the program was based on modified hours and rest days rather than modified duties. It further requested the doctor to confirm when Gbedze could return to his role as a Second Cook. When questioned about this limitation during the hearing, Malcolm suggested the exclusion of modified duties might have been a typo, an explanation the Tribunal rejected as not credible given the context of the letter.
The situation remained unresolved into early 2020. In late November 2019, Gbedze’s doctor provided a note stating that while his severe knee issues prevented him from returning to work as a chef, he was a candidate for long-term disability. The hotel referred Gbedze to his union regarding benefits but did not engage in further dialogue about accommodation. In January 2020, Gbedze’s doctor provided another update, noting that while the knee was slowly improving, Gbedze remained unable to work in his former occupation as a chef.
Despite the medical restrictions regarding the chef role, Gbedze emailed the Executive Chef and HR Director on January 22, 2020, stating he was getting better and was ready to return. The Tribunal found that by this time, Gbedze was desperate to return to work due to his financial situation. In response, the hotel sent the same letter to his doctor as they had sent in November, again asking when he could commence a gradual return to the Second Cook position.
The Tribunal found that Hilton’s approach was fundamentally flawed because it focused singularly on Gbedze’s ability to perform the specific duties of a Second Cook. Under human rights law, an employer has a duty to accommodate an employee with a disability to the point of undue hardship. This includes actively investigating whether the employee can perform other duties or be reassigned to a different position within the organization.
Tribunal Member Etmanski noted that Hilton is a full-service hotel with many departments outside the kitchen. When the hotel received medical evidence that Gbedze could not work as a chef, they had an obligation to inquire about what other work he could perform. Instead, they simply assumed he could not work in any capacity. The decision highlighted that the hotel failed to ask the doctor relevant questions about Gbedze’s functional limitations or abilities that would have allowed them to assess him for other roles, such as administrative work or front desk duties.
The hotel argued during the hearing that Gbedze frustrated the accommodation process by failing to provide the necessary medical information. They contended that he essentially resigned in January 2020 when he stopped responding to their requests. The Tribunal dismissed this argument, ruling that the hotel’s requests for information were unreasonable because they kept asking about a job the medical evidence already showed he could not do. The burden was on the employer to propose reasonable accommodation and seek relevant medical information, which they failed to do.
Gbedze eventually sought employment elsewhere, working briefly at another hotel and later at a care facility, though his employment was interrupted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a subsequent union strike at the Hilton. These external factors complicated the calculation of damages. Gbedze sought over three million dollars in total compensation, a figure the Tribunal noted was far beyond legal norms and likely the result of him representing himself without legal counsel.
In calculating the award for lost wages, the Tribunal determined that Gbedze was capable of working in alternative roles as of mid-January 2020. The decision accounted for the periods where the hotel was closed due to the pandemic and the strike, noting that it was speculative to assume he would have maintained continuous employment during those global disruptions. After applying contingencies for these uncertainties and deducting income Gbedze earned from other short-term jobs, the Tribunal awarded him $16,617.91 in lost wages.
The Tribunal also awarded a significant sum for injury to dignity, feelings, and self-respect. Gbedze testified about the profound impact the discrimination had on his life. He described experiencing psychological distress, humiliation, and suicidal thoughts. The loss of income meant he could not support his family, including his young son, and he was unable to send money to a dying relative in Africa, a failure that caused him deep emotional pain. He was forced to rely on the financial charity of friends to survive.
Recognizing Gbedze’s vulnerability as a refugee with a permanent disability who had worked for the respondent for nearly two decades, the Tribunal set the injury to dignity award at $32,000. This amount reflects the serious nature of the discrimination and the employer’s failure to support a long-term employee. The Tribunal noted that losing one’s employment is often considered the ultimate employment-related consequence in human rights cases.
The Tribunal declined to award damages for the injury itself or for “employer embezzlement,” noting that such claims were outside its jurisdiction or unsupported by evidence. The total monetary award came to $48,617.91, plus interest.
In addition to the financial penalties, the Tribunal issued a declaratory order stating that Hilton Vancouver Metrotown had violated section 13 of the Human Rights Code. The hotel was ordered to cease the contravention and refrain from committing similar discrimination in the future. The Tribunal declined to order mandatory anti-discrimination training, citing a letter from the hotel’s current General Manager sent in June 2024. This letter, which offered to pay for a functional assessment to explore accommodation options, suggested to the Tribunal that the hotel’s understanding of its legal obligations had evolved since the events of 2019.
This decision serves as a reminder to employers in British Columbia that the duty to accommodate extends beyond merely modifying an employee’s existing role. When an employee is medically unable to perform their specific job duties due to a disability, the employer must actively and meaningfully explore alternative work assignments across their organization before concluding that accommodation is impossible. A rigid insistence on a “100% recovery” or a return to pre-injury duties can result in a finding of discrimination and significant financial liability.
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