A southwestern Ontario woman is challenging her employer at a human rights tribunal hearing after she says her pay was docked because of washroom breaks she needs for her disability.

Laurie Bates filed the complaint against Presstran Industries, a St. Thomas-based subsidiary of auto parts manufacturer Magna International, claiming her supervisors embarrassed her and docked her wages because she has irritable bowel syndrome.

“I just felt as if I was being made a mockery of,” Bates told the Star in an interview.

Bates, 58, claims the company installed a timer to record how long she left her work station for a washroom break. She also had to activate a device that showed everyone on the assembly line her station number and the words “on break.”

Reached by email, Magna International spokesperson Scott Worden declined to comment on the case.

But in a response filed to the tribunal, Presstran said it “takes a proactive approach to ensuring that its employees are not harassed or discriminated against on the basis of disability or any ground.”

Presstran claims Bates’s washroom breaks caused her to miss production targets, which “has resulted (in) increased costs to the company.”

It also says paying Bates for time spent in the washroom outside of her scheduled breaks “would constitute undue hardship” and would “confer a benefit on the applicant that would not be available to other Presstran employees.”

The complaint is scheduled to be heard at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in January.

In more than two decades at Presstran, Bates had worked in the cafeteria, in the office and as a forklift driver before she moved to the factory floor in August 2014. She said she did not disclose her condition to the company until June 2015 because it had never been an issue.

Bates said she met with her supervisor and a human resources representative in December 2015. “They said they understand that I need accommodation, that I requested accommodation, and that they would be happy to accommodate me,” she said.

Instead, she said she was told a timer would be installed at her work station, and that she would be required to activate it when she went to the washroom. The data it collected would go to payroll, which would dock her wages for any time longer than a “grace period” of five minutes.

She was told she also had to activate an “andon,” a large screen that notifies employees on the assembly line that there is an issue at a particular station.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Bates said. “They had paperwork for me to sign, and I signed it, I didn’t even know what to say . . . After I did that, I thought, this isn’t right, something is very wrong.”

In its response, Presstran called the grace period a “goodwill gesture,” and said the andon “is required to be activated by all production employees, not just (Bates), whenever production is interrupted . . . ”

Bates said she was the only employee required to activate the andon for washroom breaks.

She tracked her washroom breaks on her own, and said they amounted to about 30 minutes per week, which she said is in line with other employees.

“I’m not out of the ordinary from anyone else,” she said. “What about the smokers, and people in other departments who can use the washroom all day long?”

She says her experience was “humiliating and embarrassing,” and that her co-workers would tease her about the timer. “They would say ‘I need to use the washroom, would you mind hitting my timer?’ ” she said.

“I would smile . . . but inside I was hurting.”

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Over 57 weeks, Bates said her pay was docked $600 for washroom breaks before she took a leave of absence in May.

“Every day I was going in to work afraid to make a mistake, afraid to not be able to comply with their demands,” she said. “I felt as though they were looking for a reason to fire me.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated from a previous version to correct that the andon is a large screen that notifies employees on the assembly line, not plant-wide.