A number of employees from a GTA drywall company have been fired after video has emerged which appears to show construction workers at a job site partying, at times drinking vodka.
The six graphic and disturbing videos obtained by Global News appear to show a woman dancing inside a building under construction with about half a dozen men dancing and touching the woman. One video appears to show a construction worker drinking out of a magnum of Grey Goose.
One of the workers is wearing a shirt that says, “Nelmar Drywall Company Ltd.” None of the workers nor the woman are wearing masks.
A statement from Mattamy Homes sent to Global News said that the company, “was made aware of an extremely inappropriate and entirely unacceptable incident that took place on Friday, April 9 at a home under construction on one of our job sites, involving an employee and subcontractors of one of our trade partners, Nelmar Drywall.”
Mattamy said the high standards expected by their trade partners were not met, and the individuals in question behaved in a grossly inappropriate and reckless fashion. The statement said that “Nelmar has terminated their relationship with everyone involved.”
Mattamy also denied having any prior knowledge of the event and said none of its employees were present, but said, “We nonetheless regret that this incident took place at one of our sites. We will be reinforcing with all our trade partners our zero-tolerance policies and clear expectations regarding workplace code of conduct as well as our strict COVID-19 protocols.”
Mattamy Homes confirmed to Global News the incident took place at a job site in Milton.
Emilio Bisceglia, a lawyer for Nelmar Drywall told Global News in a letter sent Thursday night that “it was recently brought to the attention of Nelmar that a video and various images are being circulated depicting certain inappropriate and completely unacceptable conduct that took place last week at a job site.”
Bisceglia wrote that Nelmar wholeheartedly denounces the conduct displayed on the subject video/images and that prior to their circulation, Nelmar was completely unaware of the incident. After the incident was brought to the company’s attention, Nelmar said it took immediate steps to investigate the matter to determine the identity of all those individuals involved and has terminated the employment of all persons involved in the incident depicted in the subject video/images.
There were reports that Mattamy ended its contract with Nelmar, however, the company confirmed the contract was not terminated but all of the individuals involved were terminated.
Global News learned the Ministry of Labour is now investigating what happened.
“ The Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development is aware of these disturbing images. That type of behavior is completely unacceptable and should never happen in the workplace. Our Ministry is currently looking into this matter,” a statement from spokesperson Ryan Whealy.
The incident comes to light on the same day the province of Ontario is expected to announce it may be ordering a shutdown of certain construction-related activities amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.