Jonathan Aschenbrener’s life derailed after he lost his job with the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
Ever since his dismissal, he has been working hard to get the justice he feels he deserves.
Yet from this negative situation came a revelation that he says has changed his life for the better.
Aschenbrener had been working under the SHA as an environmental services supervisor at the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre since 2013.
Then, during the pandemic, that all came to a crashing halt.
“I was clearly not OK mentally,” says Aschenbrener, sitting on a couch next to his wife in their Regina home. “My mental health started to decline. I became depressed and isolated.”
In the fall of 2020, Aschenbrener started having trouble communicating at work.
In meetings, conversations would elude him and many times he couldn’t understand what people were telling him.
At the time, Aschenbrener was aware he had a congenital hearing disability.
He shares the diagnosis with his father and younger brother.
However, in those moments of confusion at work, he wasn’t able to realize his hearing was the main cause of his struggles.
Eventually, he got a doctor’s note and along with his union rep, a list of suggested workplace accommodations was sent to the SHA.
Aschenbrener says when that request was unsuccessful, his mental health continued to decline and his doctor ordered that he take a medical leave from work.
Three months later, in February 2021, the SHA called a meeting to discuss Aschenbrener’s future employment.
The SHA said the meeting must be attended in person.
During past meetings that he had had while on medical leave, Aschenbrener says he was able to attend virtually.
It was also the middle of the pandemic, and since Aschenbrener was on leave, he says didn’t qualify for the early COVID-19 vaccinations that were being set aside for front-line health-care workers.
“I made a work refusal, stating it was unsafe for me and my mental health to attend that meeting and they terminated my employment,” Aschenbrener says.
Aschenbrener says he was told the reason for his dismissal was that he missed the meeting.
The SHA responded to our request about Aschenbrener’s firing.
“The Saskatchewan Health Authority confirms Mr. Aschenbrener is a former employee. Due to privacy requirements and prohibitions, we cannot provide any additional details,” the authority says.
Aschenbrener’s work refusal claim ended up going before an adjudicator.
The adjudicator ruled in favour of the SHA, stating, “Mr. Aschenbrener failed to prove that his attendance at SHA was unusually dangerous to his health or safety.”
Yet from all this hardship arose a silver lining for Aschenbrener — and it is an audible one.
During that work refusal hearing, a very beneficial discovery was made by Aschenbrener’s wife Sara Salazar.
“I could see the lawyer started to get annoyed. Fifteen minutes later, I started freaking out because I realized, he can’t hear them, he can’t properly understand,” Salazar recalls.
“This is where I learned I no longer had the ability to read lips,” Aschenbrener explains. “It wasn’t enough for me to be able to accommodate myself.”
Aschenbrener says it turned out that his hearing disability was much worse than previously known and the sole reason for his past work troubles.
“Unfortunately, it’s kind of complicated and I honestly think there are a lot of people out there with hearing disabilities that aren’t even aware they have a hearing disability,” Aschenbrener says.
“Now that he has his hearing aids, which he got in April, everything has improved. His hearing was affecting so much that we didn’t even know,” Salazar says.
Aschenbrener has since found work in the same industry with a private contractor.
While he is now appealing the adjudicator’s ruling on his work refusal, Aschenbrener and his wife say that because of the whole ordeal, his future sounds a whole lot better.
“So yes, this horrible thing occurred which I never want to see happen again, but from that horrible thing he got his hearing aids,” Salazar says.
“It gets better every day,” Aschenbrener says. “My mental health is way better than it was. It shows me that a lot of this was solely my hearing.”
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