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Are You Being Harassed at Work and Not Sure What to Do?
Monthly Archives

June 2016

Are You Being Harassed at Work and Not Sure What to Do?

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Harassment in the workplace can take on various characteristics. It could in the form of a derogatory comment made in your presence, but not directly to you. It might be an off-colour joke, or a change in workplace policies, you feel are directed specifically towards you and violates one or more of your legally protected characteristics, including, but not limited to race, disability, sexual orientation, age, or sex. The first thing you need to remember is you have rights and freedoms, whether you are a Canadian citizen or are employed through a work-visa programme. Unfortunately, the balance of power between…

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Court rules on Performance Improvement Plans

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Employers use performance improvement plans in order to help improve the work of underperforming or struggling employees. Generally, they are intended to allow the employer to determine the reason for the employee’s underperformance, address failures, and make sure that the employee has been provided with the proper tools, training and resources necessary to succeed in his or her position. Poor performance during the plan period may, moreover, constitute cause for termination. However, in order to do so, the plan must be fair, and managed and implemented carefully, the Ontario Superior Court ruled in the recent case of Brake v. PJ-M2R Restaurant…

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Confidentiality and non-solicitation clauses not essential elements of employment contracts for purposes of tacit renewal, Court says

By Uncategorized

If your fixed-term employment contract contains a renewal clause and you continue working past the contract’s expiration, the contract’s essential conditions will likely be held to be renewed for an indeterminate term. In a first-time recent decision, the Superior Court of Quebec however, declared that confidentiality and non-solicitation clauses are not essential conditions, and so do not automatically become renewed when an employee continues to work beyond the contract’s expiration date. In Traffic Tech Inc. v. Kennell, the employee was first hired pursuant to a three-year fixed-term employment contract with a renewal clause requiring the employer to provide the employee…

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Employers may be required to accommodate your sudden child-caring responsibilities

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In the recent case of Miraka v. A.C.D. Wholesale Meats Ltd. the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) established that employers may have a duty to accommodate their employee’s last-minute childcare needs and obligations, even if given no advance notice, despite the negative impact on the employer’s operations. Further, employees may not be required to seek alternate solutions for their childcare needs in order for this duty to be triggered. As such, this decision demonstrates the HRTO’s recognition of the importance of child-caring obligations and providing for a family-friendly workplace. In this case, an employee was terminated because he missed 3 consecutive…

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Supreme Court of Canada refuses leave to appeal case on the duty to accommodate mother’s breastfeeding schedule

By Uncategorized

Childcare-related familial obligations might trigger the duty to accommodate an employee under current Ontario Human Rights Legislation. However, absent a medical condition that requires breastfeeding, the duty to accommodate an employee’s breastfeeding schedule will not normally be required, a recent court case says. In Flatt v. Treasury Board (Department of Industry), an employee of Industry Canada alleged discrimination based on sex and family status after her employer refused to allow her to work full-time from home, in order to breastfeed her child. [2] The employer had a work-from-home policy that allowed the employees to work from home part of the time, but was not…

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