Employment Law

Introduction The Working for Workers Act Four, 2024, has been pitched as bringing significant changes to Ontario’s employment laws, aiming to curb employer abuses and bolster protections for workers. Schedule 2 allegedly introduces crucial updates to the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) that target what the government has identified as loopholes used by employers to circumvent its protections, such as trial period work, deceptive job posting and interview practices, and wage theft via ‘tipping policies.’ These changes have been touted as helping all employees in Ontario, with the specific goal of protecting those in precarious or service industry jobs, where…

You’ve just been fired and handed an offer that is an insult. The employer then rubs the salt into the wound by refusing to pay your minimum entitlements at law. You can sue them for common law notice, but that is for the loss of your employment. What about the harm done to you? Many employees feel they will never see their employer held to account and accept the meagre settlement amount. This is a mistake. The Courts look extremely poorly on bad faith conduct by the employer before, during, and after termination, including during a lawsuit. Employers tend to…

As an increasing number of Canadian employees are ordered back to the office from a remote or hybrid model, it is essential for them to know their rights and protections. In recent months, many Canadian employers in both the public and private sectors have implemented return-to-office mandates, requiring workers who transitioned to remote or hybrid work during the COVID-19 pandemic to work in person again. Can the Employer Force Me to Return to the Office? The answer is, it depends, and it would be best to discuss your situation with a lawyer. In example, a company can’t require a 65-year-old worker from…

So, you’ve been terminated from your job. You might be focusing on challenging your employer for more money, and rightly so. They caused this by firing you! Your job search is probably the last thing you would think about. However, after you have been terminated, one of the first things a lawyer will tell you is that you are under an obligation to mitigate the losses from the termination. What does mitigating your losses mean? In short, you cannot get money from your former employer if you made the problem worse. For example, if your apartment catches fire, you are…

Simple answer: Yes. “My work used to be fine, but then I got a new manager…” is a situation that we as employment lawyers encounter so often that it is practically a trope. An employee may have worked for years or even decades in the same role without issue, only to have the company assign a new manager who quickly destroys the existing relationship. It may be because the manager is seeking to ‘prove themselves’ by having some metric increase, is attempting to assert petty dominance, or simply because the new manager should not be managing people at all. Whatever…

The main concern for a recently terminated employee is often how much they are entitled to. As with most things, people turn to the internet, look at the top search results (or a few), and form a basic idea about their entitlements. Online tools such as Severance Pay Calculators can be useful as a starting point, but as they all prominently state in one way or another, “This is not legal advice. Speak to a lawyer.” Most terminated employees understand this and then contact an employment law firm for a (often free) consultation for legal advice. The main reason for…

“But why?” is often the most common question employees ask about their termination. Years of dedicated service and going above and beyond seem meaningless when they can be terminated anytime and without a reason. There is often a sense of betrayal, with the employee racking their brains about why they got terminated and how they will let those close to them know. The difficult truth is that employers owe nothing to employees beyond obeying the law, treating them fairly, and providing their legal rights and entitlements. In most cases, an employer can terminate a non-unionized employee without cause, at any…

Any injury on the job can be devastating, be it a slip and fall or a lost finger. For many employees, the pain is aggravated by the actions of their employers, who often fail to file the correct paperwork with WSIB, delaying the compensation or illegally punishing the injured employee for daring to get hurt by disciplining or terminating them for “unrelated reasons.” The law takes a very dim view of both of these actions, operating on the assumption that any discipline taken after a health and safety complaint is an illegal reprisal. An employer is required to show that…

“It depends” is a phrase that can be both frustrating and confusing. When seeking an answer, few things can be as irritating as being told, “It depends.” With some employers intentionally using the confusion over the difference between an employee and an independent contractor to strip workers of statutory protections and increase their profits, this is an ongoing issue. Many workers are unaware that there is a third category, dependent contractors. This third category is often difficult to determine. It relies on assessing all the factors in the employment relationship. For better or worse, some clarity has been added by…

Yes, and probably more than you think. For many employees, the first time they read their employment contract is when they are hired, and the second is when they are fired. It can be years or even decades between signing a document and parts of it becoming relevant, which can be daunting for many employees who need help with their rights. Adding to this is that Employment Law is usually rapidly changing, and something that may have been true a few years ago is now completely the opposite. This is why getting legal advice before signing anything upon termination is…

One aspect of litigation that often causes equal parts apprehension and confusion, especially for employees with little experience with the Court system, is cost awards, colloquially known as “costs.” While there have been many attempts to clarify what costs are to help those entering litigation better understand the risks, the discretionary nature means that some uncertainty is built in. Employees seeking to bring a wrongful dismissal suit are often understandably frightened by the mere existence of costs. Indeed, for an employee who made under $60,000 per year, the mere thought of having to pay even a portion of the actual…