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In a recent case, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a substantial award of moral damages to an employee subjected to long-term sexual harassment, after she made a formal complaint to her manager. Unfortunately, such behavior from employers continues to persist despite the present anti-discrimination laws, and hopefully cases like these set a trend of strong enforcement, which would serve as a more effective deterrent to employers. In this case, the employee worked for the employer for almost a decade, and was the only woman in the workplace at the time she was fired. The employee was subjected to continuous…

As a new parent, you are entitled to take unpaid time off work for up to 37 weeks to take care of your newborn child. This right applies to both parents, and the employer is legally required to provide you with your old job at the end of the leave. The employer is also not permitted to retaliate, or punish you in any way, for taking the time off to spend with your family. Unfortunately employers often consciously violate these rights and returning employees frequently find that either they no longer have a job, or that the job responsibilities or…

As an employee, by law, you are entitled to reasonable notice of termination of your employment. Employers however, often attempt to limit your legal entitlements by explicitly defining your rights upon termination in the employment contract. In the recent case of Singh v Qualified Metal Fabricators Ltd. an Ontario Court adopted an employee-friendly interpretation of these termination provisions, resolving the potential ambiguities in favour of the employee. While employers are allowed to contractually limit employees’ common-law reasonable notice requirements, they are required to do so with complete precision. In this case, an employee was terminated after 4 years of employment…

The seniority system used by an employer is a very important consideration for the employees, as it affects the employees’ pay, and often benefits and other aspects of the employer-employee relationship. In a recent case , the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that a casual employee’s inability to accrue seniority while on maternity leave was not discrimination on the basis of sex. As such the Tribunal allowed employers to exclude the time spent on maternity leave for purposes of calculating seniority. In this case the employee was a casual education assistant for the employer. As a casual employee, she…

While we often help employees who did not receive reasonable notice of termination from their employer, it is often forgotten that employees also owe a similar duty to provide notice to the employer before resigning. This common law duty was the subject of the recent case of Consbec Inc. v Walker. In this case, the BC Court of Appeal reaffirmed the existence of the duty owed by employees to the employer. In this case a 5-year manager of a company decided to suddenly quit without giving notice to the employer. The employee was the only person in charge of running…

Generally employees must be provided with the minimum entitlements to notice, benefits and severance in compliance with the Employment Standards Act (ESA) upon termination without cause. If an employee is provided with less than what is required under this legislation due to their employment contract falling below those minimums, or failing to address those requirements altogether (e.g. failing to address the right to benefits continuation), the court will find those employment provisions void, and the employee will be awarded the right to common law pay in lieu of notice, which generally exceeds the legislative minimums. In the recent decision of…

As some of the recent cases we talked about on this blog illustrate (link to article about De Anna Granes), in addition to facing long hours, and strenuous working conditions, workers in the service industry can also often face harassing behaviour from their superiors. While some workers are able to obtain damages for injuries to their dignity and self-respect, many more continue to struggle with harassment due to fear of losing their jobs, or perhaps insufficient knowledge about their rights as employees. We find that often employees themselves believe that such behaviour is the norm and that dealing with it…

The recent decision of Keenan v. Canac Kitchens (Keenan), confirms that dependant contractors are entitled to reasonable notice of employment termination. The required notice period can extend to years, and such as in this case, amount to 26 months. In Keenan, two long-term contractors of a kitchen cabinet manufacturing firm, with a total of over 50 years of experience with the company, were dismissed without notice. The pair were first hired as employees, but were later told that they would be classified as contractors, and signed new agreements for this purpose. They were required to use their own cars as…

According to a recent decision by an Ontario labour arbitrator, employers may now be liable for not protecting their employees from harassment on the employer’s social media accounts. In this decision, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) workers’ union filed a grievance regarding the TTC’s social media account created to communicate with the general public, alleging that the account served as a platform to harass TTC employees. The arbitrator granted the union’s grievance, despite the employer’s argument that, in this time of readily-available internet access, it is impossible for an employer to effectively filter all harassing social media posts. The arbitrator…

In the recent Alberta case of Turner v Atco Frontec Corp the court held that an employee’s hot temper culminating in inappropriate and aggressive behavior towards another employee might provide adequate just cause for dismissal. The deterioration of the relationship between the employee and the rest of the team was found to be, in and of itself, an adequate ground of dismissal, independent of any finding of harassment towards other employees. In this case, Mr. Turner alleged wrongful dismissal after he was terminated due to coming into conflict with another member of the employer’s team. The employee had a history…

The Ontario Human Rights Code protects one from discrimination due to both religious and creed-based beliefs. Unfortunately, the Code does not define “creed” and, while courts have interpreted “creed” in a rather broad manner (link to blog about veganism as creed) to also include sincerely-held non-religious beliefs, this remains an uncertain area of law. The recent case of Barker v. St. Elizabeth Health Care provides much needed guidance on the question of what is legitimate creed-based belief as opposed to mere personal preference. In this case, a Rastafarian man claimed that his home healthcare provider discriminated against him by continuing to send…