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In Katz et al. v. Clarke, the Ontario Divisional Court considered the issue of whether an employee’s desire to work prevents the employer from terminating them. Employers find themselves in a dilemma when their employee expresses a desire to return to work from disability leave while their doctor recommends otherwise. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the decision and confirmed a rule that assists employers in determining whether they can terminate a disabled employee. In Katz et al. v. Clarke, the employee had been on disability leave since 2008. The employee went on short-term leave which transformed into long-term leave….

Employers across Canada are well-versed in their duty to accommodate under human rights legislation. Outsourcing disability management to outside experts is one strategy employers are using to separate such duties from their main work functions, thereby increasing concentration on core business and maintaining confidentiality in the workplace. In Knight v. Surrey Place Centre, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal considered employer human rights obligations and issues surrounding delegation of the duty to accommodate. The Tribunal held that while it is acceptable for employers to outsource disability management, such an arrangement does not change employers’ obligations to disabled employees: “If the employer…

As of January 1, 2018, claims for work-related chronic mental stress have been recognized in workplace compensation cases in Ontario. However, the vast majority of these chronic mental stress claims have been unsuccessful given the difficult criteria required to prove these claims. A worker is generally entitled to benefits for chronic mental stress “if an appropriately diagnosed mental stress injury is caused by a substantial work-related stressor.” In addition, the WSIB decision-maker must be able to identify what has happened to cause chronic mental stress, including through the gathering of information from co-workers and supervisory staff. This process represents a…

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…