It is time to have this chat. For non-unionized employees, the Employment Standards Act in virtually every province permits temporary lay offs up to 13 weeks in 20 before the length of the lay off deems it a termination. In such cases, the deemed termination occurs at the original lay off. Pay in lieu of statutory notice must be paid. That is, in Ontario, from one week after 3 months of work to 8 weeks after 8 years of continuous employment.

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Effective Tuesday, October 15, Peigi will commence her new role as a Vice-Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. For a lawyer as skilled and experienced at arbitration and tribunal work, this appointment is extremely appropriate.

You might have expected more notice from judges. After all, lots of them are older. They are senior practitioners of their trade. Surely, they could subscribe to calculating reasonable notice for without cause terminations at one month for every year of service. 24 years - 24 months; 30 years - 30 months, 37 years etc. Right? Nope. Wrong.

It remains astonishing what some employers are able to get away with when they have decided an employee is no longer required. Lots of companies try to attract employees with high salaries, but offer only minimum statutory notice of termination and demand restrictive non-competition clauses that would prohibit re-employment in the industry for at least 12 months.

The Ontario Government has just amended the Employment Standards Act again. See Bill 66, “Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, 2019”. Publishers of statute texts will never be able to keep up. The lucky thing for them is that the new changes will help the printers get their work done at a reduced cost. Under the new amendments there should be less overtime paid at time and one half. Through the statutorily facilitated new rules for averaging hours, employers can work employees up to 60 hours a week two of every four weeks provided they reduce the hours in the other two weeks to 24. This would be classic hills and valleys scheduling: one week up, one week down, repeatedly. But, some employees might like such a schedule.

It seems so simple! Once you retain a lawyer, everything you say in his or her presence is protected from scrutiny by others. No one can force either the client or the lawyer to expose the nature of the confidential discussions. The reason for this fundamental premise of law is that every person is entitled to legal advice and in receiving that advice to be forthcoming with their legal advisor. In doing so, they must know that what they reveal is protected. In this way, they may reveal all the facts which allows for the legal advisor to be fully informed.

My colleague Jason Wong recently spent 2 1/2 days in court in behalf of a plaintiff employee who had been wrongfully dismissed. Because the employee was young and capable, he mitigated fully within 2 months of termination. At issue was 8,000 in notice pay, a claim for 17,000 for bad faith and the costs. Even though service was just over one year, since the employee was a team manager, he was claiming at least two months of pay. But no settlement occurred.

The next round of labour negotiations in the municipal fire sector in Ontario has begun.  The agreements run on calendar years.  These activities will be the first under the new labour disputes changes legislated by the Ford government late last year.  Both parties need to decide soon whether or not the new rules will alter the way they wish to approach the table

On October 16, 2018 nearly every employer in Ontario with employees who operated big equipment or whose jobs required a clear mind, had a workplace policy about drug and alcohol use.

I remember when clients reacted to announcements of Employment Standards changes by scowling at you and declaring there was little to be worried about because the system was complaint-based.

“No one will ever visit us”, was the retort. “If someone complains, we will fix it”.

I was having lunch with my Law golf buddy last week since we couldn’t golf anymore. We had a conversation which I think you might find helpful, so I wrote it down.