Photo by BRRT from Pixabay Unionized employees terminated for cause from their jobs can – and often do – ask their unions to grieve the termination. A termination for cause means the employer has grounds (cause) to terminate the employee. This is different from a termination without cause. After filing the grievance, an arbitration process […]
EMPLOYMENT | Changes to Alberta Employment Law. Again.
On November 1, 2020, several changes to Alberta’s Employment Standards Code came into effect. Changes include payment of earnings after termination, deductions, averaging arrangements for calculating overtime, rest periods and calculating general holiday pay. These changes are detailed in Bill 32: Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act, 2020. Remember the government’s red-tape inquiry? Bill 32 […]
EMPLOYMENT | Enhanced Job Security for Federal Workers
It is an outcome that is anchored in parliamentary intention, statutory language, arbitral jurisprudence, and labour relations practice. To decide otherwise would fundamentally undermine Parliament’s remedial purpose. – Wilson v Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., 2016 SCC 29 at para 69 Employment security is something every worker is concerned about, especially during a pandemic. It […]
EMPLOYMENT | Bad Behaviour 5.0: Employees getting away with …
Whitford was not given sufficiently clear and detailed warnings about his misconduct, was mislead [sic] by approvals granting him leave, and was not told that failure to prepare a return-to-work plan could result in his dismissal. Further, he was not caught drinking on the job, other than the one occasion when he made no attempt to […]
EMPLOYMENT | COVID-19: Temporary changes to Alberta’s Employment Standards Code
COVID-19 has impacted every aspect of people’s lives in Alberta, across Canada and around the world. Governments have scrambled to approve stimulus packages, update public health orders, and change laws to respond to this new disease. Alberta declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act on March 17, 2020. Doing so gives the […]
EMPLOYMENT | What to do with Your Conscience at Work?
We hear a lot today about people following their conscience. Conscience is more than mere preferences and choices. It is about one’s values, spiritual worldview and visceral sense of right and wrong. Few employees want to compromise on their deepest conscientious beliefs for their jobs. These beliefs often arise from religious convictions but are technically […]
EMPLOYMENT | Opening the Legal Profession: The Andrews case
While legislatures must inevitably draw distinctions among the governed, such distinctions should not bring about or reinforce the disadvantage of certain groups and individuals by denying them the rights freely accorded to others. – Andrews v Law Society of British Columbia, [1989] 1 SCR 143 Introduction In the recent federal election, a party leader campaigning […]
Reading Between the Lines: Implied terms in individual employment contracts
In Canada, every non-unionized employee has a contractual relationship with their employer. What does that contract look like? Employment contracts may be written or oral, or both. When you sign and return a letter offering you a job, the terms of the letter are the written elements of the contract. That letter usually “incorporates by […]
How Earnings Must Be Paid
Introduction In 1981, when I was a student working for the summer in London, England, every two weeks I would walk over to another building and join a queue to collect my pay packet. In the little cardboard pouch, I found a very narrow strip of paper of numbers that explained how my earnings and […]
Bad Behaviour 4.0: Employees getting away with . . .
If an employee has been guilty of serious misconduct, habitual neglect of duty, incompetence, or conduct incompatible with his duties, or prejudicial to the employer’s business, or if he has been guilty of willful disobedience to the employer’s orders in a matter of substance, the law recognizes the employer’s right summarily to dismiss the delinquent […]