Reading Time: 4 minutes 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
Reading Time: 4 minutes 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
Reading Time: 4 minutes 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 . . .
Reading Time: 4 minutes 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 […]
The Duty of Unions to Fairly Represent Their Members
Reading Time: 5 minutes Introduction: plight of the unionized worker The average unionized worker is in a weak position at work. In many workplaces he will, as a condition of employment, be required to join the existing union. Or he may have been out-voted in the decision to unionize. Bringing serious concerns and directly accessing the employer is hampered […]
What is ‘Self-Dealing’ in Employment?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Introduction While they have human bosses, most employees work for corporations, which are legal fictions with no physical existence. That renders employers technically vulnerable to their own employees who might want to take advantage of them. It is both impossible and undesirable to scrutinize every employee during every minute on the job. There are many […]
A Year of Holidays
Reading Time: 4 minutes Introduction The Christmas and New Year holiday season is a good time to reflect generally on work and legally enforced rest. This article is about the law of holidays, the legislated observance, and payment of holidays by employers across the country for the benefit of their workers. There is substantial overlap of holidays in Canada. […]
Words Matter
Reading Time: 5 minutes Introduction Several decades ago, in my first summer job during university, I washed dishes and performed other unskilled labours in the kitchen of a large government seniors’ nursing home in rural Alberta. While the work itself was not particularly memorable, I observed in that workplace of 15 men, the manager obviously decided to discriminate against […]
Too Over-qualified for the Job?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Introduction Employers usually promise job seekers that they are looking for the most qualified workers. It is in their interests to do so. But occasionally they do not wish to hire the most qualified applicants. What if a slow economy produces many clearly over-qualified applicants and the employer is suspicious that they will not be […]
Cannabis and Employment
Reading Time: 4 minutes Introduction While medical scientists are busy deciding the human health impacts of regular recreational cannabis use, and governments are still working out how cannabis will be cultivated, sold and taxed, and law enforcement officials consider how cannabis use will affect driving and how road safety will be maintained, it now falls to every employer in […]
