FAQs for Employers – Frequently asked questions by employers needing more information on the impact, rules and best practices for addressing the global coronavirus outbreak. (Last Updated March 17, 2020).
Further free resources can be found here.
Should you need legal advice on how to manage your workplace during the COVID-19 outbreak, please get in
I think we can all agree that the world is a little bonkers lately – it seems like things are changing and getting more serious by the minute. Between the time I thought I was finished writing and ready to press “publish” Ontario declared a state of emergency.
We are getting lots of questions
Workplace privacy is an evolving and somewhat muddy area of law. In Ontario, our key employment law statutes, the Employment Standards Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act, are silent on the issue of privacy. Yet surveillance is ubiquitous. Employers often have cameras in the workplace, which end up providing them information about
Bathroom breaks come up frequently in news stories about workers’ rights. The City of Hamilton just narrowly avoided a transit strike where bathroom breaks were a major issue. A City of Ottawa transit worker, calling himself a “whistle-blower” also recently spoke about lack of “recovery time” for drivers – aka not enough time to go
Cooperative education programs have become a crucial part of the educational experience as students and institutions recognize that on the job training enhances the overall educational experience. A good co-op can ground a student’s in-class learning by introducing them to practical “real world” problems. If the placement goes well, students may be offered a job
Saving provisions are widely used in employment agreements to ensure that even if a decision-maker finds that some aspect of some clause is not enforceable due to the fact that it could possibly, maybe, one day, maybe, sorta violate the Employment Standards Act (ESA), the saving provision will communicate to that judge that this was
The Ministry of Labour (MOL or the Ministry) has been busy implementing its Healthy and Safe Ontario Workplaces Strategy. Introduced by the previous Wynne government, the initiative has focused on small Ontario industrial businesses. A small business is one with fewer than 50 workers.
Occupational Health and Safety Act Inspections
In late August, the
Another large fashion retailer has fallen out of style with consumers, closing its doors for good across Canada. Last Sunday, Bradley Sell, the Chief Financial Officer of the Canadian subsidiary Forever XXI ULC (“Forever 21 Canada”), announced that all 44 of its Canadian stores would be closing. Sell cited economic viability as the primary
Employers often have questions about what to do with vacation when an employee is on a leave. Do they still earn vacation time? Do they still get vacation pay even if they aren’t getting paid? Vacation is one of the trickiest employment standards, but we will shed some light into its dark corners in this
Our clients ask a lot of questions about overtime. Despite many workplaces that are trying hard to keep work hours reasonable and limit them to 40 hours per week, in busy workplaces, overtime is very often inevitable – at least once in awhile.
There is a lot to know about overtime, more than we can