Canadian Employment Law for US Employers: Part 2 – Contracts
Continue Reading Canadian Employment Law for US Employers: Part 2 – Contracts
Canadian Employment Law for US Employers: Part 1 – Backgrounder
Discover key differences in US and Canadian employment laws in this blog series tailored for US employers operating in Canada.
Continue Reading Canadian Employment Law for US Employers: Part 1 – Backgrounder
No At-Will Employment in Canada
Are you an employer with operations in both Canada & the US? This post is for you.
Contracts vs At-Will Employment
For our US readers, Canada does not have at-will employment. In Canada, employment relationships are governed by employment contracts, either written or implied, and various employment laws and regulations. Employers are generally required to provide reasonable notice or pay in lieu of notice when terminating an employee without cause.
For our Canadian readers, at-will employment is a term used in the United States to describe the employment relationship between an employer and an employee, where either party can terminate the employment at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. This means that an employer can fire an employee for any reason or no reason at all, as long as it is not for an illegal reason (such as discrimination). Similarly, an employee can quit their job at any time without providing a reason or notice.
WPC 2016 and the Global Tech Community
Yesterday was Day 1 of the annual Microsoft World Partners Conference here in Toronto. As the news continues to highlight the distressing conflicts south of the border and around the world, a conference like WPC is a welcomed reminder that we all have far more in common than not.
There are 16,000 attendees that have
US versus Canadian Workplaces
Unlike many other areas of the law, employment and human rights law lets me dig into cultural differences, individual perceptions of reality, and some of the universal truths that unite us all. I love that just a couple of kilometres/miles south of Toronto, and in fact, just across Lake Ontario, there are often such different expectations in the workplace.
In the Canadian employment law bootcamps I’ve done for US employers, it is perhaps the assumption that Canadians and Americans share a relatively common culture that gives rise to the interesting reactions when differences do arise. I’ve blogged about this before (see my FAQs for US Employers in 2011), but want to share some of my more recent observations.
FAQs for US Employers in Canada
While we may share a love of hockey, beer and Justin Bieber, there remains many intangible cultural and legal differences between Canadian and US employment law. Given the global nature of most of the clients I work with, I frequently advise US employers on the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – distinctions between
Working Notice: Rarely the Perfect Solution
Working notice is like eating at a cheap buffet restaurant – it’s inexpensive, and it seems like a good idea at the time, but the meal doesn’t taste so great within a short period of time. This usually applies to both employers and employees.
I often have employer clients looking for a way to lower the