The Ontario Court of Appeal recently decided an interesting case in which counsel for the employer/appellant raised a novel argument regarding the interESAion of the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000 (“ESA”) and the common law as they relate to lay-offs and termination. In Elsegood v. Cambridge Spring Service, 2011 ONCA 831, the employee/respondent had worked […]
Can you be fired for wearing an orange t-shirt? Turns out you can in Florida. In a recent and on-going case in the United States, 14 employees at a Florida law firm were fired en masse for wearing orange t-shirts. The background to this story is that these employees began wearing orange shirts on pay-day […]
In this recent Ontario Superior Court decision, Justice MacDougall considered the case of a manager who was demoted in title and who had his direct reports removed from his supervision. The issue was whether this constituted constructive dismissal, especially considering that his job remained unchanged in several important ways, and his pay was not affected. […]
In a recent Divisional Court decision, the Court had the opportunity to comment on limitation periods in constructive dismissal matters. This decision concerned a class certification motion brought by employees of Allstate Insurance Company. The representative plaintiffs alleged that they, along with other class members, had been constructively dismissed by Allstate’s new business plan. Kafka […]
Raymond Giza worked as a bus driver for Sechelt School Bus Service Ltd. (“Sechelt”), and its owner, Randy Gould, for a period of five years. On September 30, 2009, Mr. Giza arrived at work to find a paycheque, a pay stub and a notice of termination letter on his driver’s seat advising him that his […]
In a recent decision, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded 26 months of notice to a long service employee of Suzuki Canada named Syed Hussain. Mr. Hussain had worked for Suzuki Canada in various positions for approximately 36 years. At the time of his termination, he was almost 65 years old. Due to his […]
On a daily basis, we receive calls from unionized workers who are shocked to discover that their human-rights related grievance is subject to the nearly-unfettered discretion of their union representatives. When we tell unionized workers that they are not a party to their grievance, many can hardly believe it. They are even more surprised to […]
In the recent decision, Bowes v. Goss Power Products Ltd., 2012 ONCA 425 (CanLII), a five-member panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that there is no duty to mitigate if an employment agreement contains a fixed-term notice provision and the agreement is silent with respect to mitigation. Prior cases had ruled that […]
Pay equity is about “equal pay for work of equal value” according to the Pay Equity Commission of Ontario. However, the Commission also recognizes that a persistent inequity continues to exist between men and women, which the Commission refers to as the “Gender Wage Gap.” According to recent studies by University of Victoria professor Ken […]
In Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1999 v. Lakeridge Health Corporation (“Lakeridge Health”), the Divisional Court of Ontario upheld two decisions of the Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal (the “Tribunal”), which found that the Pay Equity Act (the “Act”), does not require the harmonization of wage grids. The concept of “pay equity” in Ontario is […]
