Much legal ink has been spilled over the past year about the impact of cannabis legalization on the workplace (see our overview here). At the end of the day, however, the basic rules of the game have not changed. Employees still cannot expect to attend at work while intoxicated. Employers can still insist on sobriety in the workplace. And safety-concerns regarding how to structure operations remain a foremost consideration in any workplace (and in fact are mandated by operation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act).

The legal doctrine of frustration of contract is well known to employment lawyers but its application is not all that intuitive to the average employer or employee. In the recent case of Hoekstra v. Rehability Occupational Therapy Inc., 2019 ONSC 562, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice was asked to revisit this doctrine and opine as to whether an employee, as compared to an employer, can ever assert frustration to end an employment relationship.

Social media platforms moderate user-posted content to protect us from offensive, disturbing and sometimes criminal content. This process, however, is not always automatic. It often relies upon the efforts of individual workers to act as gatekeepers, keeping undesirable content at bay.

We are not long into 2019 and yet one thing already seems clear – the law concerning employment contract termination clauses will continue to be the focus of a great deal of litigation in Ontario. In just the past few months alone, new decisions from the Superior Court have helped to advance the law and provide further guidance to employers on proper drafting of termination clauses.

Tagg Industries v. Rieder serves as a useful reminder of the importance of proving (and communicating to employees) a termination for cause, as well as the high threshold that employers must meet in such circumstances.

The size of an employee’s salary is often seen as an indicator of importance within an organization. Thus, when women are paid less than their male counterparts for performing similar work, it suggests that their efforts are somehow of lesser value. In Ontario, we have a number of legal mechanisms that are designed to reduce gender-based wage disparity, however, it remains a reality in far too many workplaces.

On January 2, the Court of Appeal for Ontario released its first decision of 2019: Heller v. Uber Technologies Inc. et al. While the new year is just getting started, this decision is likely to be one of the most significant from an employment law perspective. Its implications are far-reaching and raise novel compliance challenges for Ontario employers that contract to resolve workplace disputes by way of private arbitration.

When an employee is fired and not given sufficient notice, a common point of dispute becomes how to properly calculate the lost value of non-monetary benefits. Wages, by contrast, are a relatively simple affair. If a court orders the employee ought to have received an additional three (3) months’ notice, the parties need only calculate the value of three months’ wages and any resulting interest for the delay in payment.

In a previous blog entry, we wrote about the laws surrounding secret recordings in the workplace. As we cautioned: “[b]efore creating such recordings, be sure to think carefully about the necessity of the action and check whether any workplace policies may be engaged.”

Manchester may be best known for its premiership football teams and spawning the likes of Oasis and The Smiths, however, the City was in the headlines last month for something quite different: its Student Union (“MUSU”) voted to replace clapping at all of its events with “jazz hands” (i.e. the practice of waving open hands in the air).

This week on Twitter, our firm has been examining the minimum wage from a variety of perspectives. Using the hashtag #minimumwageweek, we shared content ranging from videos of famed economists such as Milton Friedman to historical articles on the original debate when Ontario’s minimum wage was first introduced in 1963.

On October 23, 2018 the Ford government presented Bill 47, the Making Ontario Open for Business Act. Bill 47 is set to repeal a large portion of Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, which was passed into law by the previous provincial government just 11 months ago.

Determining what conduct amounts to just cause for dismissal is no easy task. In part this is due to just cause being inherently situation specific. When describing what may constitute just cause, employment lawyers often refer to extreme examples: think of situations where a public-facing employee makes repeated racial slurs to a customer or commits major fraud in the course of their duties. Typically, such facts will prove fertile ground for successful assertions of just cause for dismissal by an employer.

As we have discussed in previous articles, if you are fired from work and decide to seek severance, you are required to take reasonable steps to find alternate comparable employment. This obligation is referred to as the “duty to mitigate” the loss of your employment.

Wrongful dismissal disputes are fairly common. In our experience they often resolve through negotiation and infrequently progress far into the litigation process. That said, sometimes cases of this nature do reach the court room and the parties usually fight over the quantum of severance sought, the type of payments claimed (i.e. bonus/commissions) and whether the former employee made reasonable efforts to find re-employment.

According to Restaurants Canada, the Canadian food service industry employs over 1.2 million people. With so many people involved in this industry, whether as franchise owners, professional chefs or part-time servers, it is important to be aware of the workplace rights and obligations that apply. The food services industry is in many ways unique, facing safety and cost challenges that many other sectors do not. With that in mind, we set out to provide an overview of some key employment rights and obligations:

Earlier this month, Vey Willetts lawyer Andrew Vey spoke with Global News about the novel implications of a recent Ontario court decision for sexual harassment complainants. 

In a landmark decision, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (“HRTO”) has found an employer who required job candidates to be either Canadian citizens or permanent residents liable for discrimination contrary to the Human Rights Code (the “Code”).