An Ontario employer cannot fire an employee while she is on maternity leave simply because she is on maternity leave. Ontario law protects the employee’s position while she is away. But, what happens when an employee who has been on maternity leave returns and is then terminated?
An employment law blog.
Sean Bawden, Partner, Kelly Santini LLP.
sbawden@kellysantini.com | 613.238.6321
Friday 31 August 2012
Thursday 30 August 2012
Names Will Get You Fired
Sunday 26 August 2012
Being Reasonable about Constructive Dismissal
Should I stay or should I go? Without question, the single most difficult case that walks through my door is that of harassment or bullying by managers. This post will focus on general hostile working environments. Working environments that are toxic by reason of violations of the Human Rights Code are treated differently.
The fact scenario most commonly presented is that of the employee who simply cannot take any more from his or her manager and/or subordinates. Pulled in a hundred different directions, often with no support from above, the worker’s well-being starts to suffer.
What is an employee, faced with this situation of unbearable stress, to do?
Monday 20 August 2012
Failing to Prevent Subordinate's Stupidity Not Just Cause for Dismissal
Some facts are simply too fantastic to make up. Is a manager’s failure to specifically prohibit an employee from using a forklift to raise a wheelchair-bound co-worker to a mezzanine just cause for the manager’s termination from employment?
As incredible as those facts may seem, that was the issue that the Honourable Justice Peter Lauwers of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice was asked to resolve in the case of Barton v. Rona Ontario Inc., 2012 ONSC 3809 (CanLII).
Sunday 19 August 2012
Costs of Hiring an Employment Lawyer
Saturday 11 August 2012
Any Day can be a Holiday
Employees' Rights to Privacy and Remedies for Their Employer's Breach of Such Right
Employers often have the actual ability to access their employees’ private email accounts. But do they have the legal right to do so?
Providing employees with mobile technology, such as smart phones, laptop computers, tablets, etc. has the potential to be a minefield for employers. As I wrote in a post titled Overtime Pay and Mobile Technology, providing employees with smart phones carries with it the real risk of exposing employers to claims for unpaid overtime.
Yet there is another risk that employers face when they provide their employees with mobile technology and fail to implement policies on the uses to which to those employees may put that technology: The risk that employees will use that technology for non-work related purposes.