Do the statutory provisions in Ontario's Employment Standards Act, 2000 governing the ways by which an employer may temporarily lay-off an employee oust the application of the common-law doctrine of constructive dismissal during the temporary lay-off period?
According to a decision from the Court of Appeal for Ontario, Motion Industries (Canada) Inc. v. McCarthy, 2015 ONCA 224 (CanLII), the answer is “no.”
Can we all be honest with one another for a moment? Yesterday’s fight over which retail establishments could open and which could not was about one issue and one issue only: which businesses had the right to make money yesterday and which were precluded.
Some have taken the position that the rules on who can open are arbitrary. The rules are not arbitrary; they are clearly deliberate. The law establishes clear criteria on the tourism criteria that must be met before a municipality may pass an exempting by-law under subsection 4 (1) of the Retail Business Holidays Act. The law is about economics. The clearest proof of that point, I would suggest, is the omission of Boxing Day from the enumeration of holidays in the Retail Business Holidays Act; it is a “holiday” in several other statutes including the Employment Standards Act, 2000.
If an employee asserts his right, as guaranteed under the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000, not to work on a holiday or on a Sunday, must the employer provide him with a substitute for the hours he otherwise could have worked?
In a decision from the Ontario Labour Relations Board, Farinha v Highland Farms Inc, 2014 CanLII 17466 (ON LRB), the answer was “no.”
As a general statement of law, it is illegal for a retail business to be open on a holiday. Of course, there are numerous exemptions to this rule; the most well-known of which being the ‘tourist area’ exemption. What many people may not know, however, is that the legal onus is on the store’s employees to restrain members of the public from buying goods.
Have employees been convicted of allowing the public to shop on a holiday? They have.
There is a saying in law that “bad facts make bad law.” Of course, the opposite is also true; good facts make good law. In a clear demonstration of the latter, the case of Bray v Canadian College of Massage and Hydrotherapy, 2015 CanLII 3452 (ON SCSM) demonstrates what happens when experienced counsel appears before an experienced trial judge with some pretty decent facts.
While Bray looked at a number of issues of importance to Ontario employment law, the four most interesting features are:
In 1986, English rocker Robert Palmer suggested that you might as well face it, you’re addicted to love. What if, however, rather than being addicted to love, one is “addicted” to watching others make love, on the internet, using an employer-provided laptop? Has “addiction” to internet pornography been accepted by a Canadian human rights tribunal as a "disability"?
As an aside, the image above is taken from an advertising campaign for what is touted as the world’s largest online pornography site. More information on the advertising campaign can be found on AdWeek’s website here: AdWeek May 20, 2014, which is obviously safe for work.
Under what set of circumstances can a non-unionized employee claim to have been constructively dismissed?
In a recent decision from the Supreme Court of Canada, Potter v. New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission, 2015 SCC 10, Canada's top court confirmed that there are two possible ways by which an employee can be constructively dismissed.
