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).

Costs of Hiring an Employment Lawyer

How much is hiring a wrongful dismissal lawyer going to cost me? When someone finds him or herself suddenly unemployed questions about the costs of services get serious. Legal services have long had a reputation of being expensive, and there may be a further perception that their cost may put them out of reach to some people. I wish to dispel that myth.

Any Day can be a Holiday

Earlier this month I blogged about the nine “public holidays” under Ontario law and how the Civic Holiday, Remembrance Day, and Easter Sunday were not such holidays, see Public Holidays under the Ontario Employment Standards Act. 

It has occurred to me that I may have mistakenly left some readers with the impression that no Ontario employee was entitled to those days off as a holiday. That too is incorrect.

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.

Public Holidays under the Ontario Employment Standards Act

For most workers in Ontario, the first Monday in August and Easter Monday are paid days off work. However, neither is a “public holiday” as defined by the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000. What that means is that the rules surrounding statutory holiday pay do not apply to “the Civic holiday” or to “Easter Monday.” But, that does not necessarily mean that they cannot be treated by any particular employer as a ‘holiday;' on this point see the post Any Day Can be a Holiday.

The points above provide an opening to discuss what the rules surrounding such holidays actually are.