Should Employers be Allowed to Fire Employees for Their Off-Duty Conduct?

Should employers be allowed to fire employees for their off-duty conduct? Although this blog has repeatedly considered the issue of whether employers can fire employees for their off-duty conduct (they can; see e.g. Comments on Facebook "Just Cause" for Dismissal), the question that this blog has not yet really considered is whether employers should be able to do so.

In posing this question I do not wish to be taken as suggesting that any particular set of actions should go without punishment. Moreover, I do not intend to suggest that perhaps an employee should never lose his or her job for off-duty conduct. Rather the questions are really these:

• Is termination from employment ever an appropriate punishment for one’s off-duty conduct?
• If termination can be an appropriate punishment, after what sort of process should such a punishment be meted out?
• How serious must the off-duty conduct be in order to warrant termination from employment?

There is More to Employment Law in Ontario than Just the Employment Standards Act

There is more to employment law in Ontario than just the Employment Standards Act, 2000. While this point should be obvious, a recent article in the Toronto Star, Ontario allowing employers to fire workers without cause begs for this point of clarification.

Court Finds Successor Employer Liable for Previous Employer’s Pension Obligations

The common rebuttal to the slackerism “close enough” is the saying that “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” However, as the case of King v. 1416088 Ontario Ltd., 2014 ONSC 1445 (CanLII) aff’d 2015 ONCA 312 demonstrates, in cases where two or more employers are closely related, Ontario courts will be prepared to say “close enough” to ground a finding of joint and several liability.

Court Finds the Phrase “Any Amounts Paid” to be Fatally Ambiguous

In the perhaps never-ending battle between employers and employees with respect to the issue of the enforceability of employment contracts, score another victory for employees and their position that employment contracts must be crystal clear before the courts will uphold them.

In the case of Howard v Benson Group, 2015 ONSC 2638 (CanLII) the Honourable Justice A. Donald K. MacKenzie found the following contractual provision to be null and void and therefore legally unenforceable:

[8.1] Employment may be terminated at any time by the Employer and any amounts paid to the Employee shall be in accordance with the Employment Standards Act of Ontario. [sic]

Ontario Judges Finds Individual Director Liable for Unpaid Wages Pursuant to Oppression Remedy

Are employees who are owed wages “creditors” for the purposes of advancing a claim pursuant to the oppression remedy provisions of Canada’s business corporations laws?

In a recent, unprecedented decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, El Ashiri v. Pembroke Residence Ltd., 2015 ONSC 1172 (CanLII), at least one judge has said that the answer is “yes.”

Employment Standards Act does not Oust Common Law of Constructive Dismissals for Layoffs: ONCA

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.”

Opinion: Seeking Retail Honesty

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.