Sometimes being under an umbrella is a good idea; like when it is raining. Other times, however being under the same umbrella as someone else is not such a good thing.
In employment law, the issue of whether two companies are a “common employer” or ‘stand under the same umbrella’ can be important when calculating a dismissed employee’s length of service; the same being one of the critical factors for calculating a dismissed employee’s entitlement to reasonable notice of termination.
In the case of Dear v Glamour Designs Ltd., 2015 ONSC 5094 (CanLII), the Honourable Justice S.A.Q. Akhtar held that there were simply too many interconnecting factors between two related companies to say that the two were anything but a common employer. The employers were found to be one and the same for the purposes of calculating the employee’s length of service.