Employment Standards Act

The amounts have gone up significantly.

know from my review of things over the years a little bit um but yeah it ultimately just comes down to you know how big of an issue or how bad is this misconduct you know there i've got actually a couple cases maybe we can go through uh if we've got time yeah just sort of some examples or some damages were awarded so there's one one example this is sort of on the lower end An individual got $10,000, and this was because the employer had not paid the employee's minimum entitlements under the Employment Standards Act.

So that's obviously a clear violation.

They withheld that.

When we talk about legal entitlements, so can you go to your employer and say, I have a legal right to take time off to care for a family member? You've got to unpack a couple of things.

Under the Employment Standards Act, you can, but for many types of classes of family members, even for an aunt or an uncle or even a nephew.

So that sort of class of family members quite broad, but only if that person may be frankly, maybe on death's door in the next 26 weeks.

So this has to be somebody who is gravely ill, critical illness.

And that's when your employer would have to give you a job protected leave under the Employment Standards Act.

For everybody else, if you have somebody who's home from school, a child who's home from school, you have a spouse who broke his leg and is in the hospital and you need to take some time off, an employer may give you the opportunity to use your vacation, maybe allow you to use some of your sick days to do it.

But an employer in the same way will not have to provide you with that kind of leave, at least under the Employment Standards Act.

So that's something employees really need to understand, especially post-COVID, Jerry, where we expect employers to be very flexible and to allow us to work hybrid if we need to.

if there is an RSU plan or stock option plan or something along those lines, you wanna get it checked, uh, by a lawyer.

You wanna, you know, have one focus be on, you know, does it talk about what happens in the event of the termination? Because, again, there's certain minimum rights you have under the Employment Standards Act, and the RSU or the stock option plan cannot have essentially language that, you know, limits you to below that minimum guarantee.

I, I think what- The plan should have said is that if they terminate someone's employment, you know, as far as these units are concerned, they'll be entitled to anything that may have vested within the, the bare minimum mandated period of time under law, uh, and maybe nothing beyond that.

But again, this was a problematic one where it sort of just said these things are gonna stop immediately, and i- again, essentially just went against the Ontario Employment Standards Act.

So yeah, it was a big win for employees, these particular... uh, this particular employee.

Uh, and as I say, just something to think about for those that might have a plan, but also on the employer side, you wanna be making sure that your RSU agreements or your plans are, um, you know, valid and all your T's are crossed, I's are dotted sort of thing.

You know, forget RSUs.

Mm-hmm.

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under the Ontario Employment Standards Act, it says there's an express prohibition on contracting out of it.

So that means employers are expressly not allowed to apply any other minimum standards legislation, and what matters is where you work.

The where are you performing the work.