Thoughts from a Management Lawyer: Labor & Employment Law

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Labor & Employment Law

Thoughts from a Management Lawyer

Commentary and discussion of current and topical Canadian labour and employment law issues by a management-side labour and employment lawyer.

Post Frequency: 1.2/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 20:36:49

Ontario Human Rights Commission Annual Report

Posted on August 21, 2009
The Ontario Human Rights Commission released it's 2008-2009 Annual Report, the first since the Ontario Human Rights system was re-vamped. The Commissions' new, more proactive and educational role, is laid out in the Report. As is acknowledged by the Chief Commissioner, the Commission has attracted controversy...

Thoughts on Employer Reactions to the Elimination of Mandatory Retirement

Posted on August 17, 2009
This is old news, but I got to thinking about it as I was clearing out my home office and came across an article in the Fall 2008 issue of Industrial Relations by Andrew Templar and Marjorie Armstrong-Stassen from the Odette School of Business at the University of Windsor...

City of Toronto Strike Ends

Posted on August 01, 2009
The City of Toronto Council approved collective agreements with striking unions thus bringing to an end the 39 day strike. Of course they were going to approve the deal but the margin was 21-17, tighter than most people anticipated. But the residents of Toronto are not happy with either side...

VIA Heads to Arbitration

Posted on July 26, 2009
Yesterday I posted about the spill off consequences flowing from the VIA and City of Toronto strikes. Today we hear that VIA and the Teamsters are going to final and binding arbitration to resolve their outstanding issues. Given the rhetoric, this was a surprise...

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The Impact of Strikes

Posted on July 25, 2009
Day 35 of the Toronto city workers strike, and no end in sight (in fact, one of the unions representing the workers has indicated that they will walk away from the bargaining table if they haven't reached a deal by midnight Sunday). The Windsor municipal strike ended recently after 101...

Overtime Class Action to be Appealed

Posted on July 21, 2009
It would seem that the Ontario Court's recent ruling that refused to certify a class in the highly publicized CIBC overtime class proceedings will be appealed. That according to the excellent Financial Legal Post. Of course, no one is falling off their chair in surprise at this news given what's...

National Post Series on Labour-Management Relations and More

Posted on July 13, 2009
The National Post is running a series of articles on labour-management relations during the economic crisis. I was interviewed for the article Getting Real that has now been published. Speaking of the economy, last Thursday I spoke last week at a Canadian Institute conference called "Workforce Restructuring: Practical Guidelines and...

Be Careful When Drafting Termination Letters

Posted on July 04, 2009
That's the lesson from a recent Ontario Superior Court case. The plaintiff was hired by the defendant on November 28, 2005 for the position of full-time receptionist and was promoted to the position of Executive Assistant in 2008 at an annual salary of $36,000...

Who's keeping Toronto going?

Posted on July 03, 2009
That's what the Globe and Mail asks as the City's municipal workers strike closes in on 2 weeks. It's an interesting article focusing on the impact of the strike not on the public, the strikers or the city, but on the people and their families that are trying to maintain...

"Never let a crisis go to waste."

Posted on June 30, 2009
What a wonderful quote that is. I wish I could take credit for coming up with it but I can't. In fact, I lifted it from a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article Building Businesses in Turbulent Times and specifically in answer to this question: Q: Is a recession really...

Labour News Dominating the Headlines (Again)

Posted on June 28, 2009
With a recession it's not surprising that labour issues are dominating the news. As employers, largely in the public sector, try to negotiate away employee gains during collective bargaining many unionized employees are resisting and taking their fight to the picket line...

Investigating Human Rights Complaints

Posted on June 27, 2009
The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in a recent case adopted six factors for assessing the sufficiency of a respondent?s efforts to address allegations of discrimination and harassment: (i) the response must be prompt; (ii) there must be corporate awareness that the conduct complained of is prohibited; (iii) the matter must...

PR Battle in Recessionary Times

Posted on June 22, 2009
The National Post has an article What?s the deal with union benefits? that reviews some of the pressures facing unions to hang onto what they've achieved through years of collective bargaining. In other news, The Windsor Star writes how OFL leader feels 'anger I have never seen' discussing a recent...

Summary Judgments in Employment Disputes

Posted on June 20, 2009
Summary judgment motions can be a highly expeditious and cost effective way of dealing with a variety of employment disputes. I'd like to discuss this procedure here having regard to a couple of recent decisions. The Alberta Court of Appeal in Poliquin v...

Court Declines to Certify a Class Action in the CIBC Overtime Case

Posted on June 18, 2009
In a much anticipate decision, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice today declined to certify a class under the Class Proceedings Act, 1992 due to lack of commonality of an issue that would significantly advance the case. A link to the case will follow shortly...

More Discussion of Dealing With the Layoff Survivors

Posted on June 16, 2009
The Lawyers Weekly has an article Employment and labour lawyers can help clients deal with ?layoff survivors' where a subject that has been written about a number of times on this blog. The article contains some good suggestions on managing the layoff to minimize the trauma on those left behind.

Inducement and its impact on Reasonable Notice - Part II

Posted on June 13, 2009
At Part I of this series I discussed, at a high level, some of the general damages principles associated with wrongful dismissal cases. The period of reasonable notice sets the time frame within which damages are assessed. Today, I'd like to discuss some hiring issues and their effects on the...

Damages in Wrongful Dismissal Cases - Part I

Posted on June 12, 2009
I will be writing a series of posts on damages issues that arise in wrongful dismissal cases. Today's post discusses some some general principles. General Principles In the absence of a legally enforceable contractual provision to the contrary an employee can be terminated for just cause or in the absence...

WHO Raises Threat Level for H1N1 (aka Swine Flu)

Posted on June 11, 2009
The World Health Organization has raised to Phase 6 the highest level. WHO has also published a Pandemic influenza preparedness and response and recommended actions. According to the Washington Post, this is the first flu pandemic declared by WHO since 1968...

Refusal to Comply With Policy as Just Cause

Posted on June 09, 2009
This issue was considered by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Gordon v. Tubs Ultimate Bath Store. This was a constructive dismissal case where the plaintiff, a delivery driver, claimed that he had been constructively dismissed because he was being forced to take on a second job of packer...

Forgetting about the Survivors in a Reorganization is Costly

Posted on June 09, 2009
MSNBC has an article about what to do with the empty cubicles resulting from all of the terminations. I found it an unusual read, but, to me, it emphasized that the survivors of corporate restructuring have their own ghosts to deal with. They are, on the one hand, expected to...

The Importance of the Standard of Judicial Review

Posted on June 08, 2009
Yesterday I wrote about a hot-declaration or hot-cargo case out of British Columbia. I mentioned how the outcome of a judicial review application is often decided by the standard of review that the reviewing court adopts in looking into the decision of the arbitrator or labour relations board, for example...

May Was Another Brutal Month for Job Losses

Posted on June 08, 2009
The May, 2009 Labour Force Survey is out. Employment decreased by 42,000 in May, led by further manufacturing losses in Ontario (60,000, the unemployment rate in Ontario is 9.4%). The unemployment rate rose from 8% to 8.4%, the highest rate in 11 years.

"Hot Cargo" Arrangements in British Columbia

Posted on June 07, 2009
The British Columbia Court of Appeal recently considered the validity of "hot declaration" clauses in a collective agreement in Victoria Times Colonist, a Division of Canwest Mediaworks Publications Inc. This was an appeal of this lower court decision...

Cell Phone Discussion and "Zero Tolerance"

Posted on June 02, 2009
The excellent Workers Comp Insider writes about Cell Phones: Unsafe at Any Speed? It's a pretty direct post that asks and then answers this question "When, if ever, will managers of major and minor corporations bring the hammer down on blatantly risky behaviors behind the wheel?" Have a read of...

Organ Donor Leave in Ontario

Posted on May 29, 2009
The Legislature has passed Bill 154 (Employment Standards Amendment Act (Organ Donor Leave), 2009). The Bill will provide unpaid job-protected leave for employees who donate certain organs to another individual. There is a short News Release discussing the Bill...

Bonus Calculation on Termination in a Recession

Posted on May 28, 2009
An issue that has arisen of late if how you calculate "bonus" on termination in a recession. Assuming that a bonus is non-discretionary or has become non-discretionary in one way or another, Courts will often include some component of bonus through the period of reasonable notice...

CAW Reaches Tentative Deal with GM

Posted on May 23, 2009
After what was a long complicated and intense negotiation, the CAW and GM have reached a tentative agreement. Ratification meetings will be held on May 24 and 25. This follows the tentative agreement entered into between the United Auto Workers Union and GM late last week.

What is the Scope of a Grievance?

Posted on May 17, 2009
The Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal considered this in Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees v. Canada. In this case the arbitrator decided that a grievance that stated that it related to ?suspension? of an employee, could, nonetheless, be interpreted to include the termination of the...

Social Networking Sites and the Courts

Posted on May 16, 2009
An interesting post over at Workplace Privacy Counsel about the ethical obligation of counsel where a witness maintains a social networking site such as Facebook where they have limited access to "friends". According to the post: An attorney who is not on the user?s ?friends list,? in theory, could effectively...

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