A recent Ontario case provides a good reminder of the importance of a clear and thorough employment contract. In the case, an employee with eight months’ service claimed he had a five-year fixed term contract and sued for more than four years of lost wages.
Facts
The parties had negotiated the employee’s move from
The Australian Government has released draft legislation which, if implemented, will boost the tax concessions for shares and options acquired under employee share and option plans on and from 1 July 2015.
In 2009, changes to the tax treatment of employee share and option plans saw the end of these incentive schemes in Australia. The
In Telus Communications Inc. v Telecommunications Workers Union, an Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench chambers judge quashed the decision of an arbitrator, upholding termination of a grievor terminated for dishonesty surrounding an absence from work. The decision was later upheld by the Alberta Court of Appeal.
The grievor had been denied a request for
In the recent decision of Thompson v Cardel Homes Limited Partnership, 2014 ABCA 242, the Alberta Court of Appeal considered the difference between constructive dismissal and simply not renewing a fixed-term employment contract.
The employee in that case was hired as a senior executive for a two-year term and his contract was subsequently
In a recent case, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a Court of Quebec judgment and found that procedural fairness standards applicable to administrative law are not applicable to internal investigations into complaints of psychological harassment in the workplace.
Facts
The appellant was a college professor who was dismissed for psychological harassment of some
In its recent decision of Rodgers v CEVA, 2014 ONSC 6583, the Ontario Superior Court considered both what it means to induce someone to leave their job and the implications of that inducement upon termination.
Rodgers had been employed by CEVA as its Canadian Country Manager, CEVA’s most senior Canadian position, for just
This month, a divided National Labor Relations Board held in Purple Communications, Inc. that employees have the right to use their employer-provided business email accounts for non-work purposes during non-work hours. In doing so, the Board reversed a 2007 precedent equating email with any other employer-owned property—seeing email as not much more than a real-life
The legal context
Under French employment law, the implementation of a means of monitoring an employee’s activity must be justified by the nature of the task to be performed and must be in proportion to the purpose sought. It must also comply with a specific procedure involving informing employees in advance of such means of
A Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) considered the meaning of “at work” in the context of an application for a stop bullying order.
The FWC found that “at work” encompasses:
The FWC has the power under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Act) to make orders to stop bullying if it is satisfied that a worker has been “bullied at work”.
The FWC considered that the words ‘at work’ were intended to confine the operation of the substantive provisions of the Act, noting:
In the recent decision of Phanlouvong v Northfield Metal Products (1994) Ltd, 2014 ONSC 6585, the Ontario Superior Court considered an incident of workplace violence to not provide just cause for dismissal.
The employee in question was terminated for cause and without notice after a workplace incident in which the employee punched another employee