"Don’t forget: you’re here forever." Those five words (seven if you are particular) are said to occupy the plaque above Homer Simpson’s workstation. As regular, and one has to admit older, fans of the iconic television show will remember, in the episode “And Maggie Makes Three”, which originally aired on January 22, 1995, Homer’s boss, Mr. Burns, affixed said plaque above Homer’s workstation after our hero was forced to crawl back to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in search of his old, and much despised, job. And while Homer makes the best of the situation, covering certain parts of the plaque with photos of his infant daughter Maggie such that the plaque reads “Do it for her”, the plot point raises an interesting question about employment law in Ontario: Is there such a thing as a job “forever”?
One of the most common misconceptions about employment law in Ontario is that so long as an employee continues to satisfactorily perform his or her job, that employee cannot be fired. As this blog has frequently stated, that simply is not the case and employers generally have the right to terminate an employee’s employment for any reason at all, including no reason. (There are, of course, exceptions, such as the fact that an employer cannot dismiss an employee for a reason prohibited by statute; but those exceptions are few.)
But what if the employee’s employment contract says that the employer “shall not” dismiss the employee? Certainly that would entitle the employee to a job for life. And if the employer did, in fact, dismiss the employee, then she would be entitled to the wages that she would have earned for the rest of her life, no?
A 2003 case from the Court of Appeal for Ontario, authored by the Honourable Justice Rosalie Abella, who now sits on the Supreme Court of Canada, Foreman v. 818329 Ontario Limited, 2003 CanLII 57401 (ON CA) held that the contract term “[The employer] shall not dismiss [the employee]” did not, in fact, entitle the employee to a job for life.
