If you have been terminated after raising health and safety concerns to your employer, you may feel that your termination was a reprisal.
You may also consider bringing a complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, but how will the Board decide your case? When and how does a termination become a reprisal under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act?
A guest post by Henry Bertoia
A guest post by Sheldon McRae, Student-at-Law
If your employer has failed to pay you for overtime, is there a limitation period that may prohibit you from recovering what you’re owed? If so, can it be varied?
In Scheffler v Mourits Trucking Ltd , 2023 ABKB 139 Justice John S. Little of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench determined that a plaintiff could claim unpaid overtime wages in a civil suit, despite portions of their claim being statutorily barred from recovery by a limitation period in Alberta’s Employment Standards Code.
Sometimes it is not so much what you say, but rather how you say it that matters.
In Derya Marquardt v Rasmussen Starr Ruddy LLP, 2022 CanLII 9123 (ON LRB), the Ontario Labour Relations Board held that an employer’s decision to deem the employment relationship at an end was prompted by the manner in which the employee communicated her concerns and her insubordination, and not by the fact that she was seeking compliance with or exercising rights under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Can your employer force you to take your vacation time in July?
A guest post by Blake Bochinski
For many employees, vacation time is essential for maintaining a work-life balance to relax and spend time with their loved ones. As such, employees typically do not need to be forced into taking a vacation. However, there may be circumstances where an employer wants to mandate when employees take their vacation.
On July 6, 2022, the applicant commenced employment with her employer pursuant to the terms of a one-year fixed-term contract agreement. Sometime before the end of that one-year term, the employer terminated the contract.
On March 27, 2023, the employee caused the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sitting at Hamilton to issue an Application against the employer for damages equal to the balance of the contract.
The employee’s application was heard less than three months later and on June 21, before the contract was even set to expire, she had her decision.
For those critical of the pace at which some litigation can move, the claim stands as proof that with proper advocacy things can get done.
