Edmonton Employment Law

Elon Musk has entered into a deal to purchase Twitter. He has suggested, quite expressly, that he intends to revisit Twitter's terms of use and moderation policies in a way to permit any speech that is not illegal. Here's a widely-circulated Tweet to that effect: By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022 This is an incredibly simplistic analysis of 'the law' and of free speech generally. Free speech is a philosophical concept that has been integrated into many countries' constitutions. Usually, discussing it as a legal concept in the US or Canada, we're discussing speech that is not only 'legal', but 'constitutionally protected'. There are presumably gaps between those concepts w...

So you've gotten a job offer...but the contract says you're not an 'employee', but rather you'll be an 'independent contractor'. What does that mean for you? This has been a movement for a long time, where employers try to characterize workers in employment-like  relationships as independent contractors. There are a bunch of reasons they do it, and they almost never create any benefit to the worker. As the worker, you may not have a real choice in the matter. But it's important to understand the implications. The Differences There are a bunch of differences between independent contractors and employees. The most significant are that statutes dealing with 'employees' often don't extend the same treatments to contractors. Occupational health and safety obligations stay largely intact, but contractors don't get to rely on employment standards legislation (though there's one weird Ontario case suggesting otherwise), the employer doesn...