Edmonton Employment Law

With schools reopening, there are already lots of kids being isolated on a 'close contact' basis - leaving parents and others, and their employers, in a situation of wondering whether the contacts of those children should also be isolating. But the financial concerns of self-isolation, for both employers and employees, are serious and legitimate. Employees don't want to stay home from work if it means that they don't get paid; employers are legitimately reluctant to pay employees who are unable to perform work. Before we get into the nuts and bolts here, a few preliminary notes: There's no case law on any of this. I can extrapolate reasonable conclusions based on existing principles, but COVID may well change how these principles are interpreted and applied, so it's hard to say anything with confidence. The below assumes that no sick benefits or short-term disability benefits are engaged. There may be scenarios where that changes the analysis, but there's go...

This pound of flesh which I demand of him is dearly bought; 'tis mine and I will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law: There is no force in the decrees of Venice. -Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1. Employers, concerned about having to provide potentially prohibitive 'pay in lieu of reasonable notice' when dismissing employees, often require employees to sign contracts limiting their entitlements on termination. There are plenty of ways that employees can challenge these clauses following termination: A new employment contract for an existing relationship might be said to lack 'fresh consideration'; an old employment contract for an evolved relationship might be said to have lost its 'substratum'; a clause may be void for a conflict with the applicable employment standards legislation; etc. In the case of Waksdale v. Swegon North America Inc. , Ontario's Court of Appeal recently dramatically expanded the category of contracts void for con...

This week, Professor Doorey published an article I wrote about Alberta Bill 32 on his Canadian Law of Work Forum.  I'm not going to reproduce it here - just click the link:   http://lawofwork.ca/bill32-charter/ Consider this post a bit of a meta-narrative, where I'll prattle on about some other perspectives not fully addressed in that article. Bill 32 which passed on Tuesday and received royal assent yesterday, is attracting national attention, particularly because of its treatment of political speech. It's getting attention for other reasons, too - my social media feeds have been filled with CUPE ads drawing attention to its overtime reform, and there's concern about limitations to secondary picketing - but in most of these ways it's more or less undoing changes by the Notley government, if perhaps going a bit further (not to say that some of these aren't constitutionally questionable in their own right).  The 'political activity' issue is probably Bill...

Introduction:  An Old Tale In the early days of the 20th Century, two ships, the Port Caledonia  and the Anna , were sheltering from a storm in Holyhead Harbour in Wales, when the Port Caledonia  came free of its berth and began drifting toward the Anna .  The master of the Port Caledonia  called for a tug, but was quoted an exorbitant fee, " £1,000 or no rope".  After protesting, he agreed to pay the fee out of desperation - but the courts later reduced the fee by 80%, because the original bargain was so inequitable, so unjust, and so unreasonable that it could not be allowed to stand. In general, Canadian courts respect freedom of contract.  However, there are a variety of circumstances, which are traditionally quite narrow, in which they will decline to enforce the terms of an agreement between parties. On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Uber Technologies Inc. v. Heller , which will have significant ramifications ...

Here's a dime-a-dozen scenario: Employee gets dismissed without notice.  She sues her employer, but in the mean time, she applies for EI benefits - after all, she needs the cash.  When she settles her wrongful dismissal claim, Service Canada looks at the income as creating an 'overpayment' - she may have to repay some or all of the EI benefits she received. I had assumed that the same would be true of CERB.  Now that I'm looking more closely, I'm not so sure. You probably know that you can't get CERB benefits if you're making more than $1000 in the eligibility period, right?  Well, at the margins, there's always a question of what kind of income gets included in that.  So we look at the definition of 'income' for the purpose of the eligibility exclusion at section 6(1)(b) of the CERB Act ...and it turns out that it's really narrow. they do not receive, in respect of the consecutive days on which they have ceased working, (i)  sub...