Do You Understand the Canadian Employee Dismissal Process?
Understanding the laws where your business operates is integral. When you follow the rules, you’ll be able to ensure you avoid legal battles, as well as continue to grow and achieve your business goals.
This is particularly important when it comes to employment legislation. These laws govern how you deal with your employees, including hiring, contracting, and even dismissing people. The laws are designed to protect workers. Without them, companies could easily violate people’s rights. Even with these laws in place, human rights are sometimes violated by businesses, often unwittingly.
In places like Canada, where the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the UN Declaration of Human Rights
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For example, employment law may legislate the kinds of questions an employer can and can’t ask during an interview. Generally speaking, discrimination during the hiring process is illegal in Canada. If a job candidate feels they weren’t considered for a job due to discrimination or bias, they can bring a suit against your company.
Employment law also governs how you treat your employees during the time they work for you. It may dictate things such as paid and unpaid breaks, shift lengths, duration between shifts, vacation time, overtime, and more.
Typically, employment legislation also extends to the process of dismissing an employee. This is the end of the employee lifecycle. If an employee is not dismissed, they may decide to quit or retire. These actions also represent the end of the employee lifecycle.
Reasons for Dismissal
The first thing you should know about dismissing an employee in Canada is that you must have a reason to do so. This comes back to concerns about discrimination and human rights. For example, it is illegal for an employer to dismiss a female employee because she decided to have a
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An employee who has worked for an employer for three years receives three weeks’ notice, and an employee who has worked for you for eight years would receive eight weeks’ notice of the dismissal.
When You Can’t Give Notice
Sometimes, you’re not in a position to give enough notice to an employee in accordance with the law. Perhaps head office gave you short notice about dismissals happening two weeks from now. Some people affected have worked for you for many years. In another scenario, an employee who has been problematic may not be someone you wish to have back in the office, so you dismiss them without proper notice.
In these cases, you have the option to pay the employee for the notice period. If you can only give an employee of eight years two weeks’ notice, you’ll need to compensate them for the remaining six weeks of notice they should have received. Again, the law varies among provinces, so be sure to check specific requirements where you operate.
A Probation
The legal rights of its employees must not be violated. "For the assurance of smooth operations, Air Canada comply with all the law defined criterion such as no excessive burden etc on employees as per defined by the law. The safety, hygiene, and effective regulations are factors that are legally imposed, and Air Canada do operate within the capacity of
Constructive discharge, or constructive dismissal, means that the employee resigned from their position as a result of the employer creating an intolerable and difficult environment. Constructive discharge is viewed as the employee being pressured to quit due to the employer making changes to the working conditions or responsibilities, but from a legal position, the employee quit due to forced termination, or fired without good cause. ("TimsLaw.com » Constructive Discharge - Being forced to quit - Tim 's Missouri Employment Law Info Site," n.d.)
There was evidence shown that the unfair dismissal requirements were the furthermost conflicting and inconsistent from the manager’s perspective. The Fair Work Act applied unfair dismissal requirements for entirely workers, regardless of the population of workers in the business (Chapman, 2015). The Fair Work Act presents two cases that dismissal could be reasonable, including other dismissal and summary dismissal. In the first case, the law offers a sequence of stages such as concluded checklist, copies of notice, declaration of dismissal and a witness announcement with signature that managers must follow with the intention to reduce the problem (Chapman, 2015). In the second case, managers may dismiss a worker without notice due to theft or fraud. As the consequence, the amount of cases in relation to unfair dismissal has risen significantly since the Fair Work Act implemented as law. In addition to the growing records of cases in relation to unfair dismissal, the judgements from Fair Work Australia showed some contradicting clarifications of the Fair Work Act (Chapman, 2015). According to an example, a business in Albury- Wodonga had dismissed an employee due to the breach of occupational and safety laws after an employee continually denied to wear safety glasses at work (Sloan, 2011). However, after checking the worker’s reinstatement, the Fair Work Australia stated that the worker had a family and he has found it challenging to
Canadian workplaces today seem to be a fairly diverse place, with a blend of many religions, ethnicities, and genders present. However, although people preach affirmative action and melting pots in current times, many inequality and power issues still abound. One strikingly noticeable example is gender discrimination. Women in the workforce face many challenges like smaller wages, harassment, male privilege in hiring or promotions, and lack of support when pregnant or raising children. One half of the planet is women, and it can be assumed the same for Canada, but they still face judgment at work because they lack the authority to dispute against big corporations or even their male supervisor. It cannot be argued that Canadian women’s status has worsened over the past hundred years, of course, thanks to feminism and activism. However, their status is not as high as it could be. Women as a group first started fighting for workplace equality during the second wave of feminism, from the 1960s to the 1990s. Legislation was approved during the second wave to try to bring gender equality to the workplace. Feminists both collided and collaborated with unions and employers to ensure women received fair treatment in an occupation. Quebec had the same issues, only the province approached the conflict differently than English Canada with its own unique viewpoint. It became clear that women were entering the workplace and did not plan on leaving. Second-wave feminism in Canada shifted power from the government and businesses to women in order to try to bring equality, although the discrimination never completely disappeared.
Teelucksingh, C., & Edward-Galabuzi, G. (2005). C. Teelucksingh & G. Edward-Galabuzi (Eds.), Working Precariously: The impact of race and immigrants status on employment opportunities and outcomes in CanadaToronto: The Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
During our initial assessment, we looked at the facts that still needed to be determined and have concluded that Lawson was one of many employees who was fired within that week. We have also ascertained that Lawson’s habitual lateness was not always documented, nor did she receive any warnings in writing only verbal ones. Therefore, Greene’s needs to implement “proactive measures to avoid a similar situation in the future, such as an employee handbook that outlines the rules, consequences if the rules are broken and consistent regular documentation in writing for infractions” (Nagele-Piazza, 2017). Written documentation of an employee’s exit interview that presents the employee with a copy of any legal documents they agreed to at the beginning of their employment should also be completed, so the departing staff member understands the ramifications if they choose to share confidential company information. Lastly, providing outgoing staff with assistance in finding future employment will maintain relationships and be looked upon favorably by all associated with this unfortunate decision to downsize
Legislation in Ontario affects human resources. Some can be bad well others can be beneficial to the workplace. My paper will be focusing on the federal legislations in Ontario and how it is improving various non-unionized workplaces. At the end of my report I will be summarizing the concept of family status related to the 11 prohibited grounds in a case study regarding a single mom and how she almost lost her job with CN Rail.
Racial discrimination in the workplace has been a persistent theme in Canada’s history as well as present-day times. The occurrence of actions and attitudes that impose a sense of one being less equal than another on the basis of one’s race in Canada’s workplace inhibits both our nation’s ability to move forward as well as strengthen unification within our country. The belief in a more egalitarian society, where one’s race and ethnic background have little to no impact on employees (or potential employees) standings within the job market, would seemingly be reinforced by the majority of Canadians, who consistently show support for Canada’s multicultural identity. Couple that with the noticeable strides Canada has made in the past several decades through legislation, in order to eliminate discriminatory practices and actions within the workplace, and one would likely assume that racial discrimination within the workplace is largely a concern of the past. However, current research supports the argument that the level of which racial discrimination occurs today is increasing, and as such it persists to be a key problem in the current workplace of the nation. In the workplace, racial discrimination is often seen with regard to uneven access to jobs, unfair selection and promotion criteria (as well as access to the means in order to meet this criteria), and workplace harassment. This paper compares similar findings of two articles; the first, Racial inequality in employment in Canada, as was published in the Canadian Public Administration (CPA), and the second, What Are Immigrants’ Experiences of Discrimination in the Workplace?, published by the Toronto Immigrant Employment Data Initiative (TIEDI).
Are you thinking about moving operations into Canada? You may have had a Canadian presence for some time now, but you’ve run into a few issues when it comes to dealing with employment legislation and payroll.
...ent of an employment contract. This is likely to be troublesome point for some time to come and likely to work on case by case basis.
The process of carefully looking at every decision and the repercussions of that decision is simply good business practice. Every company audits its decisions to make sure its what is right for the company. Firing practices should be no different. To draw some arbitrary line at this point to allow for firing an employee without cause is unethical and egregious business conduct. Due process is simply a sound way of carrying out the practice of removing an employee from the services of a c...
The decision to terminate an employee may be difficult for some managers depending on the situation at hand. Today, many states have adopted the employment at will law to fire employees for any or no reason, with the exception of employees that have a contract in place. According to Erickson (2008), “The basis for an employer to terminate an employee without being sued is the employment-at-will doctrine. This doctrine is a statement that is signed by both the employee and employer at the time of hire that states that the employee can quit at any time for any reason without notice and that the employer can terminate the employee at any time for any legal reason.” On the contrary to the definition of “At-Will” employment, Pozgar (2012) states, “The employment-at-will common law doctrine is not truly applicable in today’s society and many courts have recognized this fact. The twentieth century has witnessed significant changes in socio-economic values that have led to reassessment of the common law rule (p. 494). An example of an organization hiring on an employment on an at-will basis but terminating an employee without justifying the cause of action was the case of Joseph Casias versus Corporation. By law, an employer has to follow guidelines that essentially make ethos rules null and void because there is nothing to adhere to, especially in a circumstance where the employee is terminated by the at-will policy. In this situation, if the employer terminated by allegations that this employee was an active drug user. However, by law, according to Mr. Casias and his attorney, this employee had legitimate reasons for being involved in obtaining and smoking marijuana. As discussed in the case, the law protect employees from illegitimate...
All terminations must be reviewed and approved by Human Resources. Leave of Absence for specific medical conditions can be extended or adjusted as a reasonable accommodation where such extension or adjustment would not result in undue hardship to the company. Two or more leaves of absence for the same or related reasons, separated by a return to work of less than two weeks, shall constitute one consecutive leave in determining benefit eligibility. Each approved Leave of Absence will result in a single occurrence under the Attendance
An employer may dismiss an employee for a fair reason - this means the dismissal is substantively fair and if the employer has followed a fair procedure - the dismissal is procedurally fair.
In this case, Saito Sdn. Bhd. unilaterally terminated the benefits enjoyed by Roslan. When Roslan believes that her employer is accused of breaching an implied term of the employee’s contract of the employment as her employer had removed the benefits from her and generally it clear that the employee is no longer important. Therefore, constructive dismissal occurred. In this situation, Roslan was advised that make a formal complaint to her employer requesting that the problem be rectified. For instance, Roslan should write a formal letter to her employer asking for the reinstating the previously benefits. If no satisfactory rectification is made, the employee can walk off the job. The law of constructive dismissal requires the employee to leave in a timely manner. She must not delay too long.