Federally Regulated Employees - Part 3: Have You Been Dismissed?

In this final installment of the trilogy outlining your workplace rights and obligations as a federally regulated employee, we look at the Canada Labour Code provisions dealing with dismissal and termination. As a federally regulated employee, you can be terminated for just cause, without notice.

If, however, you are terminated without cause, your employer must provide you with two weeks written notice or two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice. Furthermore, if you have completed 1 year of continuous service and you were fired, you are also entitled to “Severance Pay” in the (greater of) two days of pay per year of service or five days’ pay. If you quit, you are not entitled to Severance Pay.

If you did not receive notice or your proper financial entitlement, and you meet the following four criteria, you have 90 days from the date of your dismissal to file a complaint to Labour Canada under Section 240 of the CLC for “unjust dismissal”.

· You were not a manager
· Your termination wasn’t due to a genuine redundancy or a discontinuance of your position.
· You worked continuously for more than 1 year.
· You were not a member of a union.

Potential remedies are broader than those available to provincial employees (who fall under the Employment Standards Act- see “Know Your Rights: Provincially Regulated Employees”) and include: lost wages and benefits since termination plus interest, reinstatement, legal costs, a letter of reference and/or “any other like thing that it is equitable to require the employer to do in order to remedy or counteract any consequence of the dismissal”.

Concluding Note
For more information on your rights and obligations as an employee in a federally regulated industry, please contact the nearest Human Resources and Skills Development Canada Labour Office at 1-800-641-4049.

You can also visit the HRSDC website: http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/index.shtml.

Next instalment: Provincially Regulated Employees - Part 4: What Legislation Applies to You?

Federally Regulated Employees - Part 2: Your Basic Rights

Hours of Work
The Canada Labour Code defines a work day as 8 hours, and a work week as 40 hours per week. Hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week (“overtime”) should be paid at a rate of not less than one-half times the regular rate of pay, and you can’t be required to work more than 48 hours per week.

Reporting Pay
If you show up to work at the request of your employer, you are entitled to a minimum of 3 hours of regular pay, even if there is no work to perform.

Statutory Holidays
Under the CLC, you are entitled to 9 paid statutory holidays per year. If a holiday falls on your day off, you are still entitled to holiday pay. You and your employer can add a day to your annual vacation or your employer can grant you a holiday with pay on a mutually agreeable day. When New Year’s Day, Canada Day, Remembrance Day, Christmas Day or Boxing Day fall on a weekend day that is a non-working day, you are entitled to a holiday with pay on the work day that immediately precedes or follows the holiday. The next statutory holiday will be Canada Day.

Sick Leave
As a federally regulated employee, you are protected for absences not exceeding 12 weeks and you will be required to provide a medical certificate after you have returned to work. The CLC protects you against dismissal, demotion, layoff or suspension because of an absence due to illness or injury. If a loved one becomes ill, you may apply for “Compassionate Care Leave” which allows for all employees to apply for up to 8 weeks of time off to care for and to support a family member who is seriously ill.

Maternity and Parental Leave
You are entitled to up to 17 weeks of maternity leave if you have completed 6 consecutive months of continuous employment. You can take this leave any time during the period that begins 11 weeks before your expected date of delivery and ends 17 weeks after the actual delivery date. You must provide your employer with written notice of your intent to take your maternity leave at least four weeks prior to your maternity leave. You and your spouse are also entitled to a maximum of 37 weeks of “parental leave” which can be shared in any proportion, so long as the aggregate is less than 52 weeks. For example, a woman who has opted to take the entire 17 week entitlement of maternity leave may only claim a maximum of 35 weeks parental leave.

Next instalment - Part 3: Have You Been Dismissed?

Federally Regulated Employees - Part 1: What Legislation Applies to You?

Corinna Traill

With the Canadian Union of Postal Workers currently out on strike and the federal Air Canada employees legislated back to work last week, this is a good time to start thinking about your workplace rights. This is the first instalment of a six-part “Know Your Rights” blog series describing the workplace rights and obligations for both federally and provincially regulated employees.

First, you must first determine which legislation applies to ¬you.

If you work in an industry that falls into any of the following categories, then you are part of the 10% of Canadian workers who are “federally regulated” and whose workplace rights and obligations are described in the Canada Labour Code (“CLC”). Interestingly, Ontario has a higher portion of federally regulated employees (40%) than any other region in the country!

Federally regulated industries include:
• Banking (bank tellers)
• Telecommunications (telephone and cable companies, radio and television broadcasting)
• Canada Post
• Pipelines
• Air Transportation (airport and airline employees)
• Railway and Road Transportation (GO, CN and VIA Rail employees, truck drivers)
• Customs

Next instalment – Part 2: Your Basic Rights