Provincially Regulated Employees - Part 5: Your Basic Rights

Hours of Work
Under the Employment Standards Act, the maximum number of hours you can be required to work in a day is 8 hours, and the maximum per week is 48 hours. You and your employer can, however, agree in writing to work more than this. You must also receive at least 11 consecutive hours off work each day and if you are a shift worker, you must have at least 8 hours off work between shifts. This requirement doesn’t apply if the total time you would have worked on both shifts is less than 13 hours.

If you are a “homemaker” who has been hired by a third party to perform domestic services for a family in a private residence, you are not entitled to work (or be paid) for more than 12 hours per day.

Breaks
You are entitled to a 30 minute meal break if you work five hours in a row, but this break is unpaid, is not considered “hours of work” and cannot be counted towards overtime. Your employer is not required to give you a coffee or cigarette breaks.

Overtime
Overtime begins after you have worked 44 hours in a work week, and is calculated at one and half times your regular rate of pay.
Your employer can’t force you to work overtime, but you and your employer can agree to a longer week. Liquor servers, hotel, resort and restaurant employees must also work a minimum of 50 hours per week in order to qualify for overtime pay.

If you are a construction worker involved in “road building”, your overtime doesn’t begin until you have worked 50 hours, and if the road-building is on streets, parking lots or highways, you must work at least 55 hours to receive overtime pay. If you are a construction worker doing on-site road maintenance, you are also not entitled to overtime unless you have worked at least 55 hours per week.

Reporting Pay – the “Three Hour Rule”
When you are required to report to work for a shift that is three hours or longer, but you work fewer than three hours, you are entitled to the greater of a) three hours’ pay at Minimum Wage or b) your regular wage for the time worked. The “Three Hour Rule” does not apply if you are a student, or if you were scheduled to work fewer than three hours.

Statutory Holidays
Unless your occupation fell within the list of exemptions described in Part 4 of this blog series, you are entitled to take the 9 public holidays in Ontario off work and to be paid public holiday pay for each of these days. Your employer should calculate your public holiday pay, but for your own information, the amount is calculated by adding all the regular wages you earned in the four weeks before the work week with the public holiday, plus all the vacation pay owed to you with respect to those four work weeks, divided by 20. There is an online calculator available here.

If you agree in writing to work on the holiday, you should be paid either public holiday pay plus premium pay (one and one-half times your regular rate of pay) for the hours worked or your regular pay, and you can receive another day off (a “substitute” holiday) with holiday pay.

Sick Leave/Personal Emergency Leave
Unlike federal employees, who are entitled to sick leave under the Canada Labour Code, if you are a provincially regulated employee, you must rely on whatever sick policy your employer created and wrote into your employment contract. There are, however, “Personal Emergency Leave” provisions in the ESA, which, if there are 50 or more employees at your place of work, can provide you with up to 10 days off every calendar year if you are ill, or if a member of your family has a medical emergency. You may also take Personal Emergency Leave for pre-planned (elective) surgery, but it cannot be for unnecessary cosmetic surgery unrelated to an illness or injury. Furthermore, you may be eligible for Personal Emergency Leave because of an “urgent matter”. You must inform your employer before starting the leave that you will be taking the leave or, if you are unable to do this, you must inform your employer as soon as you can. You do not have to give notice in writing; oral notice is sufficient.

If a loved one becomes ill, you may apply for “Family Emergency 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. “Family member” includes your spouse, parent or child.

Maternity and Parental Leave
If you have worked for at least 13 weeks, you can take up to 17 weeks of unpaid leave with benefits, so long as you provide your employer with two weeks’ written notice of your intention to leave. New parents who have worked for 13 weeks may take 35 weeks unpaid “parental leave”, and they may take 37 weeks if the mother did not take her maternity leave. Two weeks’ written notice to your employer is also required for parental leave. You may take both maternity and parental leave, and the period of maternity and parental leave is included when you calculate your length of employment, service and seniority. Your employer is not allowed to “punish” you for taking pregnancy or parental leave, and your employer must offer you, upon your return, the same job, or a comparable job with equivalent wages and benefits.

Final instalment – Part 6: Have You Been Dismissed?

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

If your job did not fall under any of the “federally regulated” categories described in the first instalment of this six-part blog series educating workers about workplace rights and obligations, you are probably a “provincially regulated” employee, and the legislation which applies to you is the Employment Standards Act (“ESA”). The ESA contains the minimum guarantees and protections for you as a worker in Ontario but it is important to note there are many occupations which are exempt from ESA protection or which have “special” applicable rules.

If your job falls in the list below, most provisions in Employment Standards Act do not apply to you, with the exception of minimum wage and the termination provisions, which are still applicable.

Managers and supervisors
Farm workers
Crown employees
Fire fighters, Paramedics
Taxi drivers
Hunting and Fishing guides
Salespersons on commission (who sell away from employer’s office, incl. real estate salespeople or brokers)
“Category 1 Professionals” and students in these professions (information technology, engineers, lawyers, accountants, surveyors, massage therapists, optometrists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, chiropractors, doctors, psychologists and architects)

Minimum Wage
The General Minimum Wage in Ontario is $10.25 per hour but if you serve alcohol at a license establishment, you are entitled only to $8.90 per hour. The Student Minimum Wage, which applies to students under the age of 18 who work 28 hours a work or less when school is in session, during a break or the summer, is $9.60 per hour.

Finally, if you are a “Homeworker” and you are paid to do work in your own home (i.e. word processing, telephone soliciting, sewing, manufacturing or who prepare food for resale), the Employment Standards Act guarantees you 110% of the General Minimum Wage or $11.28 per hour.

Next instalment – Part 5: Your Basic Rights

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

Government pledges to help workers cheated by employers

Workers who have been victims of “wage theft” and other workplace mistreatment must not be afraid to come forward, Ontario Labour Minister Charles Sousa said Monday.

“I say this to those that are feeling intimidated: Call the ministry,” Sousa said in response to a report about two nannies who together are owed more than $200,000 in unpaid wages, overtime and holiday pay from their employers.

“We will react and we will ensure that their issues are covered and do everything in our power to protect them,” Sousa said.

Read the full story in the Toronto Star

Caregiver sues former employer, claiming $162,000 in lost wages

At 21, Lilliane Namukasa left Uganda to make a new life in Canada as a live-in caregiver for two small children.

But after working full-time for two years, she was paid just $2,100 by her Brampton employer and then fired without cause, forcing her into a homeless shelter, Namukasa says in a claim filed in Ontario Superior Court.

This is despite an employment contract that entitled Namukasa to receive approximately $22,000 a year, before taxes, minus $2,860 for room and board, she says in the claim.

Namukasa is seeking $162,000 for breach of contract and unpaid wages, statutory holiday pay and vacation pay. She is further claiming $33,000 for wrongful dismissal.

The allegations have not been proved in court.

The Workers’ Action Centre, a non-profit worker-based organization, says the case is one more example of wage theft faced by Ontario’s most vulnerable workers.

The centre, which is holding a Queen’s Park news conference Monday, is highlighting Namukasa’s plight and that of another live-in caregiver, as part of its campaign to beef up the province’s outdated Employment Standards Act.

“Workers should not be forced to take court action to recover unpaid wages, overtime and other employment standards entitlements,” says the centre’s coordinator Deena Ladd.

Read the article in the Toronto Star
Go to the Workers' Action Centre