A Toronto employment lawyer has one piece of advice to HR amid the ongoing confusion over the Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (IDEL): Don't make assumptions.
This issue has arisen in several recent mediations that I have conducted. As regular readers will know, Employment Insurance benefits are usually deducted from money paid out in lieu of notice of dismissal. At mediation, the plaintiff will be asked if they received EI benefits; if they did, then a mechanism for obtaining a statement of account/debt from Service Canada, and a holdback of funds to cover any repayment obligation, is typical.
“We have now this complete state of uncertainty,” says Stuart Rudner, an employment lawyer and managing partner of Rudner Law. “Because we have two courts, within a period of about a month, that have interpreted the exact same issue in completely different ways.”
Stuart talks to Brian Bourke of 570NEWS about the recent confirmation by an Ontario Superior Court judge that temporary layoffs are constructive dismissal, leaving employers liable.
The global pandemic has acted as a catalyst for organizational change, revolutionizing the way we think about workplace practices — particularly regarding employment law. As a result, the definition of employee misconduct, and the types of conduct that can warrant…
A recent ruling by an Ontario judge confirmed what some employment lawyers have been saying for more than a year — that many businesses may have actually constructively dismissed their employees when enacting temporary layoffs, putting themselves on the hook…
A recent ruling from an Ontario court could see the “floodgates open” to a slew of new cases against employers that temporarily laid off workers in the early days of the pandemic, says an employment lawyer. “This is a really…
With restaurants closed to dining, many servers who used to make a large portion of their pay in the form of tips are still working — but they are no longer serving alcohol on premises and are getting a fraction…
“I think this case is huge,” says Stuart Rudner, employment lawyer and managing partner at Rudner Law. “We've been waiting for this decision for a year now.”
Employers looking to take the government up on an offer to host workplace COVID-19 vaccination clinics need to weigh the benefits and the risks first, says Ontario employment lawyer Nadia Zaman.
