Ensuring eSignature Lawfulness for Leave of Absence Agreement in United States

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Leave of Absence Agreement in United States

[Music] [Music] well hello again welcome employment law show john schools lior samphiru beside me taking all of the heavy lift and the phone calls which we're going to get from our radio show which has been on for many years by the way i'll tell you right away employmentlawyer.ca the website to find a station near you we can catch that anytime you want to call leor member of the team outside the uh the half hour of the radio show or the tv show here no problem 1-855-821-5900 and help at employmentlawyer.ca uh leora we're going to get into leave of absence what employees need to know about that a little later in the show but lots to get through before that so week that was what do you got pal hey john i am always glad to be here really a pleasure i think this show means a lot to me because i get to to inform people and help people that's really what this uh this half hour is really all about if you want to know about your workplace rights about your work issues find out solutions to the problems you may be facing with your job with your boss with your severance this is the time this is the place we talk about that every week and we try to provide all the information that you may not be able to find elsewhere it's the rights you don't even necessarily know you have it's really the right that your employer employer is not going to tell you about but we're going to tell you about it so if you want to know and learn and get educated and be armed with the knowledge by your workplace rights now is exactly the time to do that but of course you know we only are here for 30 minutes if we can't and if we do not cover everything that you want to know about or your workplace issues not a problem no issue we'll give you my contact information so that you can call me and we can have a discussion about those issues specific to you but as always i want to talk about a situation that came across my desk and john i'll put this in the category of near-miss or close call whatever you want to call it so i spoke with a gentleman who unfortunately lost his job many of the of the victims of covert 19 lost his job because of it now he had been with his employer for six years and he was offered a severance package of 15 weeks pay now he was gonna have to return it on on a monday and he had actually signed it and in fact emailed his employer saying i'm gonna be delivering it to you on monday well on the weekend wouldn't you know what he saw exactly this show the show you're watching right now uh and so he kind of paid attention and he said wait a second this this guy handsome guy by the way on tv says severance offers are often inadequate does that mean a mine is inadequate so instead of monday going to the office to hand over a severance package he called me and we went over a severance package together and john he was owed about eight months pay eight months pay now again again he was offered 15 weeks pay that's i know three and a half months pay so he was offered less than half of what he was actually owed and for him that meant about 37 38 000 difference a lot of money okay and because of that he obviously didn't end up signing end up signing i'm gonna help him get that severance package but think about that near miss if he hadn't uh watched the tv if he had turned his uh tv on 30 minutes later he wouldn't have gotten this information and i'm telling you this not because this is an unusual situation what i've just described here is a very common one first of all people are often offered most of the time they're offered inadequate severance usually to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars that's issue number one but the bigger issue is the fact that most people just like this gentleman don't necessarily know that they're owed more he thought that 15 weeks severance after six years of employment was adequate he thought well it's more than two weeks per year so that sounds good just the right sound to it not even close he was owed eight months pay so please don't be in that situation do not sign that offer 24 hours later you would have signed off on that severance offer lost almost 40 thousand dollars please don't let that happen to you and i'll make it even easier than just contacting me you can go to severancepaycalculator.com or pocketemploymentlawyer.ca to find out what you're owed grab your smartphone go to pocketemploymentlawyer.ca there you go all the information is right there you can calculate how much you're owed so many people's job has been impacted recently severance packages are a common thing the thing these days so please do the right thing now this guy obviously saw the show so he kind of saved his own bacon he didn't sign it and got you involved but this guy felt like he was pretty much in a hurry got it friday or thursday had felt he had to have it back by monday or maybe they told him to i would assume there was some sort of deadline on that thing but he did he didn't have to pay attention to that either did he well yeah he was let go on a on a monday and he was told the following monday you have to sign it and return it back to us there was a deadline on that piece of paper and he was gonna do that he thought well i have to because they told me there's a deadline but you know it hopefully our regular viewers know that that deadline is meaningless your legal rights don't expire on friday or monday or tuesday you have two years to pursue your legal rights it's a pressure tactic that's all it is and can you imagine they owe them another 40 000 but they say we're gonna pay you less but you have to accept this by monday that's silly it's absurd so that deadline you can absolutely disregard and if he'd hand it back there's no going back right he can't take a backstory i didn't mean to if he hands it back to the company goes home realizes wait a second they owe me more right and calls them and say i take it back too late there is no taking it back once you've signed it and return it to the company it's done so please don't let that happen to you every day hopefully not every day but certainly every week i speak to someone who is in that situation who signed off of that severance package because they didn't know any better well if you're watching us you know better so it's not going to happen to you so reach out you know 1-855-821-5900 we put the number on the screen all the time employmentlawyer.ca is the website which is where we're going to go right now lior that is where you can find our radio show that's been running for better part of nine years now we take the phone calls from it playing back here we talk about him phone call number one for today's show is coming up right now my wife was temporarily laid off on march 26 and we were waiting for the roe record of employment we were told it would come it would come we never received it but now hr has called my wife she's worked at this place for five years and asked her what she wants to do if she wants to resign i don't know if she'd be entitled to severance ask her to resign ask her to resign and this whole situation is so almost confusing the company puts the employee on a layoff because of kobe 19 fine and then the company calls the employees saying do you want to resign why would the person want to resign the whole scenario is just absurd to me so let's break this down a bit when when this person was put on a temporary lab said that was back in march that temporary layoff was a termination so at that moment if she wanted to she could have chosen to treat that layoff as a termination same thing with you at home if you've been put on a temporary layoff you have the right if you want to treat that as a termination now you don't have to wait to see what the company does so number one this person could have gotten their severance then that hasn't changed now her employer said well we may not bring you back so do you want to resign that's silly that's absurd that's a termination so it's like saying well i'm going to hit you and tell me if you want to be hit you've already been hit it's done it's over well in this case she's already been terminated so she is absolutely owed severance so the question then becomes well how much severance we know she's been she's been terminated we know she's owed severance so how much pocketemploymentlawyer.ca the place you can go to find out so let's take this information let's plug it into pocketemploymentlawyer.ca so we can see how much she's owed so let's say she's in a professional job working there for five years i picked an age let's say she's 63 years old we can see on pocket employment lawyer.ca that she's owed anywhere from eight to ten months pay eight to ten months of compensation now depending on her income that could be anywhere from you know 50 to 60 or a thousand dollars or even more than that now this is an employee who was told that she could resign she's been terminated a temporary layoff even if it's because of covert 19 is a termination or at least gives you the right to treat that as a termination for her severance up to 10 months pain another place for you to go terminationquestions.com yes i'm going to throw another website at you terminationquestions.com you can lay them in there and leore a member of the team we'll get back to you with a full answer want to get to one of those today on the show leor first one for the show comes from kay says i just lost my job of four years with a software company i signed the same 12-month contract with them every year i know that i'm not old severance because i'm a contractor and not an employee but my husband doesn't agree husband is very smart well uh it is rare i'll say this that the husband is right usually it's the the the wife that's right at least in my house uh but this is exactly but this is one of those rare cases that the husband is absolutely right and all jokes aside most people many people are misclassified as independent contractor now if she's been working there regular hours full time for four years she's an employee it doesn't matter what she signed doesn't matter that piece of paper that she signed so she's an independent contractor no by name only she's not really she's an employee so how do we know if someone is truly an employee well ask yourself do i have a regular job do i go to work do my job come home do the same thing the next day do i have a boss am i part of the company the organization if the answer to any of those questions is yes you are an employee so if this person is let go after four years she's owed severance that could easily be six months pay now she may not think she's owed because she thinks she's an independent contractor the company that she works for may not realize that they owe her that because they think she's an independent contractor but the only one that gets to decide if she's an employee or a contractor is the law the law makes that determination doesn't matter what she thinks doesn't matter what the company thinks so because of that that's what the answer is six months severance doesn't matter what she signed doesn't matter what you sign if you're in that situation if you're an employee you're owed severance as an employee so she signed like four contracts was there you know one a year for four years what's the threshold where it becomes where it doesn't matter if you signed a contract five six ten we see that often with employers that you signed a number of fixed term contracts i see that often let's say with teachers private school teachers that every school year you sign a new contract for the school year to come here's the the reality if you sign three or more of these contracts they become meaningless you're now considered to be a regular indefinite employee and the reason why that's important is that at some point if the company now says well this time we're not going to renew the contract this time the contract ends you're out of here well they still have to pay you severance because that contract is meaningless you're now no longer on a fixed term contract so three usually is that magic number john does and how far if you've realized that you've been let go so nine year old sevens how far does that go back if i've signed a contract every year for 12 years okay we've determined i'm actually an employee does my severance go back 12 years or just three years in absolutely 12 years 20 years goes back to your start date so if you signed the same contract for 12 years now you're let go you're owed severance is a 12 year employee which could mean a year's pay could be as much as 18 months paid depending on your position so yeah it goes back to your actual start date all right coming up here leaf of absence what that means for employees stick around for that in the meantime we'll give you a number one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred help employment lawyer dot ca the email it's employment law show don't go anywhere you lost your job they only gave you two weeks of severance per year worked but where can you find out what you're really owed i'm going to sovereignspaycalculator.com find out how much you're owed right now severancepaycalculator.com you've been denied long-term disability you think you're powerless but you have a lot more power than you think i'll tell you a secret it's a numbers game for the insurance company they're betting on you walking away from money that they owe you don't make that mistake we resolve disability claims all the time we force insurance to pay what they owe we're in your corner call savannah and his team 1-855-821-5900 or go to disabilityrights.ca you lost your job they said they had a good reason but you think you've been wrongfully dismissed now what are you going to do i'm going to employmentlawyer.ca always check with the employment lawyer first at [Music] employmentlawyer.ca and welcome back employment law show leo sanfiro john scholes leave of absence i'm sure you're familiar with that term maybe possibly you've been on one but let's break it down uh over the next few minutes leo leave of absence if you're an employee what you need to know what is breaking down a leave of absence well a leave of absence is a generic term that refers to tom time away from work time that's a an approved time from work where you're still an employee of the company you haven't quite haven't been let go you're just away from work your employment essentially gets suspended for a period of time until you come back there's a number of types of leaves of absences so we want to talk a bit about when that can happen and what the rules are when it comes to those leaves of absences we've seen them a lot certainly now with covert 19 sometimes people have taken leaves of absence maybe because they didn't want to go back to work they didn't feel safe maybe in other situations they were taking leave of absence to take care of their family member so we want to really address those so that people know what their rights are and even for employers to know what rights and obligations are if you're an employee looking for a leave of absence you go and you ask your employer can they refuse to give you the leave so there are some leaves of absences where it's not up to the employer okay so for example if you have a medical condition and your doctor says you need to be off work that's a medical leave of absence you can take that you don't need permission as long as you have the doctor's note there's other types of leave of absences depending on where you are there's leaves of absences that allow you to care for family members there are leaves of absences to uh provide care for for someone that's sick so there's those leaves of absences that are mandated by law and an employer doesn't have a say in it now but there's other leaves of absences where maybe it's something that you do need to talk to your employer for example if it is a situation where you know what i'm not comfortable right now going to work because of corporate 19. thankfully i'm not sick thankfully my family is not sick i just don't want to be at work i want to be at home i want to take some time off while i'm while we're dealing with covert 19. that is a situation where the employer does not have to by law provide you a leave of absence so that is one where you can and have to in fact ask for that permission and of course if the employer says yes no problem then you can be on that leave of absence but not without the employer's consent and approval how about keeping up the old paycheck does the employer have to continue paying you while you're on a leave so generally no the answer is that an employer does not have to pay you while you're on a leave of absence now some employers have policies with respect to sick days so you may be able to use those sick days you may also have compensation through other means for example if it's a medical issue you may have short-term or long-term disability benefits through your employer so that allows you to get paid but the employer generally does not have to pay while you're off now in some situations the employer may say well as long as you're only gone for this amount of time we'll still pay you but the general rule very important for people to understand is your leave of absence whether it's a medical leave of absence caring for a family member whether it's just one where you you need a mental break from work an employer does not have the obligation to pay but as i said there may be other resources that are available to you does a leave of absence impact the employer's length of time with the employer the important so that's a very good question so your seniority continues while you're on a leave of absence regardless of the type of leave of absence maybe it's a medical leave of absence maybe it's an absence to take care of a family member maybe it's just an absence where the you and the company decided that you'll take some time off for yourself either way if you're on that legal leave of absence your seniority counts and your seniority continues and the reason why that's so important is that down the road if you are let go you're going to get severance and the severance is calculated based on your length of employment length of employment doesn't get interrupted just because you're on the leave of absence so to use an example let's say you've now been working for a company for 10 years you take a leave of absence you come back and then a year later they let you go well they can't say no no you're a one-year employee because you had that leave of absence interrupting so we're only going to pay you severance as a one-year employee you know you're an 11-year employee in that example so that can have a huge huge impact on severance so very important to remember that seniority doesn't reset just because you're off work i remember anecdotally you you mentioned that story one time or you had somebody off and they went off on a medical leave and it just kind of you know they disappeared into the vapor and 18 years later they said hey employee i'm ready to come back and they're like who are you yeah that is a true story uh you know a banquet hall and had an employee work for about a year then she had to go on a leave of absence medical leave of absence and they frankly they forgot about her 18 years later management has changed ownership has changed uh she contacts them and saying hey i'm ready to come back to work they have no idea who she is but they look in their records they realize yeah sure enough she's our employee now that's a problem now she's a 19-year employee if they let her go they have to pay your severance as a 19-year employee so there's a lesson there certainly for employers don't forget about your employees they're on a leave of absence if an employers aren't employees off on a leave can they be fired or laid off or temporarily laid off during that so it depends on the leave so here's what i mean by that uh if you're on a medical leave of absence you cannot be let go because you're on a medical leave of absence if you're on an otherwise approved leave to care for a family member you cannot be let go that's what's called a job protected leave so there are many leaves of absences where it would be completely illegal to let you go if you're on a different leave one of those leaves that the company did not have to give you but they agree to do it they could ultimately change their mind and let you go with severance you cannot be punished for being on a leave the company wouldn't be able to say wait a second you went on to leave so we're going to let you go for cause because the company would have approved it but with severance the company can let you go in that situation you cannot be let go because you're sick you cannot be let go because you're caring for a family member but you are able to be let go or the company is able to let you go for other leaves of absences where it doesn't fall in the category of a job-protected leave when that employee comes back from a leave of absence can the employer during that time or when they come back make changes to their job because it could be quite a long time maybe not 18 years but it could be a year or two things change right i've been seeing that now often with covert 19 an employee comes back to work after being on a leave of absence or on a layoff company wants to change the hours change the pay the employer cannot do that remember if you're on the leave of absence if you're away from work the company and you come back your job cannot be changed if your company does change your job compensation hours location even responsibilities you may have the right to treat that as a constructive dismissal constructive dismissal is a situation where you're let where your job changes but you choose not to accept that instead you treat that change as a termination of your employment and get severan so whether you're working already or you're on a leave of absence your employer cannot make significant changes to terms of employment if it's a medical leave of absence and the employee is now ready to come back but they need some accommodation to the job does the employer have to do it can they refuse an employer has a very strict legal duty to provide accommodation duty to accommodate so that means if you are sick or if there's a medical condition that requires some help from your employer in order for you to do your job the employer has to provide that help that may mean modified duties modified hours that may mean the ability to work from home if that's what's medically required ultimately as long as it's something that's stipulated by the by the doctor if the employer is able to do it they have to do it even if it's difficult even if it does cost the employer money they have to do it and if they refuse that's a human rights violation there could be significant damages that the employer has to pay you may even get some reinstatement to your job if the company lets you go instead of accommodating you so our human raw human rights laws dictate you have to be accommodated if it's a legitimate medical issue i want to remind you once again andy tango to pocketemploymentlawyer.c there's a wealth of information absolutely free and anonymous for you to uh to absorb any time you want to go there pocket employment lawyer dot ca but if you're interested in catching our radio show employment lawyer dot ca is a way to do that phone call number two uh leor from our radio shows coming up now been off since march i'm in dental we're going back tomorrow but i've been asked to sign a letter stating that they're going to reassess if the company doesn't get back to its 70 percent uh pre-pandemic production then we may be asked to take a pay cut or reduced hours so i'm not sure if i need to sign a letter like this he said it's not a legal document it's just signing below you hereby acknowledge and agree to the terms of this agreement yeah so as we're listening to this question john scholes here is shaking his head in horror no and john is absolutely right you she cannot and should not sign this document absolutely not what this document seeks to do or tries to do is to give the employer the right to do something that it otherwise cannot do to change your compensation or change your hours remember i said this a few minutes ago your employer does not have a right to do that they cannot change your hours reduce your pay etc but they get that right if you give it to them and one way to give that that right is by signing a document that says hey i'm okay if you change my pay then it becomes legal then you can't do anything about it or even change your mind so that's a very important thing to understand if if your employer asks you to sign the document especially now during covert 19 maybe you're on a layoff or maybe you're not but your employer all of a sudden wants you to sign a document i assure you there's a reason for that and i can also assure you the reason is not one that's favorable to you the employee it's a reason that's good for the employer they want to get rights that they don't otherwise have they want to limit perhaps their exposure if they let you go at some point so be very very very careful with any document that your employer wants you to sign if you're not sure what it does or if you should sign it send me a copy you can email it to me or even fax it if that's what you want to do i'll review it and i'll tell you exactly what it means and whether you should be concerned about it do not sign anything without doing that first all right lots more to go here another phone call we'll get to some emails as well first we've got to take a quick break in the meantime the number one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred the email is help employment lawyer dot ca it's the employment law show we're coming right back you were being harassed and when you said something about it you're the one who lost your job now what are you gonna do i'm going to employmentlawyer.ca always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer. insurance companies deny long-term disability claims all the time they give lots of excuses don't give up i've seen it all they've ignored your doctors they've ignored you you're angry and you're frustrated but there's hope we resolve disability claims all the time we force insurers to pay what they owe we're in your corner call savannah and his team 1-855-821-59 or go to disabilityrights.ca you thought you had a secure job you didn't see it coming now what do you do i'm going to employmentlawyer.ca check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca [Music] and welcome back employment law show a few minutes to go here uh employmentlawyer.ca that is the website go there anytime you can catch a station where you can catch our long-running radio show thousands of hours on air and hundreds and hundreds of phone calls we are we'll get to our third one for today let's hear it it was laid off from my company after almost 17 years of work they laid me off in july of this year they gave me eight weeks working severance and then 17 weeks severance when they gave me the letter saying that i would get an amount it didn't say anything about taxes or anything being taken out and then when they deposited it was a lot less than what the letter stated and i wasn't sure what i wasn't allowed to have or up to and including what i should have received wow uh yeah this is uh this is one that uh is not gonna it's not gonna end well let's put it this way because she accepted what the company had offered her so let's start with the easy thing the taxes you know what they say john death and taxes right can't avoid those so there's there's taxes on anything that's considered income so yeah your severance is still going to be taxed because it's considered income not much we could do about that by the way there's ways to minimize the tax including contributing to an rrsp and a few other things as well but generally speaking yes severance is taxed so the real issue here with this call that we got on our radio show is not about the taxes it's about the actual amount of severance now we know that this person after 17 years was given a total of 25 weeks now she was given a few weeks working severance we sometimes call that working notice that counts towards her severance so she got a total of 25 weeks that's just shy of six months now i'm kind of dreading doing what i'm about to do but let's do it anyway let's take our information let's plug it into pocket employment lawyer dot ca so that we can see how much she is really owed and by the way it's not 25 weeks so we put that information in we see after 17 years her role her job her compensation she's owed anywhere from 18 to 24 months pay 18 to 24 months now remember she received 25 weeks that's less than six months so she was owed three three and a half times what she was paid and if she had signed this then unfortunately she cannot do anything about it now even though she was owed three four times what the company had offered her please don't let that happen to you that's why it's that's why we're here we're not here because we don't have anything better to do we're here because we want to help and ensure that you know what your rights are and those rights are never more important than they are when it comes to your severance that severance is the money that you need to carry you until you find another job and if it takes her 18 months to find another job especially now during covert 19 she only got paid for 25 weeks what does she do that severances that cushion that severance is that that money that you need pocket employment lawyer dot ca chances are if you were let go you wrote a lot more severance than what the company wanted to pay you terminationquestions.com we'll do this one quick before we wrap mitch says in my latest performance review my boss said i was underperforming as a senior manager a role i've held for three years if things do not improve over the next month i will be fired for cause what should i do remember it's extremely difficult to be let go for cause his employer's gonna have to show that not only was his performance not good essentially that he was doing it on purpose it's that hard to be let go for cause so the first thing i would say is don't stress out yes can they let you go sure but they would have to pay severance if you don't agree that your performance is not good send them an email explain your position explain why that's not fair and why you're doing the best that you can but ultimately remember the rule for for this person and for anyone else watching it's extremely difficult to be let go for cause because of bad performance companies try to do that all the time but that's illegal meaning you're still owed your full severance so please remember that always remember that stuff many more rules as well if you've forgotten anything here in the show there's an easy way to catch up on it pocket employment lawyer dot saves like having a lawyer with you at all times on your tablet on your cell phone pocket employment lawyer dot ca absolutely free it's anonymous but there is a contact button at the top right you can use that help employmentlawyer.c to reach out through email and if we've piqued your interest with the radio show you simply go to employmentlawyer.ca and do a little searching on the website you'll find a station near you that catches or at least carries our long-running radio show as well so appreciate you tuning in we'll catch you next time employment law show right here closed captioning not available