Unlocking the Power of eSignature Legitimacy for Pregnancy Leave Policy in Canada

How to eSign a document: e-signature legitimacy for Pregnancy Leave Policy in Canada

[Music] [Music] all right hello and welcome once again welcome back to employment live show here john scholes besimi lior samphiru co-founding partner sanfiru tamarkin llp the most positively reviewed employment law firm in this country you can check that out anytime you can actually call and find out as well uh leor's team anytime you would like one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred the email address we use all the time on or off air is help employment lawyer dot ca and a website built just for you anytime you can use it free and anonymous and rolled into that as a severance pay calculator which will be referred to several times during the next 30 minutes that is pocket employment lawyer dot ca v or on the show today we're going to talk about parental slash maternity leave a very hot and important topic that's coming up in just a bit but we always start pal with the uh the week that was how are you hey john i am great and i'm ready and excited to talk about employment law and hopefully inform and educate you about your workplace rights let's be clear and let's be honest workplace rights are important we all have jobs we all spend so many hours at work well many of us don't know what our rights are and it's easy to think that the law is not good a lot of people think well we don't have good employment laws well that's wrong the reason why you think that is because you actually don't know what the law is and what your rights are we have excellent employment laws in canada and what we do on this show every week is tell you what those are help you understand what those rights and enforce those rights and give you some answers to the questions that i'm sure you're struggling with over the last two years employees have had more questions than ever about workplace rights whether it's temporary layoff or vaccine mandates or changes to your jobs or being let go so if you have an issue or question doesn't have to be related to the pandemic over the next 30 minutes a lot of those questions are going to be answered but of course we only have 30 minutes and if we can't get to your questions specifically not a problem you have the option to contact me in the office so we can have a private chat about your matter and get your answers to you that way we'll give you that contact information throughout the show today but now that we know what we're here to do let's go ahead and do it let me start talking to you about a situation that came across my desk over the past week so it's often the situation when you're let go you get a letter of termination so you know you've been like go it's in writing your employer says so today's your last day tomorrow is your last day well sometimes that actually doesn't happen and employers think that they can avoid telling people that they're terminated but act as if they are let me give you a prime example of that i spoke with a gentleman who had worked in a restaurant for a number of years and every week he'd get his schedule his shifts for the following week there's not usually not too many changes work fairly consistent hours well uh one week he noticed he wasn't on the schedule for the following week he asked his employer about it didn't really get an answer he said we'll see we'll we'll get back to you same thing happened uh the following week and before too long his employer stopped even getting back to him now he was never told he was let go he wasn't given a letter he wasn't given any record of employment he just wasn't scheduled anymore and he contacted me of course and he wanted to know what his rights were so here's the thing john of course this is a termination the most basic aspect of the employment relationship is that you make yourself available to work in your employer schedules you for work gives you work that's what employment is well in this situation his employers stop giving him work that's a termination he has been let go doesn't matter what the company wanted that's the matter doesn't matter how they refer to it he was terminated it wouldn't in fact be impossible for him to be more terminated than he was so of course he's owed severance for him that's as much as six months paid he had been there for just under four years i'm going to help him get that severance but i wanted to remind everyone there especially employees that if you don't get work from your employer that's a termination whether your employer says something else maybe they refer to it as a scheduling thing as a layoff a temporary left it does not matter if you don't have work you've been terminated that triggers your severance entitlements what are their he reached out obviously because he he realized who you were and you're going to help him but would there have been a time limit if you just let this fester for much longer would have been under that two-year uh two-year time limit absolutely so if he stops being scheduled that triggers the limitation period so he has two years from that point to when he stopped being scheduled to pursue any matter there's a two-year limitation period john and every every week i get contacted by someone that hears one of our shows or reads something that i wrote and contacts me but unfortunately their issue arose more than two years ago certainly it's not a good idea to sit on your rights if you have an issue or a question even if you're not sure if it's a real issue better to pick up the phone and call so that you don't lose out on your limitation period did you could you get the temperature what this employer was thinking by doing this they just figured out we'll just forget about this guy he'll go away or maybe you know maybe they didn't realize they would have to pay him any severance they didn't realize they'd actually let him go i i think they knew exactly what they were doing they were just hoping that this guy is going to go away find another job and kind of forget about it kind of you know see the writing on the wall and he did and he is but he still owed severance you can end someone's employment and hope they go away and avoid severance at least you can't do that legally now some people may not have realized that they have horizon options luckily he called me and that's why again six months seven that's a lot of money i don't care who you are and what you earn six months pay is going to be a lot of money employment lawyer dot ca by the way the firm website go there for all things of course having to do with employment law you can also find where the tv and radio show is scheduled and there's a list there as we do the radio show across the country pretty much tune in to that it's an hour long broadcast every week several times a week as a matter of fact on those radio shows lior as you know we got a ton of great phone calls people want to know stuff they're learning constantly which is good and we take some of that we do we cherry pick a few of the phone calls we play them back here on the show here on tv so we'll get to our first call for today leora right now just lost a big contract at work so uh we're looking at a bunch of layoffs i was looking at the employment standards minimum uh just wanted to clarify something for me it says i'm entitled to one week or every a year i was there for a minimum of eight weeks what that means so how long have you worked with this company 15 years and what kind of a job and how old are you 42 and i am a machine technician well john this goes back to the biggest the single biggest misconception in employment law and that is that when you're let go your severance is a week's pay per year of service and why do people believe that is because they can go online and they can access the employment standards legislation in whatever province you're in and that's what you're going to see a week per year eight weeks max maybe and and well it says that it's legislation i know how to read so clearly that's what i'm owed wrong wrong wrong that legislation employment standards only outlines a person's minimum entitlements those minimum entitlements are irrelevant frankly because virtually every employee has greater entitlements more entitlements based on common law what our our courts have decided over the past 150 years so yeah your minimum entitlements may be a week's pay per year of service your full entitlements can be 10 times that 50 times that depending on a number of factors so rather than me just kind of tell you let me show you an example so we had this call that we just played from our radio show so this person's been there for 15 years and he believes based on the employment standards actually he's only owned eight weeks severance well let's go to pocket employment lawyer dot ca and let's use our severance calculator feature which by the way allows you to find out your full entitlements and let's see how much this person is actually owed so he's 42 years old been there for 15 years uh severance he believes he gets nothing or very little well you see at the bottom of the screen he is out as much as 16 months paid 16 months pay now if his salary is 74 000 that's about 95 96 000 that he is owed so that's how it works and the same for you at home doesn't matter if you work for two months or 20 years if you lost your job you're much more than a week per year of service go to pocket employment lawyer dot ca use the severance calculator find out for yourself yeah it's really simple it's really free and it's quick to use against severance pay calculator as lior just said pocket employment lawyer dot ca check it out if you haven't used your job just uh take it for a spin as we say and see where you would be on if it ever came down to the time where you were let go and wondering what you wrote terminationquestions.com another great website we offer lior free you can ask your questions there it's anonymous and they get answered by someone on your team as well first one for today comes from sloan sloan says my supervisor harasses me constantly saying that i am unproductive and unqualified for the job and insists that i retire there are many days when i feel scared to go to work i filed an internal complaint but nothing has been done should i just quit no well the the answer to the question of course is an obvious one or hopefully is an obvious one absolutely you should not quit because you've done nothing wrong sloan did nothing wrong it's her employer that's doing something wrong now let's be clear here an employer has to take harassment and bullying allegations seriously it's the law it's not just the right thing to do it's the legally required thing to do so sloan did the right thing here she filed a complaint nothing really has happened well she needs to follow up in writing so that there's a record if nothing is done then that could potentially be a constructive dismissal it could also be a human rights violation it looks like sloane is maybe picked on because of sloan's age uh her employer is saying sloane's too old perhaps well in that case again it's a human rights violation as well so if you are subject to harassment tell your employer in writing file a complaint if you need to with hr follow up if you need to again in writing if your employer drops the ball and doesn't do what they're supposed to which is to investigate and fix the problem you reach out to me and we can deal with it externally but do not quit certainly not before you spoke could you speak to me you know this one was pretty obvious with this employer insisting that sloane retire i mean that's just that's beyond the pale but it could be a human rights violation the same way if it's a little more subtle like you know this person may be in sloan's case you know starts receiving you know timeshare in florida pamphlets on your desk from the boss and little hints and you know dropping little suggestions that maybe it's time to wrap it up i mean that could be just as much of a harassment right well it's not a it's not just a coincidence that you bring this up because you recall you and i spoke a couple years ago about this client that i had where that's that's what his employer did left uh all kinds of retirement packages or pamphlets on about retirement resorts it's the same thing right it's inappropriate if your boss is telling you suggesting to you that you should retire that you're too old to work there that's a human rights violation okay you cannot be discriminated against or pushed because of your age that we have no longer you can work until whatever age you want to if your employer will let you yeah you better believe that's a problem let's take a short break uh maternity slash parental leave some points on that coming up stick around for it's important stuff in the meantime and help 1-855-821-5900 is how you reach out to leor lots more coming up employment law show stick around people think you should go to the government to get severance pay employmentlawyer.ca says that is a myth government can only help you get minimum severance but not everything you're entitled to always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca if your long-term disability claim is denied should you appeal appeals often fail because insurance companies control the process so long as you appeal you're playing by their rules you should never appeal the denial of your disability benefits appeals are just a mirage of false hope don't that's their process take it out of their hands and fight for your rights with our help go to disabilityrights.ca discover your rights fight back and get what you're owed people think their employer can make changes to their job employment employmentlawyer.ca says that is a myth your employer can't change your pay hours or duties you may be entitled to full severance pay always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca [Music] okay welcome back employment law show good to have you along john scholes here weekly with lior samphiru a reminder co-founding partner sam fieru tamarkin llp the most positively reviewed employment law firm in land do not ever hesitate just to reach out if i have just a conversation with lior a member of his team if you've got some issues at work or maybe you don't be you think it might be in the future just call help 1-855-821-5900 lawyer dot ca and one of the reasons you may be calling if not now maybe in the future that would be a parental or maternal leave maternity leave and there's all kinds of questions regarding this leo i want to get into some of these ask you a bunch of questions about it because it's a real gray area of people both employees and employers as well so the first question i have for you who qualifies for parental leave well john i i'm you know it's disappointing that in this day and age we still have to talk about these things and remind people of the law because the law is actually not complicated the problem is that employers often get it wrong or the employers often frankly don't do what they're supposed to legally so it's important to remind everyone employees and employers but the rights that employees have when it comes to parental leave maternity leave uh and remind them also that these laws are entrenched there's really very little exceptions to them so as i said the first question of course is well who qualifies now every province is a bit different but generally those that qualify are new parents whether it's a mother or a father or those that are adopting a child qualify for what we call protected leave of absence time off that's protected where the job is protected now depending on your province you may have had to work a certain period of time before you've had the child before the due date or before the child comes into your care usually it's three months you would have had to work for the employer for three months uh and in those situations if you've worked long enough before the due date and you're a new parent then you qualify for this leave of absence you qualify for time off where your job is protected one of the most important aspects of employment law you know we you and i both have friends and family member stateside and it's it's remarkable how short the maturity paternal leave down there is generally it's really it's a matter of weeks in a lot of cases up here generally you said it changes from province to province but generally how long is someone allowed to go off in a family of your maternal leave you know i started off the show by saying how in canada we have good employment laws well this is an example of it uh because our neighbors down down south have much worse laws that they don't have time off or anything significant if you've had a baby you've got your back to work in a few weeks whereas in canada most places you can be off john as much as 18 months uh 78 weeks for for if you've had a child now that's a combination of maternity leave and parental leave for fathers that may be a bit less for fathers that could be as little as 61 weeks but generally for a mother who's had a baby who was pregnant and had a baby she can be off for as much as 18 months total that's a that's a long period of time and that's time where your job is protected and that's a time where you you're supposed to dedicate of course to being with your child getting healthy and to bring them to a state where you're comfortable going back to work and leaving them with hopefully another care provider because it's such a robust time can the uh can a parent uh mom and dad or mom and mom died of that can they break it up can they take half and half is that possible legally yes so parents are allowed to to split that and and so that uh a period of time is taken by the father and a period of time is taken by the mother a lot of parents choose to do that and you qualify for ei benefits during that period of time right so whereas an employer doesn't actually have to pay an employee while they're on maternity leave or parental leave you get ei benefits for 18 months now some employers do have policies that they top up bi and they pay a portion of someone's salary but legally there's no requirement to pay an employee but that's what ei is for kind of an obvious question here but i'm going to throw it out there anyway can you be fired for taking a parental leave well you know it is an obvious question and which has an obvious answer but employers get this wrong so let's be very clear this is what we call a job protected leave of absence so if you're pregnant and you're taking pregnancy leave parentally if you're a father having a new child you have a job protected leave meaning you cannot be let go because you're taking the leave your employer may not be happy they say well my gosh 18 months is a long time i'm not happy well you know too bad frankly you cannot be let go you cannot be penalized your job cannot change your hours cannot be reduced you can't all of a sudden get these mysterious disciplinary letters nothing can happen to you because you're taking parental leave you have a right to your job your job is protected and you have the right to take that time without consequences so at the end of up to you know potentially 18 months if the if the parent chooses to use the whole thing wherever wherever they're situated what are their what are their obligations what are they you know what are their rights when they come back from uh from this parental leave and and this is where i think employers get into the most trouble and that is an employer has to take the employee back to the same job at the same page the same location that they had free leave now if the pay has increased for that job then they have to get the higher pay but bottom line is an employer has to have that job available for them if at all possible the employer can't decide to just keep the replacement instead of the person that's taking the leave that's not legal they have to bring them back to that job now if they don't that could be a human rights violation that can be an employment standards act violation that could be a wrongful dismissal you name it that's wrong now the exception to this would be a situation where the job legitimately does not exist there's nothing available maybe the department shutdown and everyone has been let go well there's not much the employer can do about that but short of those extreme situations yes an employer has to take back the father the mother when they come back from proparento leaf let me take a little a little i got one more question but let me take a little bit of a side step that is different than a uh leave if you're off on the medical leave right coming back to work yes so you don't have quite the same level of protection if you're off on a disability leave a medical leave now you still have a right for your uh to have your employer consider you and for your employer to make all efforts to take you back but that job is not guaranteed your employer could decide to keep the replacement instead of you as long as they still try to find you another job in that disability leave situation if your employer doesn't even try to bring you back doesn't deal with you well that's a problem that's illegal you don't have quite the same level of protection with disability leave but still pretty pretty good protection anyway you know 18 months if you think about 18 months it is a good stretch for uh for a new parent off on a leave does that time off does that count for uh for severance if it came down the pike like that is it continuous that time that they're not even in the office or doing their job yeah even though you're not working for 18 months that time counts towards your seniority towards uh accumulating severance towards accumulating your vacation time for example after five years you may get more vacation so that counts so let's say you've worked for a company for a year and then you took a year and a half maternity leave the the day you come back you're now a two and a half year employee so that counts and that's especially important when it comes to severance if at some point you are let go the longer the more seniority you have the more severance you get so yes that time does count towards your seniority i mean the moral of the story after all these parts and these points we've we've made after 10 years is the same don't mess with mama that's just you know if you're an employer just watch your step right because they have a lot of good rights robust rights it is that simple you you don't punish someone you treat them well you bring them back you just don't mess with them you don't do it if you don't mess with them you will never break the law employmentlawyer.ca again the firm website where you want to go to find a radio station near you across this country that carries our radio show we'll get the phone call number two lior from that show right now he told my employer that i was sick and needed a few days off to recover we got tested i had to wait a few days for the results and i had kovitz when i was free and clear and ready to come back to work got a negative covet test all that said and done i informed my employer that i was ready to come back the employer thought that i was not clear to come back that i needed to stay away from work longer and after showing proof that everything was in my favor of having the isolation period over with they then said well there's actually no work for you right now gave me a layoff a very common scenario i would imagine at this point yes very common scenario with the past couple of years so let's you know let's take four per second the employer at his or her word that there's no work available for this person if that is legitimate then that employer can terminate with several they can't just put them off work you can't be temporarily laid off if you don't want them you don't have to accept that they can't just keep them on ice until there's more work it's either they bring them back to work or they pay them severance so if you're not being brought back to work even if it's for a legitimate reason there's no work the company is slow that triggers your severance entitlements and that severance can be as much as 24 months paid now in this situation if his employer doesn't want to bring him back because of colgate that could potentially also be a human rights violation if your employer thinks you're still sick or because you have covert you're going to be sick and infect others that may be a human rights violation at least though that triggers evidence and i want everyone to remember if you're trying to come back to work whether it's after having copied or for any other reason if you're not being brought back to work that triggers your severance rights we are going to grab another phone call our third phone call from the radio show but we'll do it after a short break so stick around for that in the meantime reaching out anytime 1-855-821-5900 and help at employment lawyer dot ca it's employing the washoe more coming up people think contractors aren't owed severance employment lawyer dot ca says that is a myth many contractors are actually employees and are entitled to full severance pay always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca how do you force insurance companies to pay long-term disability claims insurance companies deny legitimate claims all the time they're playing the odds they know that most people are just going to walk away your insurer may ignore you they may even ignore your doctors but they can't ignore us we know how insurance companies work we know their weaknesses we know how to use the legal process to force them to pay you what you're owed go to disabilityrights.ca discover your rights fight back and get what you're owed people think you are only owed two weeks pay when you lose your job employment lawyer.ca says that is a myth you may be owed much more than two weeks per year don't settle for less always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca [Music] okay welcome back i got a few minutes left to go lior in this half hour so we'll grab phone call number three from our radio show right now going on behalf of my mom actually she's been a retail employee for about 20 years full-time the company recently changed ownership without any knowledge any new kind of employment contractor terms have ceased benefits taken away vacation time and such it has changed substantial terms of the agreement does that not constitute constructive dismissal great question excellent question so let's start with the fact that if in a sale of a business if you continue working with the buyer your scenario seniority carries through unless you sign something that gives up that seniority it carries through that's a good thing now in this situation yeah that's a constructive dismissal an employer can't just decide to get rid of benefits to change terms of employment significantly if they you know reduce their vacation from five weeks to two weeks or they take your benefits that's a big deal right you know especially benefit that's a an important term of employment so in this situation yeah that employee can choose to continue working and accept these changes or she can say that's a constructive dismissal by changing my terms of employment you've terminated me now i have to get my severance of course the question then becomes how much severance is owed in that situation well let me show you once again we did that at the beginning of the show but i'll show you again let's go to pocket employment lawyer dot ca and let's use our severance calculator tool and let's see how much severance this this person has actually owned so this person is a bit older in their 60s been there for 20 years it's a constructive dismissal so they haven't been offered any severance except you see in the bottom there that she's out as much as 22 months pay 22 months pay so that works well in a constructive dismissal or a regular dismissal keeping in mind of course your employer cannot just change significant terms in your employment terminationquestions.com i'm going to slide this one in quickly or i know you can pull it off this one's from violet she writes in she says my employer recently put me on a performance improvement plan after listening to your show i realized that this likely means that my boss is planning on firing me in the future what can i do to stop that from happening so the the bad news is that there's probably not much that can be done to prevent your employer from firing you if they're going to do that they're going to do it and there's not much you can do to restrain them or to physically stop them from doing that what you can do is to create a situation where you can't legally be fired for cause so if she's been put on a performance improvement plan it's possible that what the employer is doing is building a case to try to fire for cause so they won't have to pay her any severance so if she disagrees with it she has to say so in writing send an email a note to her employer outlining the reasons why she doesn't believe that that performance are probably legitimate what the concern that she has is and and what the truth is by doing that even if the employer doesn't respond just by sending that email it's going to be that much more difficult for her employer to terminate her employment for cause they can still let her go okay your employer can let you go but they're going to have to pay severance so whenever we're talking about how do i avoid being let go what we're really saying is how do i avoid being let go for cause so that i get my severance remember severus john is as much as 24 months paid so it's worthwhile to do it properly that's fair that's fair game to say about anything you disagree that may come down the pike with your employer if you disagree with it don't sit back in silence it's like it never existed you've got to put everything in writing right if you send an email to your employer and they don't respond you can take that as acceptance by the way same applies to you if your employer sends you something you don't respond that's an acceptance so never accept something unless it's correct if you don't agree with something say so in writing keep that knowledge in your head at all times and by the way you can reach out now that we are done for this half hour that is really simple the phone number one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred again one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred email that we use every show is help employment lawyer dot ca and where do we find that severance pay calculator that's also free pocket employment lawyer dot ca thanks for joining us and we'll catch you next time on the employment law show closed captioning of this program is brought to you in part by severancepaycalculator.com find out how much you are owed right now severancepaycalculator.com