Employment Lawyer on Ontario COVID-19 Layoff Regulations – Global News

Employment Lawyer Lior Samfiru, co-founding partner at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, was asked by Global News to review Ontario’s new amendment to its infectious disease emergency leave regulation. This new change allows employers to cut their non-unionized employees’ pay or place them on a temporary layoff due to COVID-19 while avoiding constructive dismissal and severance pay.

Samifiru told Global News that one of the things the new rules do is eliminate the concept of a temporary layoff, at least for a period of time.

Instead, they are on a leave of absence, infectious disease leave,” said Samfiru, “At some point, the government is going to end that six weeks after that, that leave of absence ends.”

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• COVID-19: New Ontario Regulation Hurts Employees, Misleads Employers
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Samfiru says the regulations also deem all employees still working with reduced hours as on leave, which he calls “absurd.”

“Under the new regs, you could be working 90 per cent of your hours, but you’re considered to be on a leave of absence, which doesn’t make much sense.”

Samfiru believes the moves “buy employers time” to make changes and not have to worry about when a temporary layoff has to end and the make the ultimate choice of either terminating or pay the employee their severance.

However, the changes are a bit “misleading” to employers and could lead to legal action in a dispute with an employee who didn’t agree to give up their common law rights when they took the job.

“Under common law, an employer can still not lay someone off temporarily at all for any period of time. That’s considered a termination of employment.” Samfiru said, “My concern is that it misleads them and then by the same token it misleads employees, because how many people will actually understand their rights.”