Rights When Returning to Work During COVID-19 in BC: News 1130

An employment lawyer in Vancouver at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP was asked by News 1130 to go over what you need to know about your rights when returning to work amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Key takeaways from the interview

Every employer in British Columbia and Canada-wide has a positive obligation to maintain a safe and healthy working environment.

Every industry will have to be creative in how reopening looks, but they will be required to implement the correct measures to get workers back on the job.

Options when called back to an unsafe workplace

If you’re called back to work and feel those needs aren’t being met, here are your options:

• You can refuse work that you believe to be unsafe. The way that you do that is that you contact your employer, let them know you have this concern. Your employer, under provincial legislation, is immediately mandated to conduct an investigation into your concern. If that’s not resolved to your satisfaction, then it can be escalated. The next step in B.C. would be for a “re-do” of the investigation with either a union member, a member of the joint health-and-safety committee, or a third party.
• If your concern is still not resolved after a second investigation, You can escalate your complaint to WorksafeBC, which would send a prevention officer to your workplace to determine if your place of employment is safe. If there is a determination that it’s a safe workplace, you have to go back to work. If it’s an unsafe workplace, the prevention officer can shut down the company or the business, but it’s more likely that the prevention officer will make a couple of recommendations as to how to make it safe so that you can return to work, and feel good doing so.

Warning to employers in British Columbia

If you’re looking to restructure your workplace — whether that’s by reducing hours, shifting worker responsibilities, or even cutting positions altogether — there are some things to watch for.

• Your employee rights during COVID-19
• Denied long term disability due to COVID-19

There is the risk that an employee is going to choose to construe that as constructive dismissal. By that I mean, when you make a sudden change as an employer to somebody’s essential term of their employment — like their position, like their pay, like their hours, or even their location — that employee can elect to accept it, or they can choose to construe that as a constructive dismissal and pursue their rights to severance pay.

Employers who are looking to make such changes should give employees proper notice before implementing those changes.

Learn more about your rights during the coronavirus pandemic through our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Knowledge Centre, where you can find resources about your employment rights during COVID-19.

Contact us today to speak to a Vancouver employment lawyer about your rights.