Employment Law Show: Ontario – S10 E115

Episode Summary

Can the Ministry of Labour advise employees on severance? Can your conversation at work be recorded? Employment Lawyer Lior Samfiru, co-managing Partner and national practice leader at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, answers those questions and more on the Employment Law Show. 

LISTEN BELOW to Ontario’s premiere radio show about employment law and workplace rights featuring the province’s leading employment lawyers. You can hear the show live, Sundays at 1 p.m. ET, on Newstalk 1010 in Toronto, as the hosts take calls from listeners and provide vital answers to employees and employers.

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Show Notes

• Abrupt termination without severance but employer alleges resignation: Employers often mistakenly terminate employees without offering adequate severance and upon realizing what they owe, imply that an employee was resigned. Employees that are let go without a letter of termination, should send an email or message to their employer to confirm they have been terminated.
• Calculating vacation pay and vacation time: Vacation pay and vacation time in Ontario do not necessarily have to correspond. Employees should be receiving at least the minimum amount of vacation time, employers do not have to provide anything more. In some cases, employees could have more vacation pay than time. Employers cannot take away vacation time or compensation from employees unless employees have previously agreed to it.
• Difference between a severance calculator and the Ministry of Labour: The Ministry of Labour can only advise employees based on their minimum severance entitlements and not full severance entitlements. Minimum entitlements can be a week’s pay for every year of service but full severance entitlements can be much more than that.
• Employer recording phone calls without employee consent: Generally, if an employee is speaking to any other person, a phone cannot be “tapped” without an employee’s consent. An employer can, however, record a conversation they are having themselves with a particular employee.
  • LEARN MORE ABOUT EMPLOYEE MONITORING
    Employers monitoring employees in the workplace
• Terminated due to discriminatory reasons: Employees that have been discriminated against and lost their position will not only be owed severance pay but potentially additional damages as there could be a potential human rights violation.

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