Employment regulations are governed by Provincial and Federal Legislation. Provincial Legislation covers almost every type of employers, except industries within the Federal Government jurisdiction. Provincial and Federal employment laws provide standards for subjects such as minimum wage, severance pay, overtime pay and such. Basically, employers are responsible for balancing employee’s rights and employment standards when making decisions for their business.

Employer Responsibility

1. Health and Insurance

- Every Canadian worker has the right to refuse a job that they believe would put them or a co-worker in danger.

- Every workers compensation board in every province provide benefits to workers who gets injured or sick in the job.

- Depending on the province, either the employee or the employer must pay for Health Insurance premium of the worker.

- Both the employer and the employee must contribute to the Federal Employemt Insurance plan.

- The Occupational Safety Act requires workplaces to be safe from recognized hazards.

2. Discrimination

- Employers cannot discriminate based on gender, race, religion, age, or physical disabilities during the hiring process, compensation, treatment, and retention of employees.

- The Federal Government requires employees to get equal pay for equal work regardless of their gender. Canada’s pay equity laws apply to the public sector and crown corporations.

3. The Canada Labour Code

- Minimum wage is set in every province.

- A payment of 150 percent of the regular wage is required for any work hour over 40, and in some provinces, double after the 48^th hour of work in a week.

- In most provinces, employers are required to give employees a 30-minute break after 5 consecutive hours of work.

-Employees have the right to unpaid leave if they or their child or parent gets sick. They also have the right to unpaid leave during the birth of their child or if they are adopting a child

4. Wrongful Termination

- In wrongful termination cases, judges take into consideration the type of work, qualifications, length of time served, availability of similar employment and the age of the employee. They also consider the work performance of the same employee at the said job.

Employee Responsibility

1.Employment Insurance

- Employees and employers both must contribute to the Federal Employment Insurance Plan.

2. Non-Compete Agreements

- Non-Compete agreements are written to protect employers. Non-competition agreements are made so that when an employee leaves for another, usually similar company, she or he would not use the former company’s proprietary information.

- Non – compete agreements should be well written so that there would not be a need for an expensive litigation in the future.

3. Assignment of Rights and Work For Hire Agreements

- In cases where an employer hires contractors to make patentable products or inventions, Assignment-of- Rights Agreements ensure that the product produced becomes the property of the employer. Employees and Employers have to be clear on who will own the work that is going to be produced.

4. Copyright Law

- When businesses hire contractors to develop copyrightable products, a contract is usually necessary to designate the copyrights of/to? the material produced.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Business Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.