On Saturday September 21, al-Shabaab, a Somali militant group affiliated with al-Qaeda, stormed and sieged the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The Westgate Mall is an upscale shopping complex known to be patronized by tourists and expatriates.[i] In the attack, more than 60 individuals were killed and approximately 150 persons were injured.[ii] Many non-Kenyans are…
As the old saying goes, “you get what you pay for”. Two former employees of now-defunct Trillium Manufacturing are suing the Ministry of Labour over advice they received from its ESA hotline. The two employees accepted 8 weeks’ pay-in-lieu of notice from their employer as the ESA hotline told them that was their maximum legal entitlement,…
On the heels of June’s Irving Pulp and Paper decision from the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), which severely limited the circumstances when random drug and alcohol testing is permissible in the workplace, an Ontario arbitrator recently held that mandatory pre-access alcohol and drug testing was an unreasonable exercise of management rights, violated the privacy…
The Ontario Superior Court has released a decision which serves to remind employer and employees of the responsibility to speak up when unhappy with a change the terms of employment. The case, Whittemore v. Open Text Corporation, involved an employee who was employed as a Software Developer with Open Text Corporation (“Open Text”). His employment…
In unionized workplaces, temporary layoffs have long been an employer’s most effective way of responding to economic downturns. But what about non-unionized employers? Traditionally, unless an employer can show that it has an implied or express contractual right to temporarily layoff, a court will find that the interruption to employment will constitute a constructive dismissal…