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termination for cause

Most-viewed articles this week on HRinfodesk

The three most viewed articles on HRinfodesk this week deal with dishonesty as cause for employee termination, the new CSA national OHS training standard and how ongoing tardiness and breach of trust justified termination for cause

 

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Most-viewed articles this week on HRinfodesk

The three most popular HRinfodesk articles this week deal with proposed amendments to the Canada Labour Code, a vacation deprivation study, and a termination case based on the language of an employment contract..

 

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A quick primer on just cause termination

Every month I have the benefit of drafting a quick blog on great employment law topics. A case that I very recently read, which is probably the best employment case I have ever read, catalyzed my interest in drafting a quick primer on the law of just cause. In the case of Barton v. Rona Ontario Inc. (2012 ONSC 3809) the plaintiff Kerry Barton was an assistant store manager at Rona in Barrie. He managed approximately 140 employees. One of the employees was wheelchair bound…

 

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Dismissal for threat void where employer relied on outdated discipline

An Ontario labour arbitrator just allowed an employee’s grievance after the employer terminated him for swearing, refusing to leave the workplace and threatening the vice-president with a shovel. As horrible as this incident sounds, the employer had absolutely no proof of the events because the employer did not follow its own policy and conduct a proper investigation.

 

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No proportionality, no cause for termination

Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench recently confirmed that a termination for cause was inappropriate, given that it was not proportional to the employee’s conduct. As a result, the employer had to pay 12 months’ severance as set out in the employment agreement regarding a termination without cause.

 

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Landmark decision gives insight into workplace harassment and employer reprisal

The Ontario Labour Relations Board has provided what some believe to be the most significant legal interpretation yet of workplace harassment and employer reprisal in the context of the recently enacted Bill 168 amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA). The case, Conforti v. Investia Financial Services Inc., 2011, was decided on September 23, 2011.

 

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Is severance pay required when an employee is terminated?

When I speak at conferences, I am often asked the following question: “Is severance pay required when an employee is terminated?”

Before this question can be answered, we have to first confront the difficulty that some payroll terms traditionally used to describe both termination, as well as any payments resulting from this event, haven’t always been defined with the greatest of clarity. My preference has always been for those terms that convey the clearest meaning of the related employment standards and source deduction requirements.

 

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Employers must now treat verbal threats as serious offences under the OHSA’s definition of workplace violence

A recent labour arbitrator’s decision—to uphold the City of Kingston’s right to terminate a 28-year employee for issuing a verbal threat against a co-worker—was based in large part on the arbitrator’s view that “the classification of threatening language as workplace violence” under the Occupational Health and Safety Act represents a “clear and significant change” to the law in Ontario.

 

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Termination for cause upheld for breach of computer information access policy

Ontario’s Labour Arbitration Board recently held that an employer did not overreact when it terminated an IT employee for cause after he used an employer computer to download, store and share thousands of copyrighted works including movies, TV shows, music tracks, games and pornographic material, totalling over half a terabyte of data. The board found that the employee violated the employer’s trust in him and acted in flagrant disregard for the employer’s computer information access policy over many years.

 

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Dismissing an employee for cause – are reasons required?

The question of whether an employer should give reasons at the time of dismissal is an important one in employment law…

 

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