Employment Standards
Employees’ Religious Needs: Accommodate Them or Face Costly Consequences
In many cases, the BC Human Rights Tribunal has awarded individual employees thousands of dollars in lost pay and damages when an employer did not accommodate their religious (not spiritual) needs. Know your legal obligations.
What’s Involved in HR Legal Issues?
Savvy employers make it their business to ensure their management team is current and knowledgeable about all employment-related laws that affect their business, thus preventing costly and time-consuming complaints and investigations.
Vacations and Vacation Pay
Part 7 of the Employment Standards Act provides for minimum levels of vacation time and vacation pay for your employees. Vacation time is the time an employee is entitled to take off from work, while vacation pay provides employees with pay while absent during vacation.
Reservist Leave
The Employment Standards Act provides statutory job protection to civilians serving as military reservists in the Canadian Forces.
Overtime Pay
Overtime pay is often necessary in order to meet customer, production or other operational demands. However, it is crucial that you understand the intricacies of the overtime provisions in the Employment Standards Act, in order to manage the overtime you pay and ensure you don’t incur liability for overtime you might fail to pay.
Minimum Wages
The issue of minimum wages is sometimes a source of confusion, particularly when commissions, incentives or bonus schemes are factored in.
Leaves of Absence
Part 6 of the Employment Standards Act provides all employees, regardless of their length of employment, with the right to certain unpaid leaves of absence while protecting the right to return to work. These provisions of the Act provide important, mandatory obligations on the part of the employer.
Key Issues of the ESA
What follows is a brief review of your obligations under the Employment Standards Act on the key issues of overtime, uniforms, tips, dine-and-dash, cash shortages, vacations, split shifts, call-in, statutory holidays and breaks.
Investigation, Mediation and Adjudication
The Employment Standards Act (ESA) gives the Director broad powers of investigation and inspection.
Statutory Holidays
Statutory holidays are not the same thing as annual employee vacation. Because tourism businesses often aren’t in a position to close their doors during statutory holidays, you must be familiar with your obligation under the Employment Standards Act to provide your employees with proper statutory holiday benefits.