BC Workplace Blog

Our Employment & Human Rights Lawyers have been fielding many questions from clients regarding the recent announcement by the provincial government that starting in January, employers will be required to provide 5 paid sick days to BC employees.

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (“CERB”) was introduced by the federal government in response to the pandemic in 2020. The program provides financial support to Canadians impacted directly by COVID-19. Terminated employees frequently ask whether these CERB payments are deductible from wrongful dismissal damages. In this post, we reviewed two recent BC Supreme Court decisions where the Court found that the payments were deductible, in particular, the CERB payments “raise a compensating advantage” issue. If the CERB payments were not deducted, the plaintiff would be in a better position than he/she would have been if there had been no breach of the employment contract.

The practice of adopting vaccine mandates for employees in BC has advanced considerably from where we were even a couple of months ago. While there have been no changes in the applicable legislation (for example, no amendments to the BC Employment Standards Act, the BC Human Rights Code or the Workers Compensation Act to explicitly permit employer vaccine mandates), a large number of employers have now moved forward with implementing a vaccine mandate.

Workplaces are recognizing more than ever that our gender is not the same as the sex assigned to us at birth. This refreshing shift in realization has brought about an increase in personal pronouns being added by professionals to email signatures and/or social media bios, leadership sharing their views on the importance of language in our workplace, and encouragement of more visible pronoun use within our organizations.

BC employers and employees should take note that BC has raised its minimum wage from $14.60 per hour to $15.20 as of June 1, 2021, making the province’s base rate the second highest in the country. This change also increased the minimum wage for liquor servers, who were previously excluded from the general minimum wage.

Under what circumstances can a worker refuse to wear a mask in the workplace for religious reasons? Can the absence of faith in the efficacy of masks be the basis of a religious practice protected by human rights legislation? This month, we take a look at a recent BC Human Rights Tribunal ruling on this very issue.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the Canadian economy and has resulted in job loss and precarious employment across various sectors. It is yet to be seen however if and how these changes will affect an employee’s entitlement to reasonable notice following a without cause dismissal. In this article, we review recent court decisions addressing the impact of COVID-19 on wrongful dismissal damages.

The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines across the country has brought with it both the hope of return to normalcy, as well as concerns about infringement of privacy and human rights through mandatory vaccination in the workplace. How will vaccinations impact the workplace? Can employers implement mandatory vaccination policies in the workplace? In this blog post, we analyze the existing law on mandatory vaccination and what we anticipate will be permitted in the workplace with respect to the COVID-19 vaccine.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought so much uncertainty with it and has turned the world of work on its head. Every employer is required to have a COVID-19 Safety Plan that assesses the risk of exposure at their workplace and implement measures to keep their workers safe. On November 24, 2020, BC issued a Public Health Order (the “Order”) requiring the use of masks in all public indoor spaces in the province. Since this Order, our Group has and continues to receive a lot of questions from business owners and employers on the mandatory masking order, in particular, what happens if an employee refuses to comply with an employer’s COVID-19 Safety Plan including an unwillingness to wear a face mask?

In this blog post, we consider whether an employer can terminate an employee’s employment for cause for refusing to wear a face mask while at work.

Many BC employers will have issued temporary layoffs to employees with the start of BC’s COVID-19 lock down in March. Soon after the start of the provincial lock down, the BC Government extended the temporary layoff period under the BC Employment Standards Act (ESA) from 13 weeks to 16 weeks for COVID-19 related layoffs. On June 26, 2020, the BC Government announced a further extension to 24 weeks expiring on August 30, 2020.

Privacy issues have suddenly been appearing in the news, as we all grapple with COVID-19. What information can be disclosed about someone who is sick? What technology can we use to contain the spread? Can videoconference programs be used to help people work remotely? This blog post tries to give short answers to each of these questions, from a privacy law perspective.

We continue to receive many questions from employers and employees about terminations and lay-offs, so in this blog post we provide an overview of the key notice provisions in the BC Employment Standards Act ("ESA") that may assist you during these uncertain times. The minimum notice periods identified in the ESA may be in the form of working notice or payment in lieu of notice. In particular, we take a look at rarely used section 65(1)(d) of the ESA which states that an employer is not required to provide notice of termination or pay in lieu of notice to its employees if it can prove that COVID-19 has been an “unforeseen circumstance” that has made continuing the employment contract “impossible”.