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Serious insight for serious situations.

Serious insight for serious situations.

#1 Termination pay, termination notice, termination with or without cause and pay in lieu of notice (Part 2)

Second installment. You’ve decided that you do not have cause to terminate so you will be proceeding on a without cause basis. The next question becomes “What are the employee’s entitlements on termination?”. Well, there are really only two possible options, which I’ve attempted to represent pictorially (clearly, I missed my calling as a graphic

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#1 Termination pay, termination notice, termination with or without cause and pay in lieu of notice (Part 1)

There are a lot of overlaid concepts under this rubric so the first thing I’ll do is break those down into their components. Given the number of components in this topic, my response to this first “issue” will be posted over several days, so keep on coming back for updates! Termination with or without cause

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There’s more to a severance package than the number of months

A terminated employee’s primary interest is usually the bottom line figure when negotiating a severance package.  With this goal in mind, the termination notice period is often viewed as the driving factor for how much compensation will be received (i.e. more months = bigger package).  However, this viewpoint may be overly simplistic as other factors

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Chaos in the realm of termination clauses

Increasing Consistency Although an employee is presumptively entitled to reasonable notice of termination, this notice can be altered by contract. However, for a termination clause to be enforceable, it must provide for an employee’s minimum statutory entitlements under the applicable employment standards act in a given jurisdiction.[1]  Where a termination clause is held unenforceable, the

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Does an employer’s financial health affect the termination entitlements of employees? The Ontario Court of Appeal officially signs the divorce papers

Corporate restructuring has become a business reality in our volatile global economy. Just last week, Maple Leaf Foods announced its plan to cut more than 400 jobs across the country in a move to redirect resources and remain cost competitive. Other large organizations, including Bell Media and Enbridge, have recently announced similar restructuring plans that

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Employer whose conduct was “outrageous,” “cheap,” and “mean” ordered to pay terminated employee $100,000 in punitive damages

When I first started practising employment law many years ago, there was a phenomenon known as “building a case for cause”.  When you represented an employee, as I often did at the time, you could always tell when an employer was trying to do this.  After a lengthy and often unblemished tenure of employment, your

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“Draconian” termination provision found enforceable

With an introductory paragraph that reads like a soap opera, the recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Kielb v. National Money Mart Company quickly caught my attention. As summarized by Justice Akhtar, This case involves allegations of broken promises, ambiguous clauses and inequitable treatment and, at its heart, a contract that

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Deaf employee awarded over $100,000 in damages after “horrendous” conduct by employer

A decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last week contains some of the most disturbing termination facts I have seen in some time. Quite simply, it is a case study on how not to treat an employee with a disability – or any employee for that matter – and how not to terminate

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