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Sexual Harassment Articles
Changes to Ontario's Human Rights Regime to impact litigants
Since the mid-90’s, dissatisfied litigants of Ontario’s human rights regime have bemoaned its apparent shortcomings. A blend of limitations, owing their origins to the faulty composition of Ontario’s current human rights legislation, have ultimately left discrimination complainants without adequate redress. Complainants before the Human Rights Commission wait years before a resolution is reached, or imposed. Conversely, since the Commission lacks adequate discretion to immediately dismiss unmeritorious complaints, innocent corporate respondents are burdened with defending marginal complaints....[read more]
Employment Law Basics
The five most frequent files appearing on my desk – and in court dockets....[read more]
Employment Law Basics
Employment Law Basics: This is as true in law as it is in life. Here is a sampling of some of the questions I received this week and the cautionary advice I provided to those employees....[read more]
Gossip can be harmful to your career
Are you angry with your company or your boss? Be careful not to confuse freedom of speech with freedom from workplace consequences because, as a Canadian court recently found, gossip can be harmful to your career. Upset with her perceived mistreatment at work, Deborah Lee Dilg spoke to her co-workers to criticize her boss. ...[read more]
Harassed employees are no longer without remedy
Workplace abuse may have been obvious, but rarely did it amount to a paid vacation. Employees faced with a workplace abuser used to visit their doctor for a prescription or a note authorizing a leave of absence. Except in extraordinary cases, employees were bereft of a legal remedy, as courts had little appetite for walking into the workplace and ordering bosses to be nicer to their employees. The reality for most: either leave - or lose - your job. ...[read more]
Harassment doesn't belong at work
Every employer in Ontario has a legal obligation to provide a workplace free from harassment. This obligation extends to protecting you from harassing acts committed by other employees, management personnel, agents of the company, and clients or customers. Many times, both employees and employers are not clear about what their obligations are and what harassment in employment actually means. Furthermore, many people who have been subjected to harassing behaviour are not aware of what they can do to remedy the situation....[read more]
Law now leans towards workers
Except in extraordinary cases, employees facing slashed salaries, abusive bosses, demotions or material changes to their jobs used to be without a legal remedy. The reality for most was to either leave, or lose, their job. But employers no longer get to act with legal impunity. Now, equipped with the knowledge that they can sue for constructive dismissal damages, employees subjected to workplace changes turn to the courts...[read more]
Plant manager sacked for lewd behaviour
Office romance is a tricky business. For Scott Hall, the Garden of Eden simply had too many forbidden fruits. Having been hired to manage logging company Boise Alljoist’s New Brunswick operations, forestry dynamo Scott Hall's career had reached its peak. But life can be lonely at the top. For Hall, confusing office romance with leadership and management became more than a forbidden dalliance — it was the recipe for disaster....[read more]