Do you know your employment rights in Canada? Because looking back at my past career before starting my own business, I sure didn’t! Since I was 15, I worked as an employee for a number of different companies and not once did I negotiate my pay, get a lawyer to look over my employment contracts, or really know what I was getting myself into until I’d already signed on the dotted line. After interviewing David Whitten and Daniel Lublin on my podcast, who are experts in the field and founding partners of Whitten & Lublin Employment Lawyers, I couldn’t believe how much money I left on the table because of that.
I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did because knowing your employment rights is one of the best ways to protect your wealth. There’s a saying in personal finance that goes “No one cares more about your money than you do.” You can hire the best financial advisor in the world, but at the end of the day, they are looking out for themselves and their bottom line, not yours. For them, it’s just a job, but for you, it’s your livelihood and future at stake. The same rings true in the workplace. Your employer is not your friend or your family, they are hiring you for a job to ultimately help them grow and become more profitable. They are looking out for themselves first, which means you need to look out for yourself too.
This is why I want to break down the key things you should know before you get the job, once you get the job, and when you eventually leave. With that said, if you are looking for specific legal advice for your situation, make sure to consult an employment lawyer. Please also note that the following information is for non-union workers only.
Why You Need to Look Over Your Employment Contract
The last job I got, I don’t think I’d ever been more excited (or desperate) to say “Yes, I accept!” A year prior, I’d moved with my husband from Vancouver to Toronto to start a new life together with the hope that we’d be able to push our careers further than we could in our hometown.
That first year was rough. I was unemployed for the first few months and then worked a string of jobs that paid the bills but either had toxic work environments or were on the verge of bankruptcy. I wanted something stable that paid me what I knew I was worth, and I wanted out fast. After secretly job hunting for months while working as a sales assistant for a publishing company, I finally got offered a job in marketing for a big corporation. It was the complete opposite of any job I’d ever had. It was in a big tower downtown, the pay and benefits were more than I’d ever gotten before, and my boss and co-workers seemed to genuinely love working there.
Eager to leave my current job, I said yes right away and went to their head office to sign my employment contract which was left for me at reception. I didn’t even know what my salary was until I looked at the contract, that’s how desperate I was to jump ship. It also shows just how naïve I was because not looking over my employment contract, or hiring a lawyer to go through it with me, turned out to be the biggest mistake I could’ve made.
You see, although it was a decent pay bump from my last job, not once did I get a pay increase for the almost three years I was there. There also weren’t any bonus opportunities besides a $100 Visa gift card that everyone on staff received during the holidays. Moreover, although they promised that there was “room for growth”, it became clear that the only way to get a promotion was if someone left. Funnily enough, after handing in my notice because I was tired of waiting, two of my co-workers also quit resulting in those who stayed finally getting promoted!
If I’d looked at my employment contract and negotiated for better pay and more opportunities before signing it, I can only imagine how much additional income I could have pulled in and how much higher my net worth would be now. A costly mistake indeed.
What You Should Beware of in Your Employment Contract
If I could turn back time, I would have gone through my employment contract with a fine-tooth comb. So, if you’re actively on the job hunt or expecting to receive a job offer any day, make sure to look out for these items in your employment contract and ideally seek legal counsel to help (an investment I wish I would have made!).
Compensation, Bonuses and Promotions
First and foremost, make sure that the pay noted on your employment contract matches the pay you were promised when they offered you the job. You may think it’s unlikely that an employer would try to trick a new hire like this, but hey… it happened to me!
The first job I got after moving to Toronto initially seemed promising (they had Craft Beer Fridays!), but turned out to be one of the worst jobs I ever had. During my interview, we discussed compensation and I was given a specific number I was happy with. A few days later I got the call with the offer and happily accepted. I was meant to sign my employment contract on my first day on the job (which at the time didn’t seem odd but it sure does now) and what instantly caught my eye was that the number on the contract was $5,000 lower than what I was promised. When I brought it up to management, they simply said the higher number they mentioned during the interview would be something I could work up to after proving myself over the next six months on the job. Needless to say, because of that and a handful of other reasons, I quit after a week. Make sure the pay you were promised is in writing!
Along the same lines, look out for language about bonus structures and beware if the wording is too vague. You want to have clear guidelines on what actions you need to take to earn those bonuses, and not leave them completely up to the discretion of your employer since they may decide to never pay them out.
Benefits and Time Off
Although your pay is important, benefits can be just as valuable. Ensure your employment contract clearly specifies all of the benefits you’re entitled to such as health and insurance benefits, sick days, and vacation time. You should also look out for language that addresses whether you can carry-forward sick days or vacation time or if they expire.
When people think of negotiating their employment contract, they often think that just means your pay, but you may be able to negotiate better benefits or longer vacation time too. Case in point, I had a friend who was able to negotiate several months of extra vacation time per year from her employer since the nature of her live events job required her to work hundreds of hours of over-time. To her, time was more valuable than over-time pay, and she was able to travel the world because of that negotiation. Remember, everything is negotiable.
Remote Work
Ever since the pandemic, more and more people are looking for work that doesn’t require them to head back into the office. This is why before you sign your employment contract, make sure your work location is clearly spelled out, such as 100% remote or 100% hybrid with two days in the office and three days at home. If it’s in your contract, then your work location can’t easily change even if the company’s policy does.
More than that, you need your work hours, communication protocols, equipment and/or software they’ll provide you, and any reimbursements for expenses you’ll accrue established in your contract. Get it all in writing so they can’t renege later on.
Severance Packages
And lastly, there’s your severance package. Just like no one wants to talk about setting up a will when financial planning (who wants to think about death?), no one wants to talk about severance when they’re just about to start a new job (who wants to think about getting terminated?). But the truth is, this part is often overlooked by employees but you can save a lot of money in legal fees if you set it up properly in your contract at the outset instead of fighting for what you deserve on your way out.
Negotiating your severance package is vital for protecting your financial stability during the period between jobs. Without proper severance, you could be forced to rely on credit cards or savings, which can quickly lead to financial strain. Employers often aim to offer the lowest severance possible, so it’s important to push for what you’re rightfully owed. A fair severance package ensures you have enough money to cover your living expenses while you search for your next role. By negotiating, you can also secure compensation for unused vacation time or other benefits.
It’s also important to note that remote workers in Ontario may be treated differently when it comes to severance pay. Under the Employment Standards Act, remote employees impacted by mass layoffs may not be entitled to the same termination pay as non-remote workers. However, proposed changes to Ontario’s employment laws could soon rectify this, ensuring that remote workers receive equal severance pay protections.
This is where an employment lawyer can be extremely valuable. They can take a look at your employment contract and assess if your severance package is fair or not and how to negotiate a fair deal right at the start. One way to gauge this on your own is by trying out this Severance Calculator.
Advocating for Yourself in the Workplace
Okay, you’ve looked over your contract (or gotten help from an employment lawyer), signed your contract, and started work. Now what? Oftentimes you don’t know what kind of work environment you’ve gotten yourself into until a few months or a year have gone by. What this could look like is discovering that there are a lot of boundaries being encroached on or work policies being ignored or broken.
That’s why once you’re in the job, the fighting for your employee rights doesn’t stop. You need to advocate for yourself because if you don’t, your kindness or willingness to “pitch in” could be taken advantage of. Remember, if you’re working over-time, you should be compensated for that, either in the form of additional pay or lieu-time.
So how do you speak up and protect yourself and your wealth? Track everything and have proof, and know the workplace policies through-and-through. Not only that, it’s important to know which policies may be missing from your employee handbook or may not have been communicated to you, but are still legally binding. For example, starting in 2023, companies with 25 or more employees in Ontario became required to have a written policy about disconnecting from the workplace..
Asking for Accommodations for a Disability
But that’s not the only way to protect yourself. You should also be asking for accommodations if you need them because of a physical or mental disability. To ensure you aren’t wrongly dismissed from a job because of your disability, it is the employee’s responsibility to disclose to their employer that they need accommodations to fulfill their job. Once you communicate this to your employer, you should be “legally protected against discrimination or harassment on account of a disability, including a mental health disability,” (Source: Whitten & Lublin). This means that your employer may be required by law to accommodate your disability, to the point of undue hardship. That being said, your employer may ask for medical proof, in which case you should be prepared to provide it.
With this in mind, and this is a subject discussed in my podcast episode with David Whitten and Daniel Lublin, you only ever need to bring up your disability if you require accommodations. If you don’t require them, you’re not legally required to disclose it.
Moreover, it’s likely best not to bring it up too early in the interview process because, unfortunately, the hiring team may have conscious or unconscious biases against people with disabilities. To protect yourself against discrimination in the hiring process, you need only bring up the topic of accommodations once you’ve secured the job. This is another area an employment lawyer can help you navigate since it can be quite delicate.
Exiting Your Job the Right Way
Well, no job lasts forever. And although most of us would prefer to leave on our own terms, sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way. So, let’s discuss your rights if you’re let go. No matter if you get laid off or get fired without cause, your employer is terminating your job and thus you are entitled to severance. The only exception would be if you’re fired with cause because of some serious misconduct, in which case you may no longer be entitled to severance. Cause is very difficult to prove, and you should always have an employment lawyer review the circumstances to see what your entitlements may be.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s vital to negotiate your severance package when you’re reviewing your employment contract before you sign it. This is the best way to ensure you get the best deal. But all isn’t lost if you didn’t do this. This is where an employment lawyer can step in to see if there is any way for the severance package to be improved, not to mention determine if there is a case for wrongful dismissal or a termination made in bad faith.
Not only that, an employment lawyer can also assess if the language in your contract is legally enforceable or not. If it isn’t, this could allow for easier negotiation for better severance entitlements upon your exit. You can get a sense of what severance you could be entitled to based on your length of service to your employer, current age, and type of work you performed by using Severance Pay Calculator. However, since severance calculators can only do so much and there is usually nuance it can’t factor in, this is where an employment lawyer can help.
But what if you decide to quit? It’s not uncommon to quit one job before you’ve secured the next, but does quitting mean you give up any severance entitlements or lose Employment Insurance (EI) eligibility? In general, yes, since the assumption is that you had the ability to plan ahead financially for that employment gap before you quit, but that’s not always the case.
There are some situations where your quitting could be considered a constructive dismissal, which means you would be eligible for severance and EI. For example, if you get demoted or your pay is reduced by over 15% and you object to these changes in a timely manner, you may be able to claim a case for constructive dismissal. Similarly, if your work environment has become unreasonably toxic to continue working there, this situation may also qualify. With that said, you’d want to discuss this with an employment lawyer well before you hand in your notice.
I’m by far no legal expert, and the topic of employee rights in Canada can feel overwhelming and confusing. Every province has different employment rights and there’s a reason that experts in the field have law degrees. I hope this post has given you some food for thought and made you aware that no matter what employment situation you find yourself in, you’re not alone and you can find help. You can start getting help by trying out Whitten & Lublin’s Virtual Lawyer or you can contact a member of their legal team to speak with someone in person.
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