On April 1, 2018 Equal Pay for Equal Work, the new section 42 of the Employment Standards Act (ESA) came into force. This was a Bill 148 amendment. You can read more about the big changes Bill 148 has made to the Ontario employment landscape in our previous posts on this topic.  

Equal Pay for Equal work expands pay equity from pay equity on the basis of sex, to pay equity on the basis of employment status.

What a Year!

SpringLaw celebrates its one year anniversary this month. We kick off year 2 with our new monthly newsletter that we hope will be a useful, quick read to keep you updated on Canadian workplace law.  

Our clients and colleagues have been such an important part of our journey. It’s been a year of thinking through our entire workflow to ensure client experience drives the entire process, implementing new software internally across the board to support our virtual infrastructure, and rethinking how we can bring value and efficiency to every client file. There is plenty of great legal information available online and clients come to us more informed than ever. Our job is not to cut and paste what is already online, but instead, to help you think through your legal strategy, what are best practices to consider, and to sort through the noise of our information-overloaded lives.

Benefits are always a hot topic in employment law. My 2012 post on benefits during the notice period remains my most read post.

On January 1, 2018 the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) introduced Children and Youth Pharmacare, drug coverage for children and youth, who are otherwise covered by OHIP and aged 24 and under. In this post we will look at the intersection between government benefits and private drug plans and the impact of this change.

Our US readers may picture Canada as a free health care utopia with free medications, dentist visits and massages for everyone! While many health services are covered, many are not, which is where employee health benefits come in.

Today we will address another in our series of Bill 148 client questions. Over the last two weeks, we have tackled questions related to the new vacation entitlements and entitlements of salaried workers to the Three Hour Rule. This weeks’ question addresses one of the most talked about changes in the Employment Standards Act Personal Emergency Leave. For a more in depth look at Personal Emergency Leave check out our post from January.

We designed our Bill 148 webinar series to help our employer clients get acquainted with the significant changes introduced by the Bill 148 amendments. We will also be shortly issuing an Employer’s Guide to Bill 148, an ebook which will cover these changes in depth.

On March 6, 2018, Ontario Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn introduced Bill 203 the Pay Transparency Act, 2018. It has passed first reading and is in the process of making its way through the legislative process. While the Bill is not law yet, it would introduce several measures aimed at further closing the wage gap between male and female workers.

This week we bring you another in our Bill 148 client questions series. Today we will tackle the three hour rule. This change comes into effect on January 1, 2019, in the category of Employment Standards Act scheduling changes.

Q: Does the three hour rule apply to salaried employees?

A: It’s easy to see how to calculate three hours of pay for an employee who is paid by the hour. This client question asks if salaried employees are entitled to the three hours of pay. They are! Our answer to this question will also address how to calculate the entitlement when a worker is paid a salary.

The three hour rule, which again does not come into force until January 1, 2019, reads: