Human Resources and Skills Development/Service Canada (“HRSDC”) recently implemented Regional Occupations Lists (the “Lists”). The Lists are meant to “assist employers who are experiencing difficulty filling job vacancies due to labour market shortages ...
Cory Grams died while at work at a Maple Leaf Metal Industries Ltd. (“Maple Leaf”) plant in Edmonton, Alberta. His parents, as beneficiaries and administrators of his estate, claimed damages against Maple Leaf for $92,000 for negligence in failing to provide insurance coverage under an employment contract. A claim against the insurer, Zurich, was settled prior to trial. Mr ...
Effective December 12, 2006, mandatory retirement will no longer be generally permissible in Ontario, (as a result of amendments to the Ontario Human Rights Code). Employers will, however, still be allowed to enforce mandatory retirement polices if they can show that being younger than 65 (or another designated age) is a bona fide occupational requirement ...
The new LC is based on a different legal conception than the existing LC. Whereas the still valid LC is a mandatory legal regulation with no exceptions, the new code allows that the rights or obligations in labour-law relations are regulated differently than in the Labour Code, unless the code expressly prohibits or unless it results from the nature of the relevant provisions that it is impossible to deviate from such provisions ...
The right to privacy occupies a prominent place in Quebec law. Both the Charter of human rights and freedoms(1) and the Civil Code of Québec(2) recognize this right. Moreover, it is acknowledged that deliberate interception of a private communication may infringe this right. Does this mean that any form of electronic recording in a work environment is prohibited? Absolutely not ...
The new provisions pertaining to psychological harassment that were added to the Act respecting labour standards(1) (hereinafter referred to as the “ARLS”) on June 1, 2004, have given rise to many arbitration awards and interpretations over the last two years that have expounded on the concept of psychological harassment ...
In our Spring 2005 newsletter we reported on the Keays v. Honda Canada Inc.(1) decision in which the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded a dismissed employee $500,000 in punitive damages in addition to 24 months salary in lieu of notice (15 months’ reasonable notice plus nine months’ additional “Wallace” damages for “bad faith” dismissal) ...
An employment permit system has recently been implemented for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau personnel rendering services in Mainland China.The Administrative Regulations on the Employment of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Residents in Mainland China (“Employment Regulations”) were issued by the PRC Ministry of Labour and Social Security on 14 June 2005 and took effect on 1 October 2005 ...
The IT outsourcing market has matured in the past years. Many IT outsourcing relationships are fruitful and long lasting. Nevertheless international surveys continue to show that numerous outsourcing deals are untimely terminated in the first two to four years. This paper highlights the key risk factors for failure of IT outsourcing relationships. These key risk factors will be underlined by various failed outsourcing case law. Such case law probably only represents the top of the iceberg ...
Open source software ("OSS") is quickly entering the mainstream and becoming increasingly widely used. In fact International Data Group analysts have predicted that the OSS marketplace will be worth £35 billion by 2008. OSS is software that is freely available (without discrimination) and can be copied, modified and redistributed ...
Pursuant to the Act on Budget Rules for Public Administration, the Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Slovak Republic, by this Ruling, enlarged the scope of persons entitled to subsidies ensuring higher penetration of broadband internet access ...
In the workplace, youth is seen as a valuable asset. When the benefits of youth are emphasised in relation to personnel and staffing issues to the exclusion of other factors, employers may well find themselves discriminating on the basis of age. Employers may also be depriving themselves of the many benefits of an age-diverse workforce – higher retention rates; lower rates of absenteeism; greater flexibility; and a wider pool of available skills. This has a major economic impact ...
According to the independent charity, The Age and Employment Network, the cost of age discrimination in the UK now amounts to £5.5bn in lost government tax and paid unemployment benefits and a further £30bn in lost productivity annually. These are astounding figures. It seems that many employees are currently obliged or persuaded to leave the workplace before their normal retirement age and that early exit from work for people aged over 50 tends to be permanent ...
The main legal acts regulating the registration of seagoing ships in Lithuania are the Law on Merchant Shipping, the Rules for Registration of Seagoing Ships in Lithuania approved on 4 July 2005 by order No. 3-301 of the Minister of Transport and Communications, and the Decision of the Government of Lithuania “On the Register of Seagoing Ships of the Republic of Lithuania”. The following ships can be registered at the Register of Seagoing Ships of the Republic of Lithuania (the Register): 1 ...
In order for an employee to be entitled to the statutory benefits endowed under the Employment Ordinance (the "EO"), in most of the situations, he has to be under a continuous employment with their employer for a certain minimum period. As a result, what constitutes a continuous employment and what breaks its continuity are important to both employers and employees. In a recent Court of Appeal case, Lui Lim Ka & others v ...
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress made public China's draft law on "The PRC Labour Contract Law" on 20 March 2006, with a view to collecting opinions thereon from relevant departments and the public, for further amendments to be made to this draft law. The PRC Labour Contract Law is intended to be promulgated pursuant to the PRC Labour Law, and sets out to clarify certain ambiguities to give employees better protection ...
These questions arise periodically and always pose problems of conscience for the lawyers and employers concerned. A recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Caisse Populaire Desjardins de La Malbaie v. Tremblay, J.E. 2006-1218, 2006 QCCA 697, sets out the latest state of the law on the subject. The facts Tremblay sued the Caisse Populaire for unlawful dismissal and his lawyer communicated with employees of his former employer for the purpose of meeting with them ...
Procuring and implementing an ICT system within an organisation can be a stressful task. High profile failures in both the public and private sectors hit the headlines all too often. The National Audit Office's report last month on the £6.2bn NHS IT upgrade in England put many of the challenges firmly in the spotlight. In the heat of the procurement process it is easy to forget some basic procurement principles ...
Every day in Mumbai, India, a team of 5,000 couriers deliver, collect and return 200,000 lunch boxes. This massive logistics operation is undertaken with an error rate of less than 1 in 8 million deliveries and without using any information technology. Enormous labour cost disparities enable this manual operation to be undertaken cost-effectively ...
Last November the expert group appointed by the Scottish Executive to consider a statutory offence of corporate culpable homicide issued its report. As expected, the group proposed a new statutory offence of corporate killing. It recommended that this should apply to incorporated companies and, as far as possible, to unincorporated and Crown bodies. The report recommended that two individual offences (applying to named persons) be introduced ...
Enacted in June 1998, the Tobacco Act (the «Act») is a major component of the Government of Quebec’s strategy to fight smoking. In June 2005, Quebec’s legislature reinforced the Act by adopting the Act to amend the Tobacco Act and other legislative provisions(1) (the «Amending Act»). The amendments, which came into force on May 31, 2006, are primarily intended to further restrict the use of tobacco in certain locations, including workplaces, and enhance compliance with the Act ...
In the past few years, several companies have experienced financial difficulties with their defined benefit private pension plans as a result of several factors including, in particular, poor investment performance due to falling stock markets, declining interest rates, the aging of beneficiaries and the increase in the number of retirees ...
