How far do you have to go in carrying out risk assessments when the risks to your employees arise from activities conducted off your premises? It is a question that has always troubled health and safety advisors. The recent decision of the House of Lords in Smith (Jean) v Northamptonshire County Council, 2009 has helped to define the boundaries. In this case a care worker employed by the council was injured at a client's home ...
Robertson v. West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd., 2009 BCSC 602 Employee not constructively dismissed when employer’s unilateral reduction in his remuneration was small and he waited too long to complain about changes to his duties. Robertson was employed by West Fraser Timber (“WFT”) and its predecessor Weldwood for twenty-nine years ...
The establishment and operation of many Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) involves cooperation amongst industry participants, including those who may be competitors in other aspects of their businesses. It is very important that participants in CRCs remember that the prohibitions against anti-competitive conduct in the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (TPA) will apply to the CRC collaboration ...
The Labour Market Opinion (LMO) program of Service Canada has recently changed: extension applications for LMOs are no longer permitted. Instead, each request to continue to employ a foreign worker will be treated as a new LMO request and will need to be supported by evidence of updated recruitment activity ...
As of June 13, 2009, Facebook Inc. allows Facebook users to create personalized usernames for their Facebook pages on a first-come, first-served basis. This new username availability now enables users to have their Facebook page and profile at an Internet address in the following format: “facebook.com/user”. Prior to the implementation of this new policy, each user was randomly assigned a unique identification number (for example: id = 123456789) ...
The long-awaited and controversial Equality Bill (the Bill) has been published and laid before Parliament. Public consultations are scheduled on several of the measures outlined in this very significant piece of legislation, though it is not expected to come into force until the end of next year. With a General Election likely in June 2010, it remains to be seen how quickly the Bill will progress and how much of it will survive ...
The House of Lords has today given its long awaited judgement in the Stringer case (previously known as Ainsworth). The House of Lords allowed the employees' appeal, overturning the Court of Appeal's earlier decision and substituting the decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal ...
The intention of this brief note is to present an analysis of internal crises within law firms and the way of avoiding them. We define a crisis as an unexpected and grave difficulty or danger (“a time of intense difficulty or danger”). As a matter of fact the greek origin of crisis (“krisis”) meant “decision” (from “krinein” – decide) ...
In two recent cases (Coditel and Stadtreinigung Hamburg), the ECJ dealt with the so-called “in-house exemption” in procurement matters ...
What are the limits on national public procurement law to prevent collusion between tenderers in award procedures? This was the question the ECJ dealt with in its recent Assitur judgment (C-538/07).The facts of the Assitur case were as follows. Three tenderers passed the qualitative selection phase and were admitted to the final procedure ...
Mobile phone companies Vodafone and Telefónica O2 have agreed to pool their UK network infrastructure They are following the lead of H3G and T-Mobile, who are already one year into their joint consolidation project. The operators aim to share existing sites with the intention of reducing the total rent roll each company pays to landlords ...
A number of laws and regulations have been promulgated in the past few years to introduce a series of changes to the existing PRC Labour Law, among which the key legislations are the PRC Labour Contract Law effective on 1 January 2008 and its detailed implementing regulations effective on 18 September 2008 ("Laws") ...
Currently, employers can lawfully require employees to retire at 65 (the so-called default retirement age) as long as they follow the correct procedure. This has come under increasing criticism, and is currently the subject of a legal challenge by the charity Heyday (part of Age Concern). Whatever the outcome of the Heyday challenge, the Government had previously said it would review the default retirement age in 2011 to see if it was still needed ...
On August 7, 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada released its much anticipated decision of Nolan v. Kerry (Canada) Inc., a decision that concerns the ability of a plan sponsor to charge pension plan administrative expenses to the pension fund and the ability of a sponsor to use the actuarial surplus in the defined benefit portion of a pension plan to fund a contribution holiday in respect of the defined contribution portion of the plan ...
The decision in KERRY - August 7, 2009 (1) In this decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed, inter alia, that the company: May oblige the pension fund to pay the Plan expenses, that is the expenses associated with the employment of actuaries, accountants, counsel and other service providers required for the administration of the Plan; May combine the defined benefit (“DB”) and the defined c
On July 17, 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a unanimous judgment setting aside the ruling by the Quebec Court of Appeal and affirming that the employer had fulfilled its duty to accommodate in the case of Hydro-Québec v. Syndicat des employé-e-s de techniques professionnelles et de bureau d’Hydro-Québec, section locale 2000 (SCFP-FTQ). In this judgment, the Court essentially dealt with two aspects ...
In Hong Kong, some companies located in comparatively less accessible areas provide shuttle bus services for employees to travel to and from the workplace. This, of course, raises issues of liability and entitlement. More specifically, in the unfortunate event of a member of staff being injured while travelling on the company shuttle, he or she is entitled to make a claim under the Employees' Compensation Ordinance (ECO) ...
The Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO) came into force last week on 10 July 2009 following the passage of the Code of Practice on Employment under the RDO (Code) in the Legislative Council on 9 July 2009. Accordingly to reports in the South China Morning Post, one organisation has already said that it has prepared two cases for the Equal Opportunities Commission to tackle under the RDO ...
The quality of public services in Indonesia is expected to improve after the issuance of Law No. 25 of 2009 dated 18 July 2009 regarding Public Services (“PS Law”) ...
In recent times, the issue of post-retirement healthcare benefits has taken on a heightened significance for employers and sponsors of pension and health and welfare plans. Factors such as an increasing number of retirees, rising drug and healthcare costs and government cutbacks to universal healthcare programs are causing organizations to re-evaluate the extent to which they can or are willing to continue to provide post-retirement healthcare benefits ...
Much has been and continues to be written about applications for cost-sharing under section 329 of An Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases (the “AIAOD ”).Art. 329 I n the case of a worker already handicapped when his employment injury appears, the Comm ission may, on its own initiative or on the application of an employer, impute all or part of the cost of the benefits to the employers of all of the units ...
On October 27, 2009 the Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty announced a number of proposed changes to the pension framework in Canada. Most of the proposed changes will be made to the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985 (Canada) (the “PBSA”), which governs federally regulated pension plans ...
Labour & Employment Law Update A Cautionary Tale about Temporary Layoffs A recent decision of the B.C. Supreme Court, Besse v. Dr. A.S. Mechner Inc., 2009 BCSC 1316, serves as a reminder that employers do not have the right to lay off employees temporarily (and without severance) unless this right is specified in the employment agreement. In this case, a dentist was seeking to reduce the staffing costs associated with his practice ...
How can the government’s attitude and approach to internet issues best be described? The Canadian government recognises that Canada is a small country in a global economy and it pursues a general policy to ensure that Canada is ‘connected’ ...
