Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
With many companies making remote work a permanent aspect of certain jobs, experts say employers cannot reduce a current employee's salary without consent and face legal risks if they do.
However, employers can hire new, remote employees at lower wages, if they so desire.
Stephen Wolpert, a partner at Canadian employment law firm Whitten & Lublin, told CTVNews.ca an employer can change an employee's pay if both parties agree to the reduction.
"If they're both onside with the changes … there's no real hurdle to that. The harder question is when an employer is sort of imposing it on an employee unilaterally, without the employee having agreed or without the employee having acknowledged that working remotely is a benefit to them," Wolpert said in a telephone interview Thursday.
In those cases, Wolpert said, an employer can still reduce wages without an employee having agreed, but it comes with a "real risk" that the reduction will qualify as a constructive dismissal of that worker's employment, which can entitle them to severance.
Constructive dismissal, Wolpert said, is when an employer makes a substantial change to the terms of an employee’s employment without consent, resulting in the employee having the option of treating their employment as having been terminated.
However, what the courts deem as constructive dismissal is "relative," he said.
"If it's a one-per-cent reduction in wages, that might not be seen as a constructive dismissal. If it's a 20-per-cent reduction in wages, that probably would be," Wolpert said. "The courts would look at all kinds of different things to decide how big a pay cut could be tolerated before it's a constructive dismissal."
While imposing a pay cut to existing employees poses a legal risk to employers, Wolpert said they do have the option to "red circle" someone's salary.
"In other words, you don't reduce it, but you make an internal decision that you're not going to increase it for some period of time," he said. "And that's usually permissible, because most employees aren't entitled to wage increases.'
Howard Levitt, an employment lawyer at Levitt LLP, said employers also have the option to hire new employees at lower rates if they are planning to have them work from home full-time.
"They can hire 10 employees at 10 different rates for the same jobs quite legally," Levitt said in a telephone interview with CTVNews.ca on Thursday.
However, he said employers have to give current employees the option of returning to the office at full pay.
"If [companies] want to have a policy that people working at home will earn less, they can have that policy as long as they give the people who were previously at the higher salary the option of keeping their higher salary," Levitt said
While working remotely eliminated the costs of commuting and running an office space, Christopher Achkar, principal and employment lawyer at Toronto-based firm Achkar Law, told CTVNews.ca that employers have to take into account the new costs facing an employee working from home, such as increased electricity bills, as well as personal phone and internet usage.
"These are things that now that employee will have to bear the cost on those, and the employer is getting a windfall essentially," Achkar said in a telephone interview Thursday.
If an employer does try to reduce a current employee's wages, Achkar said the employee should "make it clear" that they are refusing the change if a mutual agreement has not been met.
He added that if the employer comes back and says, "too bad, take it or leave it," that is grounds for constructive dismissal and the worker should speak with an employment lawyer about compensation.
"What the employee should not do is not say anything about the decrease in pay and think that later on they can bring it up again," Achkar said. "Once you accept a change in employment, like pay, then it will be hard to go back on it."
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.