Ontario proposes new rules for companies laying off remote employees

The Ontario authorities is proposing an replace to employment legal guidelines that might entitle distant workers to termination notices.

The proposed modifications, introduced on Monday, would make distant employees eligible for a similar eight week minimal discover of termination or pay-in-lieu as in-office workers.

“Whether you commute to work every day or not shouldn’t determine what you are owed. No billion-dollar company should be treating their remote employees as second-class,” Ontario Minister of Labour Monte McNaughton mentioned in an announcement on Monday.

Currently, Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA) applies when 50 or extra workers at an “establishment” are terminated inside a four-week interval and entitles them to eight, 12 or 16 weeks’ discover of a mass layoff.

The proposal would broaden the definition of “establishment” to incorporate distant workers and, in doing so, entitle them to the identical superior termination discover.

This approach an organization can not cut up terminations between distant and in-office workers to keep away from assembly the definition of a mass layoff. It additionally ensures distant workers are given the identical protections as in-office employees within the occasion of wide-sweeping terminations.

If handed, the modifications would additionally make it obligatory for employers to supply new hires with info in writing about their job, akin to pay and work hours.

The proposed laws is a part of the Ontario authorities’s Working for Workers Act, which has helped workers disconnect from the workplace and enforced employers to inform their workers how they’re being electronically monitored.