Monkhouse Law

Swift justice to our clients is very important, especially to employees who have been wrongfully dismissed with no, or improper, notice. That said “swift” in the civil court context can mean an employee is left to wait at least one year before their hearing. In the 2016 decision of R v Jordan, the Supreme Court […]

In accordance with Section 22(1) of the Employment Standards Act, 2000, employees in Ontario are entitled to pay at 1.5 times their normal rate of pay for any hours they work in excess of 44 hours per week. There are of course, exceptions to the general rule, and several types of employees are exempt from

Long Term Disability in the Context of Popular Social Media   Long term disability claims are often long and arduous by their very nature. As the benefits are subject to multiple qualifications and are paid out over an extended period of time, insurance companies and claimant disputes will often arise at numerous stages in the

Generally, no employee should ever resign due to health reasons since that means getting no severance pay. If an employee is too sick to work or struggles physically to do their job they should go on leave, and then have an employment lawyer let their employer know that their contract is frustrated. If a 26

In the past year, the Ontario government has introduced some additions and changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act (“OHSA”) with the hope of providing additional protection and information to workers regarding hazardous working conditions. Within this post, we will be focusing on the new regulations on noisy work environments and how employers and

A termination clause in an employment contract details what happens when the parties, most often the employer, wants to end the working relationship. From an employment lawyer’s perspective, this clause is one of the most important, if not the most important, aspects of an employment agreement. Because of its significance and the power imbalance between

Update March 26 2020 related to COVID-19 Construction employees and employers face a particularly challenging situation in the face of the pandemic. Unfortunately, recent government measures have only worsened their uncertainty. The Ontario government’s emergency measures included the construction sector on the list of essential workplaces. The description is broad and seems to indicate that

Important things to keep in mind when investigating a harassment complaint The Ontario Human Rights Code (“Code”) states that employees have the right to be free from abusive or annoying behaviour stemming from one or more grounds in the Code. Section 5(2) of the Code states the following: Every person who is an employee has

Speaking at a Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce event earlier this month, Ontario’s Labour Minister Kevin Flynn stated that a final report outlining recommendations as part of Ontario’s Changing Workplaces Review (the “Review”) will be released sometime in the spring of 2017. The Review is the first independent review commissioned by the Ontario government in

Typically, an employment relationship ends in one of two ways, either by termination or resignation. There is, however, a third, less intuitive way that employment may end: frustration of contract. This most often happens when the employee is too sick to keep working. Many employees choose to retire and/or quit when they are no longer