• Employer obligations
• What your policy must include:
  • A workplace assessment to be completed by relevant personnel to develop and implement preventative measures within six months
  • Identified risk factors including office culture, external circumstances and the physical design of the workplace
  • Emergency procedures
  • A workplace harassment and violence prevention policy with reports, records and data to assist the investigator
  • A resolution process, including time frames to better support employees or people accused
  • Support measures for employees
  • Documentation on how to protect the privacy of people involved,
  • An annual report (first one due March 2021) to the minister of labour.
  • Mandatory training for employees
  • Need to be aware of each required investigation or resolution step and the timelines associated with those steps
• Implementation know-how
• Typical and atypical mistakes that can prove costly and how to avoid them

The new stand-alone Work Place Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations effective January 2021 bring significant change to federal labour law rules. Employers are expected to have an effective policy and to move from discussion to action.

• 15 months in, how is implementation going?
• What stakeholder feedback has been received?
• Is the law being enforced?
• Are complaints being received?
• Management and Union observations and comments

Employers are being inundated with vaccine-related cases and claims of wrongful dismissal.

• Is there a legal test of vaccine mandates imposed by employers?
• Are we pitting individual rights of workers against employers’ health and safety concerns amid a pandemic
• What are the factors considered in determining whether you terminate
• What does the contract or collect agreement say?
• Where is the employee working?
• What are the grounds for the employee not being vaccinated?
• Non-unionized employees – cause?
• Cost of termination if the contract or collective agreement doesn’t make vaccinations mandatory?

Find out about the important as well as the nuanced and complex changes to leave and benefit provisions:

• Personal leave
• Changes to medical and bereavement leave
• New family violence leave
• Traditional Indigenous practices leave
• Parental sharing benefits
• Removal of service, eligibility requirements
• What if the collective agreement provides a greater right or benefit?
• What will be considered a greater right or benefit?
• Anticipated problems and proactive solutions
• Perspectives on these changes directly from the Labour Program
• Labour Program handouts and interpretive guidelines
• Extension of the COVID-19 leave available under the Canada Labour Code

Hours of work, standard work day and work week, rest days, breaks, notice of schedule and shift change, overtime, exemptions from standard work hours, averaging and more. In addition to significant changes to the Canada Labour Code in 2019 that had an impact on how employers manage an employee’s work day, recent exemptions for and modifications to hours of work provisions add further complexity.

This session will provide:

• The information you need to effectively comply with the Code
• Challenges that may arise with respect to these changes
• Important exemptions from and modifications to Hours of Work Regulations
• impact of collective agreement rights
• Flexible work arrangements
• Vacation time and pay
• Calculating entitlements to avoid costly mistakes
• Questions to ask to verify compliance with daily and weekly hours of work requirement

Canadians are looking for more accessible information regarding wage gaps of employers. Where wage gaps exist, pay transparency legislation can prompt employers to take action to examine their practices and show leadership in reducing wage gaps that affect various marginalized communities such as women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and visible minorities

This session will cover recent amendments to the regulations under the Employment Equity Act that address pay transparency, as well as provide an update on the status of pay transparency legislation in some of the provinces.