The most common COVID-19 related employment law issue, from the start of the pandemic to now, has been layoffs.
Employees are asking lawyers whether their employer can place them on a temporary layoff, with no pay to support their family. Or whether they can be forced to take a 25 per cent pay cut.
Employers, for their part, seek legal advice about employees that they can’t afford to pay. If they lay them off, must they pay dismissal damages which they can’t currently afford?
The answers are not always straightforward.
In the early days of the virus, in March and April, we were able to tell employees, ‘yes, you can absolutely sue for wrongful dismissal if you are laid off — provided you are non-union, the government did not order your company to entirely shut down and your employment contract did not permit layoffs (99 per cent of contracts did not at the time)’.
[Interesting Read]
See Also:
(1) ‘People are being shown no mercy’: Online evictions raise alarm in Ontario
