You are an HR practitioner in a medium-sized company that will soon be hiring 20 summer interns. You have been directed to provide a 1500-word briefing for all line managers outlining the legal obligations that your company has to these new employees.
Write a memo that outlines the most important legal requirement that managers must know about when hiring and managing these employees. You may wish to make specific reference to your jurisdiction’s laws addressing employment standards, occupational health and safety, and human rights. * Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act * Managers must make sure that they comply with this act’s ten principles in regard to maintaining the standards for privacy. According to this act, the human resource department and the company are responsible for safeguarding the privacy of employees. According to this Act, employer can barely keep anything from an employee. Employers are allowed to gather information about employees such as performance, attendance, and possibility of advancement. * Employee Standards Legislation: * There are minimum standards that employers are required to meet * Human rights employment standards in Ontario: * Protects people in Ontario from employment discrimination * The protected grounds of discrimination in employment in Ontario are: race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion or religious creed, age (18 and over), sex (including pregnancy and childbearing), sexual orientation, marital status (including same sex partners), family status, physical or mental disability (includes dependence on drugs or alcohol), pardoned conviction, ancestry or place of origin * Should encourage diversity in the workforce, one that is a true representation of the population * Everyone has the right to be free from discrimination and harassment according to the Ontario Human Rights Code. * Minimum wage: it is the lowest wage an employee can be paid by the employer. Generally most employees in Ontario are entitled to at least $10.25/hr (minimum wage)—this excludes students, liquor servers, homeworkers, and hunting and fishing wages * Hours of work: The maximum amount of hours an employee can work in a day is 8 hours and the maximum amount of hours an employee can work in a week is 48 hours (unless otherwise stipulated in a written contract). * Workers must have at least 11 hours off during the day and at least 8 hours between shifts (if the two shifts equal more than 13 hours together). * Employees must have a 30 min lunch break after 5 hours of work. * Employees must receive 24 hours off weekly or 48 hours off bi-weekly * When people put in extra hours (overtime), they are entitled to overtime pay (1.5 x normal wage per hour) * Holidays: * Employees in Ontario qualify for 9 public holidays and on these days, employees can take these days off and be paid public holiday pay. If they agree to work on holiday, there are to be paid public holiday pay plus premium pay or they get normal wage for the day and can take another day off and get public holiday pay. The 9 public holidays are new year’s day, family day, good Friday, Victoria day, Canada day, labour day, thanksgiving day, Christmas day, and boxing day. * Vacations: * Employees are entitled to 2 weeks off per 12 month period of work. Employees should be paid at least 4% of earnings in 12 month period. * Unjust dismissal: * An employee can take the employer to court and sue the organization for unjust dismissal or the employee can also file a claim for severance or termination pay. * Layoff procedures: * Is entitled to recall rights, where laid off employees have the right be requested to come back to work by their organization under certain conditions. If the employee is offered both termination and severance pay, the employee must make a choice between the two options. * Severance pay: * Employees qualify for this if they have worked 5 or more years and their employer has a payroll greater than $2.5 million or employer severed the employment of 50 more employees. * Should also take into account the number of years the employee completed at the organization * Pay Equity: * Employers that are regulated by the federal government should pay accordingly for work of equal value (pay equity) * Pay equity should look at the wage gap issue and try to deal it with that way there isn’t much of a difference between the earnings of full-time women workers and full-time men workers.
Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA): * There are ten principles that apply across the country. These are standards for privacy practices. The organization must protect employee privacy. * There is very little information that an employer can keep from the employee. * Employers are allowed to gather information related to the workers performance, attendance and is there any chance of promotion.
The Government’s Role in Providing for Equality and Privacy Protection * Employers can look to the Canadian Human Right Commission and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and/or they can also look to Ontario Human Rights Commission in order to go about applying human rights. * CHRC tries to resolve issues pertaining to the 11 prohibited grounds of discrimination or harassment as stated in the Canadian Human Rights Act. CHRC can resolve these issues by using mediation, conciliation or tribunal or go to the Supreme Court of Canada * CHRC audits federal workers to make sure they abide by the Employment Equity Act. * CHRC also makes sure pay equity requirements are met
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada * They make sure they abide by the PIPEDA * They look into complaints and offer employers solutions * If organizations do not comply and violate a worker’s privacy rights, the Commissioner can take the issue to the Federal Court of Canada. If issue is still not resolved, the Court can step in.
Employers’ Role in Meeting Legal Requirements Avoiding discrimination * Avoid differential treatment, that is avoid treating individuals differently because of a difference that is a prohibited ground of discrimination * Organizations should constantly take a look at the questions and methods they use when hiring an employee. By paying attention, one can avoid differential treatment * Only in the case of bona fide occupational requirement is differential treatment legal. Employer must prove the BFOR.
Mandatory Retirement * Since age is a human rights issue, employers should not force an employee to mandatory retire because of age (since its discriminatory) unless there is a bona fide occupational retirement The Duty to Accommodate * The employer should look into the employees characteristics and see how it can be accommodated so that way the worker can do their job * The employer is responsible for duty to accommodate whether it is performing another job. Accommodation must be provided unless there will be undue hardship. * When the employee needs to be accommodated they must also demonstrate this need to the employer (i.e. religion, disabilities) Preventing Harassment

* Human rights legislation prohibits harassment especially those pertaining to protected grounds. This includes sexual harassment (quid pro quo harassment, hostile work environment). * An anti-harassment policy needs to be set in place, stating that harassment will not be accepted. Everyone needs to be informed about the policy, including employees. All workers should participate in anti-harassment training. * The company needs to find a way to make it easy for people to report harassment. * If this doesn’t work, the person who was the harasser will be disciplined, this way the victim will be protected as well. * Employers should also be on the lookout for psychological harassment (such as workplace bullying) since it may be more detrimental than sexual harassment. Since Ontario does not have anti-bullying laws, guidelines must be in place. * Employers must also protect employees and the general public from dangerous workers. Employers can be found liable for negligent hiring if they did not conduct adequate background and reference check or if the employers know or should have known that the worker was going to physical destructive to other
Valuing Diversity * Organizations should be inclusive and have a policy in place that values diversity (especially since Canada is a diverse country). Diverse workforce can be an advantage, competitively speaking that is, since there will be more people with talent and more insight into what the customer want. * By hiring diverse workers, microinequities may result. Companies must try to overcome the microinequities by trying to be inclusive (that includes commitment from the top), also being involved in open discussion may just help with the issue of microinequity. * Organizations that are trying to promote diversity will try to reach employment equity goals. Policies may reflect their value for diversity. Also if workers are demonstrating inclusivity, then the organization will reward, hire or even promote the worker. Companies can include training programs to talk about diversity. Every employee must feel respected that way they can reach their potential.
Occupational Health and Safety * The government regulates the protection and ensures health and safety legislation is there in all jurisdictions (including Ontario) * In order to protect people, companies must take the safe operations approach * It is both the employee and employers responsibility to have a safe and health workplace.

* What this act covers: * Workplaces: any place where an employee works in, on, or near (does not include: * Worker: anyone who works or provides a service in exchange for being paid. This excludes inmates. * Employer: Someone who employs or contracts a worker to perform work or services. This also includes contractors and subcontractors. * Workers’ rights * right to participate to classify and resolve workplace health and safety issues. * Workers can participate in health and safety committees * right to know about any exposure of potential hazards that may come their way * Workers should be trained and be aware of how to use machinery/equipment, hazardous products, working conditions. * right to refuse work that may be detrimental to the health and safety of themselves or other employees. If employees feel they are endangered by workplace violence, then they can also refuse work. * right to stop work that is seen dangerous to any person. The health and safety committee members can execute this right.