The Chartwell Chronicles: Employment Law
Managing the Size and Structure of Your Post-Pandemic Workforce
#WorkforceWednesday: OSHA ETS on Hold, Retaliation Claims Increase, "Vaccination Ambassadors" - Employment Law This Week®
A recent decision of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice provides helpful guidance to Ontario employers on the standard of workplace investigation in the context of a termination for cause. The Court also provides helpful...more
In this case submitted to the Supreme Court (“Cour de cassation”), a State health insurance agency dismissed one of its employee for gross misconduct for having sent to some of her colleagues, through her professional email...more
In Breen v Foremost Industries Ltd, 2023 ABKB 552, the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta dismissed the claim of a President and CEO that he had been wrongfully dismissed from his employment, finding that his employment had...more
The city of Portsmouth terminated a police officer in the wake of a bequest made to the officer by a 92-year-old woman he had met while on duty. The officer had assisted the woman in finding an attorney to draft a new will...more
In Goruk v. Greater Barrie Chamber of Commerce, 2021 ONSC 5005, the Ontario Superior Court found that the Chamber of Commerce (COC) was justified in dismissing with cause a 75-year-old, long-term employee with no prior...more
In a recent labour arbitration decision, TELUS v United Steelworkers, Telecommunications Workers Union National Local 1944 (Heywood), Arbitrator Jolliffe, Q.C., upheld the termination of a long-service, unionized employee for...more
In Czerniawski v. Corma Inc., 2021 ONSC 1514, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice concluded that a long-term employee’s misconduct did not justify dismissal for cause without notice. The court awarded 19 months’ common law...more
For school personnel administrators, it is a frustrating but typical experience to have a teachers’ union representative object to warnings and directives on the grounds that the warning is too broad, or not directly on point...more
The Illinois Appellate Court recently affirmed the dismissal of a tenured fifth-grade teacher accused of intentionally breaking the seals on standardized test booklets to help students cheat on the test....more
On December 3, 2019, the New Jersey Appellate Division upheld the dismissal of a whistleblowing claim filed by an ex-casino employee. In Cook v. Bally's Park Place Inc., the Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s...more
Red faces – no gross misconduct when employee revealed executive's pay - The EAT had to consider whether an employee had acted in breach of contract or committed gross misconduct when he revealed details of an executive's...more
In Local 702, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO v. National Labor Relations Board and Consolidated Communications, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently upheld the termination of a...more
Prior to the advent of social media and especially the #MeToo movement, employers were generally comfortable drawing a bright line between what employees did on their own time and workplace misconduct. ...more
When Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. fired store manager Jeanette Ortiz, accusing her of stealing $626 in cash from the safe, it could never have expected its minimal theft loss to balloon into a nearly $8 million jury verdict...more
The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently overturned a longstanding line of cases that allowed disabled employees to prevail in discrimination cases without proving the employer intended to discriminate or was even aware that the...more
There’s good news for retailers: you are getting better at preventing shrink from employees. In 2005, a University of Florida study found that employee theft accounted for 47 percent of shrink. In a follow-up study in 2016,...more
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals has affirmed a decision holding that a call center employee with bipolar disorder proved that he was discharged “because of” his disability by establishing he was discharged for misconduct—i.e.,...more
A recent federal appeals court decision case upheld an employer’s termination of a diabetic employee for misconduct, despite the employee’s argument that her poor work performance was a result of low-blood sugar....more
FMLA abuse is an increasing problem oftentimes leaving employers searching for options. However, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals gave employers a win in Sharif v. United Airlines, Inc., when it affirmed an employer’s...more