The Ontario government has just passed the Bill 148 which amends the Employment Standards Act and the Labour Relations Act with a target effective date of January 1, 2018.  The Bill still needs to receive Royal Assent.

Key changes to the Employment Standards Act will include:

• Raising the general minimum wage to $14 per hour as of January 1, 2018 and $15 per hour as of January 1, 2019
• As of April 1, 2018 requiring the same rate of pay as paid to full-time employees for employees doing substantially the same kind of work including temporary help agency staff, casual, part time, temporary and seasonal workers
• Increasing the minimum vacation to three weeks per year after an employee has five years of service
• Increasing parental leave for birth mothers who have taken maternity leave to 61 weeks (from the current 35 weeks);  increasing parental leave for adoptive parents and fathers to 63 weeks (from the current 37 weeks)
• Extending the availability of personal emergency leave days to employers with under 50 employees
• Requiring the first two days per year of personal emergency leave to be paid with the remaining eight days unpaid
• Extending the leave of absence to 104 weeks for death of a child as a result of a crime to the death of a child for any reason
• Increasing the current 52 week leave of absence in the case of child disappearance as a result of a crime to 104 weeks
• Increasing family medical leave from 8 weeks to 28 weeks
• Adding a new domestic violence/sexual violence leave of absence ; up to 10 days off and up to 15 weeks of leave per year will be available (first five days to be paid) where an employee or an employee’s child experiences domestic or sexual violence and needs time off for medical attention, counselling, to relocate, for legal assistance or law enforcement reasons

There are numerous changes that will come into effect on January 1, 2019 concerning scheduling including the following:

• If a shift is cancelled within 48 hours of its start, employees will be paid 3 hours of pay
• Employees can refuse a shift without repercussion if they receive less than 96 hours of notice
• On-call employees who are either not called into work or work fewer than three hours must be paid three hours of their regular pay rate

The Ministry of Labour has announced that it will hire up to 175 additional Employment Standards Officers to enforce the changes.

Key changes to the Labour Relations Act will include:

• Card-based union certification for the building services industry, the home care and community services industry and the temporary help agency industry
• Allowing unions to access employee lists and certain contact information provided the union can demonstrate that it has the support of 20% of employees in the proposed bargaining unit.
• OLRB can conduct votes outside the workplace, including electronically and by telephone
• Employees in a bargaining unit may only be disciplined or discharged for just cause in the period between certification and the date on which a first contract is entered into, and during the period between the date the employees are in a legal strike or lock-out position and the date a new collective agreement is entered into (or the date on which the union no longer represents the employees)
• Maximum fines will increase to $5,000 for individuals and $100,000 for organizations (formerly these fines were $2,000 for individuals and $25,000 for organizations).

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