Tag Archives: JobProtectedLeaves

5 essential rules Alberta workers need to know

Whether you’ve been working for the last 20 years or you are starting your first job, something that many workers overlook are the laws that govern their work and their employers. In Alberta, these laws are referred to as Alberta Employment Standards, and they apply to most employees in the province. The only problem is Employment Standards — also known as pages and pages of rules pertaining to work in the province — can be a very long read.

To save you some of your well-earned time off, we’ve identified some of the most common Employment Standards regulations that we get asked about at the Workers’ Resource Centre that we believe are essential for all Alberta workers to know.

1. Wage Rules

Minimum Wage
The general minimum wage in Alberta is $15 per hour. There are some exceptions for domestic workers and salespersons whose minimum wage is calculated monthly and weekly. Student workers under the age of 18 can be paid as low as $13/hour for up to 28 hours a week, however, other strict conditions must be met for employers to pay this student wage rate.

The 3-Hour Minimum Rule
Employees must be paid at least 3 hours of pay at minimum wage each time they go to work, even if their employer sends them home earlier. If you were called into work and sent home after working only 1 hour, you must still be paid for 3 hours of work.

2. Overtime and the 8/44 Rule

In Alberta, overtime for most workers is calculated using the 8/44 rule (Note: there are some industries and professions that are exempt from this rule). Overtime means all hours worked beyond 8 hours a day or 44 hours a week, whichever is more.

Let’s say you worked 10 hours a day for 5 days a week for a total of 50 hours. If you calculated overtime weekly (above 44 hours), you would only have 6 hours of overtime. But when you calculate it daily (8 hours) you would have 10 hours of overtime, so your employer would be required to compensate you for 10 hours of overtime, not 6.

Depending on the agreement with an employer, overtime can be compensated by paying workers at 1.5 times the regular rate of pay or by banking hours. If you and your employer agree to bank overtime hours, you are initially paid for overtime at the regular rate of pay and later, you are entitled paid time off equal to the number of overtime hours worked. (Note: unless stated in writing, banked overtime hours must be used within six months).

3. Breaks

Workers in Alberta are entitled to breaks after working 5 hours or more. If your shift is more than 5 hours long and less than 10 hours, you are entitled to at least one 30-minute break. If your shift is longer than 10 hours, you are entitled to at least two 30-minute breaks.

Breaks may be paid or unpaid. However, if your employer places restrictions on your activities during a break (such as not being allowed to leave your workplace), your break must be paid.

4. Rest

Alberta workers must be provided at least 1 day of rest from work each week. Employers can combine work weeks, meaning you work without rest for more than one week, but must provide workers with the following periods of rest:

If you work 2 weeks straight, you are entitled to 2 consecutive days off before returning to work.
If you work 3 weeks straight, you are entitled to 3 consecutive days off.
If you work 4 days straight, you are entitled to 4 consecutive days off.

5. Job-protected leaves

There are 12 types of leaves that workers are allowed to take from work, without risking losing their job. Most workers who have been employed for more than 90 days are eligible for the following types of leave:

1. COVID-19 Infection = up to 14 days unpaid leave

2. COVID-19 vaccination = up to 3 hours paid leave

3. Citizenship Ceremony = half day unpaid leave

4. Maternity and Parental Leave = Up to 16 weeks unpaid maternity leave for a birth parent and up to 62 weeks of unpaid parental leave per child*

5. Personal and Family Responsibility = Up to 5 days of unpaid leave necessary for a worker’s health or for a worker’s family needs.

6. Illness/Injury Leave = up to 16 weeks per year of unpaid job-protected leave to heal from a long-term illness or injury.*

7. Compassionate Care = up to 27 weeks unpaid leave to provide end-of-life care for a family member*

8. Critical Illness = up to 16 weeks unpaid leave to care for a critically ill adult family member and up to 36 weeks unpaid leave to care for a critically ill child*

9. Bereavement (death of a family member or a pregnancy loss) =3 days unpaid leave

10. Death or disappearance of a child = up to 52 weeks unpaid leave if the child has disappeared and up to 104 weeks unpaid if the child has died due to a crime.*

11. Domestic Violence = up to 10 days unpaid job-protected leave*

12. Reservist = unpaid job-protected leave for Canadian Forces reservists for deployment and training

* While these leaves are not paid by the employer, there are other government programs and grants that provide income support due to these circumstances.

If you have questions about how these rules apply to your work, have an employer who isn’t following these rules, or need help with a job-protected leave, please click “Get Help” below.

So, you’ve lost your job. Now what?

People commonly lose their job on maternity or parental leave. Critics say EI needs an overhaul

The NDP is pushing for changes to the system it says is ‘discriminatory’

This article is sourced from CBC News, written by Natalie Stechyson

What happens to your employment insurance when you lose your job before returning from a maternity or parental leave?

It’s a question often asked in parenting groups, queried on social media or posed to employment lawyers as Canadian parents increasingly find themselves in this situation amid a cooling labour market and mass layoffs in several sectors, such as media and the tech industry.

“I’ve never seen layoffs like this in my life, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Allison Venditti, a human resources expert in Toronto, told CBC News. She’s also the founder of advocacy group Moms at Work, Canada’s largest organization for working mothers, with 7,500 members.

Companies are cutting ranks, Venditti said, and parents who are on leave aren’t immune.

In fact, when companies are laying off employees due to economic issues, they feel more open to laying off those who are on protected leave, said Andrew Monkhouse, managing partner at Toronto employment law firm Monkhouse Law and an adjunct professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

“It’s a persistent problem in Canada,” he said in an interview.

And that can leave new parents in a financial lurch. Under the current federal employment insurance (EI) system, parents cannot combine unemployment and parental leave benefits. That has critics calling for an overhaul of the system.

On Thursday, New Democrat MP Daniel Blaikie sent a letter urging Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault to change the EI rules immediately, calling the current ones “punitive and discriminatory.”

In his letter to Boissonnault, Blaikie wrote, “Women in Canada have waited long enough for justice in the employment insurance system,” adding, “Just get it done.”

In a statement emailed to CBC News, Boissonnault said the federal government cannot comment on specifics as the issue is currently before the courts.

“Our government will always stand up to give everyone the employment assurance they deserve,” he said.

A huge challenge

Jennifer Extence of Crysler, Ont., was about 10 months into her 18-month maternity leave in January when she said she received notice that she’d been terminated immediately due to restructuring.

Extence, 39, who had been a brand manager, said she contacted Employment and Social Development Canada about two weeks later to provide an update on her situation. Her EI income was immediately stopped, she said, with the explanation that because she would be receiving severance, and severance is considered income, she couldn’t receive EI benefits at the same time.

“It was overwhelming. I never expected to be spending my maternity leave without income,” she said in an interview. “This is time with my children that I’ll never get back, and instead of enjoying every moment, I’m left with the feeling of uncertainty and stress on a daily basis.”

Severance is listed as income on the EI website.

Extence also has to repay the two EI payments she received after losing her job, she said. It’s been “a huge challenge” given the cost of groceries and diapers.

“If I was a single parent or if my partner wasn’t able to float us, I have no idea what I’d be doing to put food on the table.”

Overhauling EI

It’s a common misconception that you can’t lose your job while on maternity or parental leave — because legally you can if you’re being dismissed for reasons unrelated to going on leave.

“It’s always common, but it’s also not illegal,” Venditti said.

A worker who pays into the system has to work a specific number of hours to qualify for benefits and must do so for each new claim they make. That means a new mother who has lost her job and files a claim for regular EI benefits has to work the necessary hours anew to get their full parental leave entitlements.

In 2022, then-employment minister Carla Qualtrough said not being able to stack unemployment and parental leave benefits into one EI claim creates an equity issue in the system, particularly for new mothers. She said she was looking for ways to make the system less clunky to eliminate inequities.

The Liberal government has said it’s committed to modernizing the program. As part of its consultations, Employment and Social Development Canada surveyed Canadians, and 89 per cent of respondents agreed that parents who lose their job “prior to welcoming a child” should be able to access EI benefits for job loss without having any impact on their EI maternity and/or parental benefits.

This kind of overhaul takes time, Venditti said.

The problem is with how the system is structured, Monkhouse said, with maternity leave being part of EI. So if someone is away on maternity leave, they use up that EI allocation, unlike a worker who is laid off generally.

“There’s a disproportionate effect on the people, predominantly women, who are off on maternity leave, in terms of getting EI afterwards,” he said.

Mothers take maternity or parental leave almost twice as often as fathers, according to Statistics Canada.

Job loss on maternity and parental leave is something that’s not really talked about, even though it’s common, Venditti said, adding that one reason may be that parents who pursue legal action often have to sign non-disclosure agreements.

But she said she’s seeing a lot more women, especially in senior positions, being laid off.

“The motherhood penalty is a real thing,” she said. “People always think they’re protected until it happens to them.”

See the original article here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/parental-leave-ei-changes-1.7115993

3 lessons from Karina Gould’s parental leave that could help all Canadian families

1 Reply

by Andrea Doucet

This article was sourced from The Conversation.

Federal cabinet minister Karina Gould, leader of the government in the House of Commons, has made Canadian history three times: as the youngest female federal cabinet minister, the first to give birth while holding office and the first to take parental leave. Her approach to parental leave could well translate into her most enduring legacy.

Like all MPs, Gould wasn’t eligible for parental leave when her first child was born in 2018. Four weeks later, she resumed work in her constituency of Burlington, Ont. After another five weeks, she returned to the House of Commons with her infant in tow.

Gould has just given birth to her second child. This time, she’s doing things differently. She’s taking six months off, thanks to 2019 legislation that provides MP parents of newborns up to 12 months with paid parental leave benefits.

On the surface, Gould’s parental leave plan resembles that of many Canadians. Yet there are key differences, and they offer three lessons on how parental leave could be redesigned for each and every Canadian parent.

Lesson 1: Boost eligibility

Not all Canadians are eligible for parental leave. Almost one-third of all Canadian mothers (outside of Québec, which has a more inclusive program) do not receive paid maternity or parental benefits. This is due to many factors, including restrictive eligibility criteria of 600 employment hours in the year before a child’s birth.

MPs do not pay into Employment Insurance (EI) and so were, until 2019, ineligible for parental leave benefits. Yet the government found a policy path for them.

It’s time to rethink eligibility criteria so that more Canadians can benefit from parental leave benefits.

Lesson 2: Better wage top ups

MPs receive 92 per cent of their salaries while on leave. Similar salary top-ups exist in the public sector and some private companies. For most Canadians, however, parental leave is low-paid: only 33 to 55 per cent of wages, with a ceiling of $401 to $668 weekly and $63,200 annually.

Out of 36 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada has the lowest wage replacement rates for parental leave.

This has implications for how many Canadian fathers take their parental leave entitlements. In 2020-21, 23.5 per cent of eligible fathers took parental leave. In Québec, which has a 70-75 per cent wage replacement rate, that number was 85.6 per cent. It’s time to make leaves affordable for all parents.

Lesson 3: More flexibility

Finally, there are lessons about flexibility and choice, and what they mean in a post-pandemic world, where remote work has changed how people balance family life and paid work.

For Gould, this means taking a short post-partum leave and then combining parental leave with some remote work. As she told Canadians, she plans to “take on her MP work remotely, voting and participating in caucus and cabinet meetings, though on a reduced schedule.”

Admittedly, an MP’s job, with its unique pressures, requires a flexible parental leave system. Yet many other jobs have distinct demands.

The problem with Canada’s current system is that leaves must be taken as consecutive weeks in the first 12 to 18 months after a child’s birth.

There are other ways to do parental leave. In Sweden, for example, leaves can be taken in one or several blocks of time, in days rather than weeks, on a full or part-time basis, and across several years.

There are risks to flexible leave, however, that are well-documented in research on flexible work and gender inequalities. Some employers might not respect the boundaries of parents on leave. These boundaries are critical because parents need time to care for their infants, who demand and deserve that dedicated care.

But there are precedents to build on, such as Ontario’s “right to disconnect” policy and EI’s Working While on Claim option.

Shining a spotlight

Gould’s parental leave matters not only to her family. It should matter to all Canadians, because it shines a spotlight on the federal government’s long overdue promise to rethink and redesign parental leave policy.

There have been important changes, including a parental sharing benefit for fathers and second parents and benefits for parents of adopted children. It’s time to do more for more Canadians.

A rethinking of parental leave should begin with clarifying what parental leave is.

Currently, a paid leave to care for an infant combines parental benefits, which are lodged within EI as employment benefits, and the right to take job-protected leave, which is part of provincial/territorial/federal employment standards.

But parental leave is more than an employment policy — it’s also a care policy. Despite what the EI website states, a leave to care for an infant is not about being “away from work.” Care work is, in fact, actual work.

Parental leave also needs to be integrated with other care policies, especially early learning and child-care policies. Again, there are models to emulate, such as Sweden and other Nordic countries. There, children have a human right and entitlement to be cared for.

And there is an explicit policy aim that for every child, there will be no gap between the end of well-paid parental leave and the beginning of early learning and child care.

Recognizing the value of care

The COVID-19 pandemic had major impacts on how some Canadians, including MPs, can now do some of their paid work in the office or at home. The pandemic also illuminated the socioeconomic value of care and the care economy.

Gould understands this. As the former minister of families, children and social development, she worked with child-care advocates and experts to shepherd the creation of Canada’s first national child-care program.

When she returns from her parental leave, she will be well-placed to advocate for more inclusive integrated care policies. In fact, it may be long overdue to create a federal minister of care.

See the original article here: https://theconversation.com/3-lessons-from-mp-karina-goulds-parental-leave-that-could-help-all-canadian-families-222045