https://thehumlawfirm.ca/changing-an-employees-job-duties-without-updating-their-employee-contracts-can-cost-you-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars/ Canadian Workplace & Employment Law, Professional Regulation Wed, 27 Nov 2024 02:09:08 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://thehumlawfirm.ca/changing-an-employees-job-duties-without-updating-their-employee-contracts-can-cost-you-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars/#comment-61 Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:13:41 +0000 https://thehumlawfirm.ca/?p=11785#comment-61 […] The nature of employment may have fundamentally changed, necessitating a new contract. For example, an employee’s job description may evolve to the point that they can argue, “The current job I am working on is so different from the one when I signed the employment contract, so the contract is obsolete.” In Celestini v. Shoplogix Inc., 2023 ONCA 131, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the motion judge’s decision that significant changes in an employee’s job responsibilities and compensation structure rendered the 12-year-old employment contract unenforceable. Consequently, the employee received 18 months of wrongful dismissal damages under common law instead of the 12-month termination notice stipulated in the contract. This resulted in an award of over $421,000 (later increased by over $37,000 due to another issue). This outcome could have been avoided if the employer had periodically updated the contract and spent a tiny fraction of the awarded damages on it. This could also play out in reverse. For example, if an employee is promoted to a supervisory position where overtime premium pay is no longer mandatory under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (“ESA”), an outdated contract entitling them to overtime pay could lead to substantial overtime claims if accumulated over time. […]

]]> https://thehumlawfirm.ca/changing-an-employees-job-duties-without-updating-their-employee-contracts-can-cost-you-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars/#comment-52 Wed, 17 Jan 2024 16:33:51 +0000 https://thehumlawfirm.ca/?p=11785#comment-52 […] The Ontario Court of Appeal revisited the doctrine of “changed substratum.” The Court found the employment contract void due to substantial changes in the employee’s duties, showing the importance for employers to promptly update contracts when assigning new responsibilities to avoid unexpected and costly terminations. Hum Law explored this development in detail. […]

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