When can employer on hourly basis cancel work at the latest? I'm trying to find out if a new policy implemented by my employer is legal. I'm employed on an hourly basis, no minimum amount of work, with shift plans made yearly. Now they started cancelling some work less than 3 hours in advance depending on business needs (which make sense, but aren't my problem). I can't track down any specific legislation, I found SR 220 Art. 324 and SR 822.111 Art. 69 (official commentary/explanations by SECO) which both seem to support me, but aren't specific enough to be of any use to me. Switzerland, Canton of Zurich.
First Part OR 324 is quite the right article for this. If the employer doesn't want that you work (because he has nothing to do for you) it's his problem, not yours. He still has to pay if you are there and ready to do work. This is for instance also mentioned in this article. The meaning of this is obvious if having a contract with a fixed number of work hours per day/month/year. Second part Prove that you have a fixed work contract. If the shift plans are made in advance you have a proof that you have a certain number of hours to work (and thus an expected income). If I interpret this here correctly, this is &quot;echte Arbeit auf Abruf&quot; (true work on request), because if your employer wants your work, you have to be there according to the shift plan, as opposed to your employer asking &quot;who is ready to work tonight?&quot;. So your employer must pay you the hours agreed on in the shift plan, regardless of whether he has work for you or not (but you must explicitly tell him that you are willing to take work). Third part Can the employer change the shift plan, and to what extent? The employer must announce changes to work hours as soon as possible, and changes on short notice are only acceptable in emergency cases. A reduction in work hours due to not enough work shall not reduce the employee's salary. The business risk is entirely with the employer and he must not shift that responsibility to his employees. (That was common in the late 19th and early 20th century, with all the officially self-employed home workers in the textile industry). Here is a federal court decision that affirms this (BGE 125 III 65 S. 66).
Ask yourself... What are you trying to achieve? My understanding is an employer is not obliged to provide you a positive job reference. I believe at most, they are only to obliged to confirm that you worked there. Anything above that is optional. The fact that you have left British Columbia only makes it more difficult for the company to chase you - It does not alter your legal obligations. As part of the settlement, both the employer and employee singed an mutual non-disparagement agreement. Why did you sign a mutual non-disparagement agreement if you still disagree? It leads me to believe there could be trust issues between you and others. Why do you think your old employer must abide by the agreement, but you have an exemption? Let's say you make noise - let's say your old employer in BC tracks you down. Ask yourself how an independent third party like your new employer would react when they read that you signed an agreement, then decided to ignore it. Both you and your previous employer have begun new separate journeys. You two crashed once - I suggest you not alter your path or you could crash again. Life is too short. Concentrate on making your new home in your new city and a new job a new start. It will bring you a greater benefit than breaking a signed, sealed non-disparagement agreement.
Yes, this is a valid concern As written, every piece of IP you produce while employed belongs to the employer. This includes your hypothetical game. It also includes your weekly shopping lists, your Christmas card to your Great-Aunt Nellie, the … a-hm … private video you make of you and your significant other. As written this is overly broad and probably unenforceable. However, it’s always better to have clear and legally enforceable clauses in your agreements because unclear, arguably unenforceable ones lead to disputes. To be fair, the employer has probably lifted some (bad) boilerplate and hasn’t actually thought through what it means. Get it redrafted.
Are there any protections against an employer circumventing the WARN act by staggering layoffs over multiple days? For example, could an employer lay off 200 people without notice by laying off 40 employees each day for a week? The WARN Act's definition of layoffs measures the number of employees laid off in &quot;any 30-day period&quot;. 29 U.S.C. § 2101. So, to lay off 200 people without notice, it would have to stagger it at 40 people a month over five months, not over five days.
Not going to hold up. Dutch Supreme Court confirmed 2012-09-21 in LJN BW6135 that arbitration is still covered by the the right to an independent judge, as established in Golder v UK, ECHR 1975-02-21, nr. 4451/70. Stack Exchange can't decide the rules themselves. (The Dutch case confirms that sector-wide arbitration is in fact legal, with regard to a standard arbitration clause commonly used in the Dutch building sector. The arbiter was found to be independent in that case precisely because they weren't picked by the builder involved.) The GDPR is only indirectly relevant, but the fact that it's mentioned does mean that there is an indisputable intent to provide services to EU consumers. (See section 23 of the GDPR, or its national equivalents). As such, you can't hide behind a US business address. If you intend to do business in the EU, it's under EU laws - all of them. You can't say that only the GDPR applies, and not other rules. I'm having a bit of a problem finding a source, but I'm fairly confident that consumers have the right to sue at their own, local court, overruling the default of suing in the court where the counterparty is located. Finally, I have the right under national law (Dutch: BW 6:236 start and sub-n) to strike the arbitration clause up to 30 days after the conflict arises, and demand a court decision. That's not 30 days after I accept the "Public Network Terms", that's 30 days after the arbitration is invoked. Dutch law explicitly allows arbitration abroad, and arbiters may apply foreign law, but as written the arbitration clause has no legal basis in the Netherlands, and any arbitration resolution would therefore not be considered valid. You may wonder if it matters to Stack Exchange that the arbitration decision would not hold in the EU. Well, consider a clause like Indemnification, which demands the user indemnifies Stack Exchange. That's a pretty empty demand if it's not enforceable.
Executive Summary Yes, you must pay your employee (if the person is indeed an employee) to read the manual. This is because, (1) as you note in your question, reading the manual is a state OSHA required part of the job, and (2) hourly employees must be paid at least minimum wage for all hours they work and there is no exception for time spent reading safety manuals. Furthermore, household cooks who are employees who are paid by the hour are not exempt from the minimum wage. There is no really plausible exception to the requirement to pay a minimum hourly wage that would apply to someone who is an employee in this position. For example, this person could not plausible be classified as a salaried employee or manager in this scenario for FLSA purposes. You could, of course, set a reasonable expectation regarding how much time should be allocated to reading the manual, so long as the expectation you set is indeed reasonable - five minutes would be unreasonably short, but 20 hours to memorize it would be unreasonably long. Is The "Employee" An Independent Contractor? It is conceivable that the person you describe as an employee is really an independent contractor, rather than a employee, and hence not subject to minimum wage laws. For example, you do not have a duty to determine that a catering company that serves many customers and is its own business providing food for you on an irregular basis, or a third-party restaurant that delivers either itself or through a third-party delivery service, is paying minimum wage or complying with work safety laws like OSHA, because they are independent contractors. But, there is nothing in your question that suggests that this is the case. (Note that if this person is an "employee" and not an "independent contractor" that it is also important that you obtain worker's compensation and pay withholding taxes for your domestic employee; often this is done via a third-party payroll service.) Applicable Law The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq., requires you to pay every hourly employee the federal minimum wage, plus overtime if applicable, from "Portal to Portal" (i.e. from showing up to work until leaving work, because commuting time is not counted as work for purposes of the FLSA). Hours worked is defined as follows by the FLSA at 29 U.S.C. § 203(o), contains no exception for time spent reading a safety manual: In determining for the purposes of sections 206 and 207 of this title the hours for which an employee is employed, there shall be excluded any time spent in changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday which was excluded from measured working time during the week involved by the express terms of or by custom or practice under a bona fide collective-bargaining agreement applicable to the particular employee. This states with respect to employees in domestic service at 209 U.S.C. § 206(f): Any employee— (1) who in any workweek is employed in domestic service in a household shall be paid wages at a rate not less than the wage rate in effect under subsection (b) of this section unless such employee’s compensation for such service would not because of section 209(a)(6) of the Social Security Act 42 U.S.C.A. § 409(a)(6)constitute wages for the purposes of title II of such Act [42 U.S.C.A. § 401 et seq.], or (2) who in any workweek— (A) is employed in domestic service in one or more households, and (B) is so employed for more than 8 hours in the aggregate, shall be paid wages for such employment in such workweek at a rate not less than the wage rate in effect under subsection (b) of this section. The referenced Section 206(b) is the currently effective federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour). The cross-reference to the Social Security Act states that employment taxes paid by the employer (such as the employer part of FICA taxes) do not count towards paying the minimum wage. California has a parallel state minimum wage of $10 in 2017 which is substantially similar except in amount.
No First, there does not appear to be unlawful discrimination: there is nothing to suggest that you are a member of a protected class and were terminated because of that. Second, you were given no reason for your dismissal so your employer is not claiming you were terminated for just cause. So, in BC, an employer &quot;can end an employee's job by giving written working notice or pay&quot; and this is perfectly legal. For someone who worked for &quot;about 6 months&quot;, the notice/pay period is 1 week. So either they must give you 1 weeks work or pay you 1 weeks wages.
The real question isn't whether there is a law, but whether you want to keep your job. If you want to do something that you believe will affect your company negatively, and you ask whether it's legal or not, the question alone should show you it's a bad idea. And another question is whether you can be sued, and what it will cost you even if you can win a case, and the answers to that are "yes" and "a lot".