Unlock the Power of Digital Signature Licitness for Independent Contractor Agreement in Canada

How to eSign a document: digital signature licitness for Independent Contractor Agreement in Canada

[Music] [Music] good day and welcome again employment law show so good to have you along for the next 30 minutes please stick around guaranteed to learn all kinds about employment law and as it works probably where you spend eight hours of your day right for most of your life so this is really important stuff and it applies to most people out of a non-union setting as well so we've got lots of stuff to throw at you this morning or at least today anyway you want to reach out anytime to lior one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred lior right there co-founding partners sam fieru to mark in the most positively reviewed employment law firm in this wonderful country of ours whether in ontario or bc or alberta serving all those people and helping people on a daily basis tons of phone calls and emails come through every day we'd like to get a few on the show as you know help at employmentlawyer.ca is the way to do that i'll give you more contact throughout the show as we carry on and on the show today leor it's a big one what independent contractors need to know this is one of the biggest vacuums of misinformation when it comes to employment law we're going to clear a bunch of it up today so stick around for that but we always start my brother with the week that was what's going on on your side uh i don't think you'd be surprised to hear john that i'm getting a lot of calls a lot of emails a lot of questions about workplace rights that's what i do you know i i try to squeeze in time to come here and do this tv show because the rest of the time i'm answering questions i'm trying to help as many people as possible myself and my team across canada uh dealing with all these workplace issues that the pandemic has created whether it's severance or temporary layoff or changes to compensation vaccine mandates you name it we deal with it and it's been a bit of a whirlwind but that's okay i'm happy to do it we're ready to help and on this show we want to inform you about your workplace rights so if you haven't had the best week because your boss maybe gave you an ultimatum and you've been wondering what to do well you know grab a coffee sit down and let's talk about it right now you will learn what you need to do in this situation how to respond and what your rights are that's exactly what we want to do it's to inform and inform you and information is power knowledge is power that's exactly what the show is about and of course you always always always are encouraged to reach out to me in the office if what we've talked about today doesn't fully answer your question if you need help to deal with your employer we'll give you that contact information so we can have a private chat and get to work but i always like to start off with the situation that came across my desk i spoke with a gentleman that's been working for the same employer for a number of years over eight years but recently his employer decided that because of this the pandemic that the same pandemic we're all dealing with that they're going to change their business model they're going to go after different customers they saw different opportunities but what this meant for this individual is that he's going to have to change his hours of work so instead of working eight in the morning till till four in the afternoon he's gonna have to work from noon until about eight in the evening uh so for him that was going to be a massive massive change and his employer said well listen it's not really our fault it's kind of the pandemic that's making us do this uh and you know the person did feel that that makes kind of sense because it is the pandemic it is a very difficult situation so he called me wanting to know do they have a right to do this even if it's because of the pandemic can they change my hours of work from eight to five to four to twelve to eight so the answer here is actually simple and not controversial the answer is no this employer cannot do that your employer cannot change the terms of your employment even if it's because of the pandemic they can't change you to a different shift they can't reduce your pace significantly they can't demote you they can't say that we're going to now close the factory here and move away 200 kilometers any of those changes result in a constructive dismissal so if you're facing a change like that's exactly what i told them even if it's pandemic related whether it's not whether or not it's pandemic it doesn't matter you have the right to treat that as a constructive dismissal so for him yes he can accept the change and now he's working 12 to 8 if he wants absolutely or he can say by changing those terms by telling me that my 8 to 4 shift is no longer available you've terminated my employment now you owe me severance and i said john he was working for about eight years he's gonna be on about nine maybe ten months of severance so i'm going to help him get that severance he doesn't want to work in the afternoons and evenings but you have the same rights if your employment terms have changed even if it's because of the pandemic the term constructive dismissal should come to mind right away does an employer learn sometimes in this in this when it comes to change of hours and time of work do they have they have a little bit of leeway i mean eight to four twelve day that's a completely different shift but they say we got a movie from 8 30 to 4 30 or even nine to five from eight to four is that can they get away with that yeah there's a little leeway that an employer has if they were going to change this shift by half hour here and now we're there yeah they could probably get away with that unless there's a really good reason why you can't do it same thing with pay cuts anything less than 10 pay cut is probably going to be something that you're not going to be happy about but your employer may be able to get away with anything more substantial is a constructive dismissal and the good thing is if you're not sure if the change that your employer is implementing is substantial enough you don't need to wonder you just call email me let me know let me know what it is and i'll tell you because not every change is the same small leeway sure significant changes constructive dismissal you probably know the second question i'm going to ask you and that's this one if this if this particular gentleman says you know what my schedule's not super tight i got a little bit of free time maybe this change won't be that bad maybe i'll end up liking it but then again maybe i'll hate it can he just tell the employer in writing you know what can i just try it for a bit and if this doesn't work for me back to the old shift yeah he may say well listen i don't know how this is going to impact me my family can i do it is it going to work for me so employer i'm going to try this for a few weeks and then i'm going to let you know if i'm unhappy and if i'm unhappy if i don't want to do it if the employer doesn't take him back to the old shift then it's still a constructive dismissal but he has to say that in writing if he doesn't say anything he just continues working he's going to be considered to have accepted this change and then he's stuck so if you're going to try to change out a change in hours or changing a new role make sure your employer knows that you're not accepting it you're not agreeing to it you're just going to try it out for a while to see how it goes as long as you do that and you put it in writing you still have the ability to try it out because as you've said so many times if you do accept it and just go along with it to be you know be the good soldier the good employee great intentions but it also means that they can do it again down the road well this person their uh shift is changing uh from eight to four to twelve to eight he accepts it he wants to be that good soldier or by accepting it now his employer has the right to do it again and next time when they change it from 12 to 8 to 4 pm till midnight you may not be able to do anything about it because we let the change happen the first time that's why we can't ignore these changes we always have to think what will happen if i accept this change leo and i and some other uh you know lawyers in his firm of course have been doing a radio show across the country for over 10 years you want to find out a station near you that carries it it's an hour long every week it's fantastic stuff employmentlawyer.ca find the media tab and you'll be able to go from there but we pulled some of the phone calls from a variety of radio shows we've been doing for the decade leora we played them back and we talked about him full call number one for this show today is coming up now you know i worked at a i got laid off while my job was over there that was march of 2020 and i've yet to get an actual phone call from them i was there for 17 years in a full-time position they've sent me some emails to come back as a contract position looking like night shifts on the weekends we're not unionized and i'm just wondering if i'm entitled to any severance wow march 2020 that's a long time and listen s and employees have been in a very difficult situation because depending on your province for the most part they were required by government to be shut down to be quote but that ended and s were allowed to reopen and once they were allowed to reopen employees have to be brought back to the same position same terms same compensation etc well that's not what this person's employer is doing they're saying we're going to bring you back not even as an employee as a contractor on completely different terms well hopefully you remember what i said moments ago they can't do that even if it's because of the pandemic it's a constructive dismissal so he can obviously accept this change i don't know why you would it's a pretty major change or you can say no i am treating this as a termination this is a constructive dismissal now employer you have to pay me my severance how much severance well let's talk about that to find out how much severance he is owed to find out how much severance you're owed let's go to pocket employment lawyer dot ca let's plug the information into our severance calculator by the way free and anonymous and let's see how much this person is at this own so he's a 48 year old floor supervisor we know he's been there for 17 years that's a long time you can see right at the bottom he's owed 16 months pay and by the way john that could actually be conservative it could be as much as 18 months paid so somewhere between 16 to 18 months pay he zoned at his compensation level we're talking about a significant amount of money almost six figures and that's why it's important to remember with constructive dismissal with any termination you have significant entitlements and pocket employment lawyer dot ca the easiest fastest way most accurate way to find out how much you're actually owned yeah and on that website as leo mentioned in just use severance pay calculator has been used and this is not hyperbole hundreds of thousands of people over the last several years have plugged their information into that and uh it's been a bucket of water in the face when they realize how much they're actually old you know conversely to what they've been told by their employer or a friend or their neighbor steve don't go there pocket employment lawyer.ca and use the severance pay calculator another place for you to ask questions anytime terminationquestions.com we'll get to one of those this time zakari leora khari says i was fired for cause after an incident occurred with another co-worker this was the first and only time i've ever behaved this way at the office after eight years of employment and the co-worker has a history of making things difficult for other staff can they do this well john this brings up of course the issue of determination for cause so let's talk a bit about that this person got into some sort of an altercation and he was fired for cause for cause means his employer is not paying him any severance well the only time you can be let go for cause i.e without severance is if what you've done is terrible if you're guilty of the worst sin it can't be worse so it's only the worst offenders that can actually be legally terminated without severance the fact that he may have done something wrong and getting into an altercation is never a good thing so he did something wrong but the fact that he did it does not mean that that rises all the way to the level of cause if this is an isolated incident if it's not a situation where he went and assaulted someone and then you know used us violence he got into an altercation it's not going to be cause no chance meaning he is owed severance so the message here for every employee is this even if you've done something wrong frankly even if you've done a few things wrong if you're let go doesn't mean that you can be deprived of your severance it doesn't work that way it's very difficult to terminate someone for cause if you were to take a hundred employers that have just snapped and fired an employee for cause claiming cause i mean what would be the percentage of the ones that as you say pull the trigger too fast i imagine it's pretty high they haven't done their due diligence right yeah well absolutely and employers oftentimes equate doing something wrong to termination for cause and as we've just said that is not the case to terminate someone for cause either the person has to be guilty of very significant misconduct or the employer has to provide advanced warnings and give opportunities to improve and then and only that can they consider a termination for cause the vast majority of people when they come to speak to me probably 90 of the time when the employer says we have cause it's actually not cause not because the employee has clean hands necessarily only because it does not rise to the level of cause it is very difficult it's the capital punishment of the employment relationship you know i finally on this topic if you're an employer and you're looking to let somebody go for a cause i mean how much of a work up to have to do how many warnings and how many times you have to write them up before you can you know have a clean slate to say now finally i've done what i have to do you are gone for cause with no severance you know it really does depend on the type of issues that the employee is creating so if it's a performance related issue at a minimum i would want to see three warnings three situations where there's something in writing saying employee you better do better or else and after a while if the employee still is not doing a good job well what more can you do so as a rule of thumb three is a good place to start in some situations you need more than that in other situations if the misconduct is very bad you may not need three but as a basic rule of thumb three is good coming up as we mentioned what independent contractors need to know if you're an independent contractor do not tune out stick around for this next segment of the show i'll give you some contact in the meantime as we go to break 1-855-821-5900 email help employment lawyer dot c we'll continue employment law show more coming up people think you should go to the government to get severance pay employmentlawyer.ca says that is a myth government can only help you get minimum severance but not everything you're entitled to always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca if your long-term disability claim is denied should you appeal appeals often fail because insurance companies control the process so long as you appeal you're playing by their rules you should never appeal the denial of your disability benefits appeals are just a mirage of false hope don't that's their process take it out of their hands and fight for your rights with our help go to disabilityrights.ca discover your rights fight back and get what you're owed people think their employer can make changes to their job employmentlawyer.ca says that is a myth your employer can't change your pay hours or duties you may be entitled to full severance pay always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca [Music] and welcome back thank you so much for sticking around employment law show john school's here beside me lior sam firu co-founding partner sam free route to market llp they are the most positively reviewed employment law firm in the land reaching out 1-855-821-5900 important segment this time roundly or i mentioned this off the top it is so important because so many people will fall under this particular category what independent contractors need to know how many phone calls have we had on our show with people going oh i didn't know that pretty much countless right it's one of the biggest things when it comes to employment laws individuals being misclassified so we want to talk about who really is an independent contractor what to do if you're not really one and how the law deals with the situation we're gonna start off with a big one that is many independent contractors mainly truly be employees despite what an employer or their contract says so it does not matter what you sign it doesn't matter if you sign a piece of paper that says you're a contractor or you're not an employee you may have signed a piece of paper that says big bold letter you are not an employee guess what it doesn't matter you're likely an employee because the only one that can decide if you're an employee or not is the law the law makes that determination you don't do it the company you work for doesn't do it i don't do it the law does that so if you look like an employee and act like an employee you are an employee and being misclassified is very very very common i had an email a discussion with an employer recently where i was retained by an independent contractor and i contacted this employer saying well no this person is an employee and this company couldn't understand well wait a second mr santa fearo can't you read look this person signed the document saying they're not an employee look it's right there it does not matter what you sign you can't change the nature of your job and the character of your situation by signing a piece of paper number two is this there are ways to determine whether someone is a contractor or an employee very simple right well so it has nothing to do with uh what you signed but here's what you need to know so how do you determine if you're an employee or an independent contractor well you ask yourself am i in business for myself or do i work for someone else if you work for someone else you are likely an employee so let's use my plumber example i love to use my plumber example so you have a leak in in your faucet you call a plumber the plumber doesn't work for you he works for him or herself they come to your place they provide a service they do the job you pay them and they go to their next job that is an independent contractor they're not your employee they have many clients they run a plumbing business on the other hand if you run a plumbing company and the plumber works for you they you're they're your employee so ask yourself am i the plumber or am i something else who controls what i do do i work exclusively for one company do they pay for my expenses do i have to report to them do i have other clients there's a number of factors to look at but it does not matter what you signed and you're likely misclassified if you're not sure one way or the other we're talking about what employee contractors or at least people on contract who think they are independent contractors need to know point number three is this lior employees incorrectly classified as contractors are missing out on basic rights and entitlements how about that so what does it matter if you're an employee or contractor it matters because if you are really an employee you wrote a bunch of things for example your own overtime pay vacation pay statutory holiday paying minimum wage all these entitlements that you have if you are an employee now the company may not pay it to you because they say no no you're an independent contractor but if they've misclassified you and they should have been paying it to you then they owe you that and you can potentially go back a couple of years to get paid what you're owed so that's why it's important to get this right the other reason why it's important to get this right is that if you've been misclassified and now you're paying your taxes as an independent contractor well see i remain one day and say well wait a second you're really an employee and you've been paying your taxes wrong now there's going to be fines and back taxes and penalties so you really really do want to get this right next point is this independent contractors are often old severance pay when they are let go or fired i can imagine how huge this would be if someone's been a contractor for 15 20 years right so most of the time when i get involved in these situations is when someone has actually been let go uh and the company says well you're an independent contractor we're letting you go we're gonna pay you nothing or maybe we'll throw you a week or two weeks pay because you're an independent contractor but again if this person has been misclassified then they wrote severance like an employee and that could be as much as 24 months paid so if you lose your job unless you're a thousand percent convinced that you're an independent contractor and even then you have to give me a call i spoke with the lady couple years back she had worked as a bookkeeper for the same company for over 20 years and she was let go and the company said you're an independent contractor nonsense impossible she was an employee she was owed two years pay and i helped her get it same thing with you if you lose your job you are likely an employee most people are despite what you've been called that means you're out sevens and final point about independent contractors is this contractor should always talk to an employment lawyer if changes are made to their job or if they're let go especially like that well absolutely if you're an employee you have the rights of an employee including the right not to have the terms of your employment change and by the way john we talked about the difference between employees and contractors we also have our tool at pocket pocketemploymentlawyer.ca that allows you to find out if you are an employer or contractor so you go to pocketemploymentlawyer.ca scroll there to our independent contractor tool you answer a few questions and you can find out are you really a contractor or have you been misclassified and you really are an employee probably the first place you want to go to if what we've said here on this show trigger some questions in your mind check it out for yourself plus i mean if it was really that easy the entire planet would be full of contractors and employers wouldn't have any sort of you know repercussions of paying severance or otherwise oh you're all contractors it doesn't work absolutely i think if it was that easy to do a piece of paper everyone would go on their laptop write up a quick document saying you're a contractor and everyone would sign it doesn't matter if you're working part-time in a fast food restaurant if you're a secretary if you're working at a factory everyone will be contractors clearly that's not the case that's why the piece of paper doesn't matter what matters always is substance over form employmentlawyer.ca that's the firm website as mentioned before media tab to find a radio show near you across the country they carried quite quite quite widely we'll get to another phone call from our radio show before we break right now leora listen up my wife she was working for a very important construction company she worked there for two years and then when she got on medley close to the end of when she had to return to work that's an email saying that right now you're laid off she pretty much had left little they just said you know what due to calvi like because was called the time let's say you cannot come to work right now we're just going to lay off so there's a number of things here but i want to start with the fact that this is something that people get wrong all the time and that is people that work in construction are still owed severance in fact there are the same amount of severance as non-construction employees it's based on your age your position and the length of your employment so she's out severance assuming of course she is not part of a union she's owed severance so if they let her go she's gonna be all that compensation even after two years she could be looking at as much as six months paid but there's another issue here is that if she's been let go even in part because of the fact that she took a maternity leave that's a human rights violation that's a violation of the employment standards act it's illegal you cannot be let go in those situations so severance potential human rights violation yeah this employer did it wrong if you find yourself in any of those situations you have to reach out to me right away short break and we'll take another phone call on the other side in the meantime here's how you reach out to leor and the rest of his team very capable always good for a chat one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred help at employment lawyer dot c that's the email address we're coming back with more employment law show people think contractors aren't owed severance employmentlawyer.ca says that is a myth many contractors are actually employees and are entitled to full severance pay always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca do you force insurance companies to pay long-term disability claims insurance companies deny legitimate claims all the time they're playing the odds they know that most people are just going to walk away your insurer may ignore you they may even ignore your doctors but they can't ignore us we know how insurance companies work we know their weaknesses we know how to use the legal process to force them to pay you what you're owed go to disabilityrights.ca discover your rights fight back and get what you're owed people think you are only owed two weeks pay when you lose your job employmentlawyer.ca says that is a myth you may be owed much more than two weeks per year don't settle for less always check with the employment lawyer first at employmentlawyer.ca [Music] all right welcome back a few minutes to go here employment law show thank you so much for spending some of your time with us today i want to get to our third phone call again our radio show employmentlawyer.ca the website under the media tab you'll find a station near you that carries it's an hour long always stuff to be learned lior phone call number three is coming up right now i've been an executive for a company for 20 years company was bought out three years ago the new owners they sent a letter to all of us saying that they will not be changing anything in terms of our employment contract now they have just sent us a new employment contract three years later they have waived the common law severance terms i just don't know what to do what what are my options crumple it up and throw it away i mean i couldn't say it better myself john the option is you do not sign this because if you're gonna sign this all of a sudden now you're gonna limit your future severance to as little as eight weeks pay so it's always a bad idea when your employer wants you to sign a new employment agreement and usually it's because they want you to agree to give up your future severance so i can assure you that if this person were to sign this agreement she's now limited to eight weeks pay well how much would she owe does it really matter or would she been owed more if she hadn't signed it so to do that and just for fun let's go to pocket employment lawyer dot ca let's use our seventh calculator and let's see what she's owed if she doesn't sign this piece of paper so we know that this person is an executive role has been there for 20 years uh let's say they're in their 50s you see right at the bottom that this person would have been known as much as two years paid 24 months paid so if she signs the piece of paper eight weeks if she doesn't sign it two years so the difference between two months and two years now you understand why you cannot sign this employment agreement it's as simple as that john do you think it's it's it's the case sometimes where these employers have either heard our show maybe saw us on tv maybe heard the radio show and then maybe they got some advice saying you know what i want you to get some new employment agreements to your employees before you get in some deep trouble maybe that's why all of a sudden this has come on her desk well let's be very clear john for an employer one of the most important things that you can do is to have proper comprehensive employment it's the best thing that you can do for your business so i can't blame employers for doing that for employees the opposite is true you don't want to have an employment agreement you would much rather either have worked on a handshake or go to the the pub and write something on the back of a napkin that is better than having a to that 10-page employment agreement so that we have that conflict between employer and employee but if you're already working why would you agree to give up your legal rights by signing an employment agreement that gives those up frankly it'd be better to lose your job get paid your full severance than to sign that employment agreement at least you'd get your full severance in that situation we just talked about if she signed that employment agreement and the employer turned around a week later and let her go she would have lost on six figure worth of severance terrible thing to do never ever do that even if she did sign it doesn't she have to be given something for it to make it even binding yeah if you're already working your employer should be giving you something in return for signing but that's kind of the next level of analysis on a most basic level i say if your employer wants you to sign it you say no nothing good can come out of you signing a new employment agreement yeah like you said you want a handshake rather than a 10-page document which is counter to what most people would think they want this but they don't need that for an employee less is more when it comes to employment agreements and that's the way we're going to leave it for today reaching out really simple phone numbers first one eight five five eight two one fifty nine hundred you wanna reach out through email that's simple as well help employment lawyer dot ca if you shrink that down to just employment lawyer dot ca that's the firm website where you get the radio calls right you can find a radio station near you and pocket employment lawyer is always free and anonymous as well thank you so much we'll catch you next time employment law show closed captioning of this program is brought to you in part by severancepaycalculator.com find out how much you are owed right now severancepaycalculator.com