Glossary - Employment and Work
First aid means treating yourself or having someone at work treat you. Some examples are:
- cleaning minor cuts, scrapes, or scratches
- treating a minor burn
- applying bandages, a cold compress, or an ice bag
- putting on a splint at your workplace
First aid also includes changing a bandage at a follow-up appointment if this does not lead to further treatment.
In Debt and Consumer Rights, Employment and Work, Tribunals and Courts
Garnishment is one option for getting money from someone if they didn’t obey a court order to pay you. To do this, you have to fill out forms and follow the rules of the court that apply to this process.
You might be able to get money from:
- someone’s bank account
- payments they get, like rent cheques from a tenant
- their wages if they’re employed
There are some things that usually can’t be garnished, like:
- employment insurance
- social assistance
- pensions (unless the creditor is a government agency)
In Employment and Work, Human rights at work, Human Rights, Types of discrimination
A grievance is an official complaint by a union against an employer. Grievances are decided by arbitrators, who are private judges hired by the union and the employer. Arbitrators hear your complaint and decide whether it happened. If you win, the arbitrator can order your employer to pay you money, change workplace rules, or stop doing something that’s not fair to you.
In Employment and Work, Housing Law, Human Rights
Ontario’s laws say that harassment happens when someone says or does things that they know, or should know, will bother you. This could be because what is said or done is offensive, embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning, or not welcome. This usually has to happen more than once to be considered harassment, but a single incident can be considered harassment if it causes you to feel very uncomfortable.
Harassment can include sending emails, posting materials or pictures, making jokes or other comments about:
- your race, gender identity, gender expression, sex, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or age
- things like the way you dress, how you talk, or your religious practices
- in housing law, if you are receiving social assistance
- in employment law, your record of criminal offences
Harassment like this goes against human rights laws and is a kind of discrimination. For example, if an employer harasses you because of your record of criminal offences or a landlord harasses you because you are on welfare.
Harassment is also against the laws that protect a workers’ health and safety, and the laws that protect tenants.
In most jobs, people get public holidays off with holiday pay. To figure out your holiday pay:
- add up your earnings, which are your regular wages plus vacation pay, for the 4 work weeks before the work week with the holiday in it
- divide that total by 20
Under the Employment Standards Act, homeworkers are employees who do work out of their own homes for an employer. Examples of homework are sewing, stuffing envelopes, online research, answering calls for a call centre, and telemarketing.
Insurable employment means a job that is covered by the EI system. Most jobs are automatically covered by the EI system if you are an employee. You are automatically covered even if you don’t have a written contract and it does not matter how you are paid. If you are a contractor who works for yourself, you are usually not covered but there are many exceptions.
To qualify for EI benefits, you must have an interruption of earnings. Your employer must fill out a Record of Employment (ROE) every time you experience an interruption of earnings.
If you are applying for regular EI benefits, an interruption of earnings happens when you go 7 days without doing any work or getting any pay from your employer.
If you are applying for special benefits, like sickness benefits, maternity or parental benefits, compassionate care benefits, or benefits for parents of critically ill children, an interruption of earnings happens when your normal weekly earnings go down by more than 40%.
An employer may say they have “just cause” to fire you. If they do have just cause, they don’t have to give you notice of termination.
A court might decide that your employer had just cause if you did something that was serious misconduct or you failed almost completely to do your job. The court looks at all the circumstances, including how long you have worked for the employer.
