Most employers (and employees) do not want to wait and see how long it might take to find other work.  They want things resolved and out of the way.  So employers will often provide a salary continuance arrangement that provides some incentive for the employee to look for work and find a new position.  Usually, it is 50% of the remaining severance amount that they might have been paid. This is considered a reasonable provision and many employers will refuse to delete these clauses.  Nevertheless, most employees view these incentive payments as a “clawback” on the amounts that they are “owed” and become very upset with these provisions.  Some employers simply are very insistent on including these provisions as part of any severance arrangement.

Nevertheless and with that in mind – here are a few things you can consider when faced with a salary continuance proposal:

1.  The Length of the Notice/Severance Period:  Just because an employer has chosen some arbitrary number as the number of weeks or months that it will provide as a notice and/or severance period, that number may not be written in stone.  It may be quite flexible.  Sometimes employers will low-ball employees, hoping that they do not take any further steps.  Employees are often more likely to get the notice period increased than to get the “clawback” removed.  Many employers will increase proposed severance packages after receiving a letter from legal counsel.

2. Definition of Mitigation:  Some employers will state that the 50% payout will be triggered if the employee finds any work – even part time, consulting or temporary.  Empoyers are often willing to negotiate changes to these clauses so that the 50% will only come into effect if the employee has found a reasonably comparable employment or self-employment opportunity.

3.  What’s Included?:  Sometimes employers will offer a salary continuation on the basis of base salary alone.  Employees are entitled to be provided with benefits continuation, pension contributions, bonuses and other amounts that they would have earned if they had continued to be employed – even the severance arrangement is a salary continuation package.

4.  Other Items:  Employees should be able to get some other items included in their severance packages – like outplacement assistance through a decent agency and reasonable legal fees to have a package reviewed.  As well, some employers will provide a helpful reference letter though they cannot really be forced to do so.

The items listed above are items that employers will often consider changing, adjusting or adding.

It is fair to point out that, despite anything I have said above, some employers will be open to removing the salary continuation provision and paying out a lump sum.  They will usually want some concession in exchange – for example a lower overall amount or the agreement not to pay some of the “extra items” listed above.  But it is often  worth trying.

Other employers will not budge on anything and will tell employees to take the package or bring a lawsuit.  Employees then have to make a decision as to whether it is worthwhile to start a legal claim.  This can be a difficult decision, especially since neither the employer, the dismissed employee or the lawyer know how long it might take the employee to find new employment.

Nevertheless, in situations where employers have provided low-ball offers and are not willing to budge initially, dismissed employees will often come out ahead by proceeding with a Statement of Claim (i.e. filing a lawsuit in court).

Surprisingly, this was not the conclusion of the Ontario Court of Appeal in a recent decision.  In Nagribianko v. Select Wine Merchants Ltd., the Court reviewed a case that had been to the Ontario Small Claims Court and the Divisional Court.  The employee had signed a contract that referenced a six month probationary period.  But the contract does not appear to have specified a payment that the employer was required to provide if dismissed after the first three months.  This should have made the contract null and void in accordance with the Supreme Court of Canada’s powerful decision in Machtinger v. HOJ Industries Ltd. [1992] 1 S.C.R. 986.

The employee had worked for the employer for just less than six months.  He was dismissed on a without cause basis.  He sued for damages and was awarded four months’ compensation in the Ontario Small Claims Court.  The judge ruled that he had been induced to join the employer and that the clause did not effectively oust the employee’s common law entitlement.  This seems consistent with most of the case law.

The Ontario Divisional Court reversed the decision and held that the trial judge had failed to give effect to the probationary language.  The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the Divisional Court’s decision and held that the term “probation” was not ambiguous. It ruled that “probationary status enables an employee to be terminated without notice during the probationary period if the employer makes a good faith determination that the employee is unsuitable for permanent employment, and provided the probationary employee was given a fair and reasonable opportunity to demonstrate their ability.”

The Appeal Court went on to conclude that the employer could not contract out of the minimum standards required by the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000 and that therefore the employee was entitled to one weeks’ pay, which the employee received, even though this one week’s pay was apparently not specified in the contract.

This analysis all would have been correct if the contract had specifically stated that the employee could be dismissed after three months but before six months with the payment of one week’s pay and the continuation of one week’s benefits.  However, if the contract did not say that specifically, it should have been viewed as a contract that would violate the common law case law as set out in Machtinger v. HOJ.  The contract appeared to specify that the employee could be dismissed at any time during the six months as a probationary employee with no notice or payment.  The fact that the employer paid the minimum one week’s compensation required by the ESA 2000 ought not to have fixed a poorly drafted contract.

Here, in contrast to the Brake v. PJ-M2R Restaurant Inc. that I looked at last week, the Ontario Court of Appeal weighed in heavily on the side of employers and was quite unsympathetic to what should have been a reasonable employee claim.  The decision is good news for Ontario employers, even those with poorly drafted contracts, who may now find it easier and cheaper to dismiss probationary employees.  The decision also demonstrates, as I indicated previously, that the outcome of a case at the Ontario Court of Appeal may well depend on the particular panel that is hearing the decision.  In this case, justices LaForme, Hourigan and Paciocco have issued a ruling that strongly favours employers and provides quite the contrast with the previous decision that I examined in Brake v. PJ-M2R Restaurant Inc., which went the other way.

Other recent Ontario Court of Appeal decisions have also gone in different directions and I will review two or three more of them in coming blogs.  The most significant take-away is probably a strong measure of uncertainty, which underscores the risks inherent in civil ligation and, particularly, in employment law cases. Contact us today!