Employment law advice is about as reliable as stock tips; everyone is an expert, whether they know anything or not.
Case in point, I recently read an employment column titled “Am I entitled to record conversations at work?” The answer noted it is not “illegal” to record conversations at work, as long as you are part of the conversation. Although technically true because it does not breach the Criminal Code to wander around your workplace with a concealed recording device, it still can be cause for dismissal.
Imagine the impact on morale and collegiality if your employees believed they were being secretly recorded by management or even by a colleague. There may be circumstances where a junior employee could get away with this, if, for example, they had to obtain evidence that was otherwise denied. But for any executive it would almost certainly be cause for discharge.
A lawyer on a call-in show recently told listeners a temporary layoff is a wrongful dismissal unless the employee had either agreed to it in writing or had a personal history of being laid off. That isn’t correct, either. A very short layoff is not a dismissal (although it might give rise to a claim for unpaid wages). Apart from that, in a variety of industries and types of positions, temporary unpaid layoffs, subject to recall when work becomes available or the season starts (such as schools, camps etc.), are an implied term of the employment relationship.
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