Featherlou, here’s one thing you might want to consider. Since Jim is now an hourly worker with no committment, I’d say that means he’s free to say to his employer, “I can’t make it in until noon tomorrow” and go to an interview for a job with a decent employer in the morning. Since his employer has shown no sense of obligation to him, he need show no obligation to them.
Good luck!
CJ
Perhaps it’s a juristictional thing. I’ll ask my friend who is a labor lawyer to get me a legal cite, but in Ontario, (like what Hajario wrote) if you are terminated you must be given two weeks notice or severance pay equal to two weeks pay.
It’s different if you’re fired for cause – such as the production manager finds you filling the trunk of your car with company fax machines and computers. Then you get the boot without notice or severance pay.
But that’s also for run-of-the-mill termination. I don’t know how it works for lay offs – that could be different.
Hmmmm this is what I do normally without the being fired bit 
My employment contract states that there is a 2 month period after either side giving notice.
I know the rules are slightly different here in Australia but alot of big companies (telcommunication etc) are laying of salaried staff and re-hiring them as independent contractors. Seems to be more benefit for the company to do it this way, strange thing is the contractors get paid more than if they were on a salary but there is NO job security. Suppose the companies must be saving on the extra’s (less paperwork in the payroll dept), no compulsory superannuation payments etc.
I spoke with the HR expert at my company and found out that I was wrong about the two week notice deal. Here in California, you do not have to be given any notice, even if you are laid off. She thinks that in my case there was a written company policy in place that granted me those two weeks. This sort of policy is in place more often than not but it is not universal.
You always have to work during your notice period if you want to get paid unless the company opts to pay you the cash in lieu of notice.
Haj
Don’t underestimate the cost of benefits. A recruiter was recently trying to sell me on a job as an independent contractor. I did a little research and found I needed about a 30%+ pay increase to keep the same benefits. Plus there are other expenses, such as unemployment insurance and payroll taxes paid by the employer (here in the States, at least) that add to the expense. A laid-off employee will save the company over 150% of the employees base salary (sometimes well over, depending on the benefits package). So if I lay you off, then bring you back as an independent at 110% of your salary, I’m still saving.
This is incorrect. In fact, in the U.S. the vast majority of people who collect unemployment were fired. And it can be for any number of reasons - work slowdown, too stupid to do the job, showed up late too many times, told the boss to fuck off, whatever. A company can, if it chooses, file a challenge to the unemployment claim, but unless they can prove GROSS misconduct by the employee, they are going to have to pay.
If you quit, you can very very rarely collect unemployment. You’d have to make a case that you quit under duress.
Where I work (an institution of higher learning, in the US), you are informed of your layoff in advance and work throughout your severance time. The advance notice is two weeks for every year you have worked for the institution, so old-timers have to work for their severance for months and then are done with no extra pay to walk away with. However, the boss has the option to release someone early, so the key is to come off as disgruntled as possible. Piling up years’ worth of bad attitude helps build a foundation for getting released early too.
No, that last part was not sarcastic exactly. We had one woman here who was horribly pissy about co-workers and management, but did her actual job fine (was pleasant to customers and whoever else she had to be). When it was time to lay her off, that pissiness gave our boss the clue that he should probably not keep her around any longer than necessary. So she got six month’s of severance and didn’t have to work for it like the other honorable shlubs do.
Here in my state, employers can, and do just about anything they want, and get away with it. Nevada is notorious for having no job stability. The only good point is the unemployment claim filing process is pretty quick and painless, and unless you are a complete fuck-up, you pretty much always qualify unless you really deserved to get fired (theft, violence that kind of stuff)
This is my current job description, to a tee! 
If I was paid to think about working, I would be retired already!
Standard disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer. In fact, I am not a labour expert of any sort. But I am an independent contractor who is usually paid by the hour, so I will try to suggest a few things I’ve encountered in my experience.
Featherlou, this is really a question for Alberta’s Employment Standards Act, or whatever the legislation is called in Alberta. It should set out exactly how an hourly employee is paid and any other points about pay–here in Ontario, for example, hourly employees who do not get paid vacations must get 4% of their gross as vacation pay. I know you’re in Alberta, but if Alberta has a similar provision and Jim is not getting it, then you have some recourse–report the employer to the province. In short, I recommend reviewing the current legislation, seeing how Jim is faring against it, and complaining to the province if necessary.
Provincial legislation will not describe how federal income tax/EI/CPP is deducted, since those are federal. But there would be something somewhere to tell you this. Check the reference section of your local public library; I have often referred to the copies of employment legislation in mine as I go through the negotiating process.
Of course, a contract might negate these requirements if both parties agree to the exceptions to the legislation, but as you pointed out, Jim has no contract, so in my opinion, the legislation would govern his work conditions. I would recommend that he ask for a contract; if they refuse to negotiate one with him, he should stay for only as long as it takes to find a new job.
Once again, I am not a lawyer and these are my opinions on what should be done. Good luck!
[lawyer nitpick]
Jim does have a contract with the company. He agrees to work for them, and they agree to pay him $X per hour. If there were no contract, Jim would be saying “Well, I’m doing some work to benefit the company. I guess they’ll pay me something. I wonder how much.” The company would be saying “This guy down in Cubicle 342D-2 keeps showing up and doing work. I wonder if he is expecting us to pay him.”
What he does not have is a long term contract with benefits.
In the US, if Jim was doing the same job he had been doing as an employee, he would probably still be considered an employee. The company could get hit with failure to pay withholding taxes, including a penalty of 100% of the amount. I don’t know the Canadian laws on withholding.
Jim should go to the company and say, I am netting only 75% (or whatever amount) of what I was as an employee. I need to be paid more to work as an independent contractor.
In the US there are some advantages to being an independent contractor. You can deduct all sorts of work related expenses on your federal income tax return. Again, I don’t know the Canadian laws, or Jim’s particular work or expenses.
Here in the U.S of A. whether they call you part time or whatever, if you work at least 1000 hours in a year, you are entitled to the same benefit program as your peers. FLSA law.
If the company’s around long enough, and the guy has his 1000 hours, this may apply in Alberta too. A lot of the Cdn labor laws mirror those of the U.S.
From this site, which applies to Saskatchewan:
Something similar exists for Alberta, I’m sure.
I would like it if Alberta had laws requiring part-timers to have partial benefits, but I don’t think it does. I’m trying to wade through Alberta’s Labour Standards, but it is pretty thick going. (Oh, btw, the first thing I encountered was “Labour laws do not apply to Construction Industry - see special rules for contruction.” No real big surprise there.)
“If you quit, you can very very rarely collect unemployment. You’d have to make a case that you quit under duress.”
When I first moved to WV, my first boss was satan’s brother. We’ll call him Tom (yes, his real name haha). I swear this was the most evil, horrible, nasty man I have ever met. To give you an example of his assholeness, he would only hire women for his office (and only men for the warehouse), and he would not hire women who didn’t need to work. He wanted single moms, newlyweds, etc. — so he could treat them any way they wanted and have them under his thumb. Example 2: WV law requires employers to give their employees who work 8 hours a 30 minute lunch with 2 paid breaks OR a lunch over 30 minutes. So what does he do? Gave us a 35 minute lunch. I could go on and on.
He kept the office girls in knots. I quit after 5 months, and another woman quit about 2 weeks after me. She needed the money but she was going home crying and throwing up every night. I told her before I left I would testify at her hearing if she filed for unemployment.
A few months later I was called, and we went. We spoke our piece, and then Tom opened his mouth and proceeded to verbally abuse us for about 15 minutes (funny thing was, he was there to prove that he was not abusive). It was so bad I was pretty much numb the rest of the day … I mean it was baaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
Anyhow, everything he said was on tape. We won
Just thought I’d throw that in there. I’m quite proud of that story
Okay, I’ve had a chance to wade through this thread and I figure it’s about time I put my two cents in, since this is all about me.
To recap the details of my situation, I was informed at the end of June that I was getting my two-weeks notice of being relaeased. My boss had just landed an old friend of his to step into the office general manager position which had been vacant for the last two years and the new guy’s arrival would make my job redundant. He therefore offered to have me written off as a lay-off to make me eligible for Employment Insurance (aside: a couple years ago, the Canadian government, in its infinite Liberal Party wisdom, decided to spend several hundred million dollars changing Unemployment Insurance to the more friendly sounding Employment Insurance). Further, he offered to let me finish the few projects I had begun on a contract basis to be paid out on an hourly rate which is actually slightly higher than my average hourly rate over the last six months. I agreed to his terms because I’m a month away from a wedding and need to make those extra bucks. There are no taxes being deducted from those hours because I will technically be sub-contracting to them and am, therefore, responsible for paying my own taxes.
As has been speculated above, the two weeks I spent in the office were as unproductive as I could get away with. I gave the new guy the bare minimum training required to bring him up to speed with how things are done around the office. However, when he conceded that he is computer illiterate, I suddenly forgot to teach him how to access the many files he needs to get to to do his job (which are located, variously, on a PC, a Mac running OS 7 and a Mac running OS 8, all three of which are using different spreadsheet and word processing software). In the meantime, I managed to spend a lot of time driving around the city, picking up supplies for our field guys, dragging 10 minute trips into half hour or two hours excursions. Also, although my computer does not have internet access, it sure has solitaire. I managed, in a single sitting, to play eighty games. And then there was the thirty-minutes-at-a-time napping (my former office is located at the very back of the building, so it’s usually pretty easy to sneak a couple winks without anyone being the wiser). As final touches, I dropped an April Fools gag onto one of the computers which causes the cursor to bounce around the screen like it’s on a spring every time you touch the mouse and changed the font on several of my files to Zapf Dingbats.
The hourly work I’ve been doing has been quite labour-intensive (did I mention this is a construction company?), which has forced me to slow down to a snail’s pace, since I’m not really in labour-intensive shape. I suppose this could get me in some trouble, except that the company is desperately understaffed right now and several of the projects I’m working on require me since I’m the only guy on staff who has even the slightest clue how to do them.
I have no intention of working even one second for them in August, and they’ll be woefully unprepared for me to stop showing up if they continue to get specialized work that only I am trained to do. How sad for them.
My attitude since they dropped the bomb on me has been “Fuck 'em” and I see no reson to change that attitude. I have been nothing but loyal and dependable for two and a half years, but factions within the company have conspired to squeeze me out. My only hope for the future for them is that they lose bags of money in the immediate future trying to fill my shoes and failing miserably.
As for the legality issue, it has been my experience in the construction industry in Alberta for the past eight years that employees have even fewer rights than part-timers and temp workers. Notice is not required for firing, benefits are not required, labour disputes virtually cannot be filed and awards coming from them are not enforced. Frankly, from my perspective, I’m getting off pretty easily.
Would you mind giving a cite on that? By benefits program, do you mean payroll practices, employee benefit plan as defined by ERISA or other . . .
I was under the impression that FLSA did not cover things like retirement and health and welfare plans.
Thanks.
Sorry, my sloppiness. Some rules are governed by FLSA, some by ERISA and some by “payroll practices”. payroll practices means, more or less, that once an employer establishes a baseline, like who is and who isn’t “part time”, they can’t arbitrarily discriminate.
FLSA covers the regulations dealing with who is eligible for overtime and other pay-related items. They also are responsible for the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) compliance, including the rules on maintaining group health benefits.
The Dept of Labor website:
http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/handbook/minwage.htm
From this site:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/1421.htm
An example:
[sub]I’m almost positive this used to be 1000 hours, instead of the current 1250.[/sub]
ERISA deals with the rights of employees regarding pension benefits .
From here: