In a paper they presented at the CLEBC Employment Law Conference 2013 (held on May 9 - 10, 2013 in Vancouver), Mark Hamilton and Scott MacDonald addressed whether a corporate employer can sue a former employee for defamation for making disparaging claims against their former employer.

Mr. Hamilton and Mr. MacDonald are lawyers at Richards Buell Sutton LLP in Vancouver. The title of their paper was: "Potential Claims Against Departing Employees Without Written Agreements".

Based on their paper and presentation, here are some points of note:  read more »

California has passed legislation prohibiting employers from demanding access to employees' and job applicants' personal social media accounts. The text of the September 27, 2012 press release from the Govenor's office is as follows:

Governor Brown Signs Laws to Protect Privacy for Social Media Users

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today took to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace to announce that he has signed two bills that increase privacy protections for social media users in California.

Assembly Bill 1844 (Campos) and Senate Bill 1349 (Yee) prohibit universities and employers from requiring that applicants give up their email or social media account passwords.

"The Golden State is pioneering the social media revolution and these laws will protect all Californians from unwarranted invasions of their personal social media accounts," said Governor Brown.  read more »

Back in January 2012, the US National Labour Relations Board Acting General Counsel released a second report describing 14 social media cases reviewed by his office.

Here's the entire news release, with a link to the report (and the one that preceded it):

To help provide further guidance to practitioners and human resource professionals, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon has released a second report describing social media cases reviewed by his office.

The Operations Management Memo covers 14 cases, half of which involve questions about employer social media policies. Five of those policies were found to be unlawfully broad, one was lawful, and one was found to be lawful after it was revised.  read more »

Jean-Philippe Couture, a lawyer in the Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG) office in Calgary, has written an article entitled, "Canadian Tax Implications Of Hiring U.S. Contractors To Perform Work In Canada".

The article was published in BLG's Fall 2011 Labour and Employment Law News newsletter.

Lus Laboris has published a guide entitled, "Non-Compete Clauses: An International Guide" (May 2010).

As set out on their website , the lus Laboris alliance is comprised of member law firms in 42 countries, with coverage in more than 100 countries. Its specialisms include: individual employment contracts; collective redundancies; discrimination; expatriation; restructuring; compensation, benefits and tax; pensions; collective bargaining; workplace policies and handbooks; litigation and dispute resolution; and corporate social responsibility.

The Lus Laboris website describes the guide as follows:  read more »

Labour and employment lawyers in Vancouver may be interested to know that the American Bar Association's "5th Annual Section of Labor & Employment Conference" will be held in Seattle this year, on November 2-5, 2011. 

The program guide has not yet been posted to the Section's website. Last year's jam-packed program guide - the conference was held in Chicago - can be found here.

In Mason v. Chem-Trend Limited Partnership, 2011 ONCA 344, the Ontario Court of appeal overturned the application judge's decision and ruled that the following restrictive covenant was unreasonable and therefore unenforceable against a 17 year technical salesperson whose employment was terminated for just cause:

I agree that if my employment is terminated for any reason by me or by the Company, I will not, for a period of one year following the termination, directly or indirectly, for my own account or as an employee or agent of any business entity, engage in any business or activity in competition with the Company by providing services or products to, or soliciting business from, any business entity which was a customer of the Company during the period in which I was an employee of the Company, or take any action that will cause the termination of the business relationship between the Company and any customer, or solicit for employment any person employed by the Company.

The National Employment Law Project is a US advocacy organization for employment rights of lower-wage workers, It has offices across the United States and a staff of lawyers, policy experts and researchers.

Of note to US employers, the Project recently published a "Criminal Background Checks: A Best Practices Guide" (March 17, 2011), which speaks to best practices in the US context.

Jackson Lewis, a US labour and employment firm with offices across the country, posted an article last month on its website entitled,  "Washington State Legislature Targets Bullying in the Workplace" (February 15, 2011).

The article states that:  read more »

The table below contains a comprehensive list of the upcoming workplace law (employment, labour, human rights, pensions, privacy and immigration) conferences in Canada in 2011. The full names of the service providers, and links to their sites, are at the bottom of the page.

 read more »