Employment Disputes

Losing your job can be overwhelming, especially when your employer gives you a termination letter or severance package and asks you to sign quickly. Many employees are entitled to more than the minimum amount offered by their employer.

Severance can depend on age, length of service, position, compensation, benefits, bonus history, employment contract, and ability to find comparable work. A termination clause, release, or deadline in the package should be reviewed before it is accepted.

Our lawyers advise employees on termination pay, severance pay, common law notice, wrongful dismissal claims, releases, and post-termination negotiations.

We help employees understand and pursue their full legal entitlements before signing away rights.

When an employer alleges just cause, it is often trying to end employment without paying severance. However, just cause is a high legal standard, and many allegations of misconduct, poor performance, lateness, insubordination, policy breaches, or workplace conflict do not justify termination without compensation.

Employees should not assume they have no rights simply because the employer uses strong language in a termination letter.

Our lawyers assess the allegations, investigation process, disciplinary record, workplace policies, and surrounding facts to challenge unfair cause allegations and pursue compensation where the employer’s position is not legally justified.

Our lawyers help employees respond to discipline and termination positions with evidence, not panic.

Constructive dismissal can occur when an employer makes significant changes to employment without the employee’s agreement. This may include a pay cut, demotion, major change in duties, reduced hours, unpaid suspension, relocation, toxic work environment, or pressure to accept new employment terms.

Even if the employee was not formally fired, the law may treat the employer’s conduct as a termination. The practical problem is that employees often need advice before deciding whether to object, continue working, negotiate, resign, or pursue compensation.

Our lawyers assess the change, the contract, the workplace history, the employee’s response options, and the risks of each path.

Getting advice early is important because delay, acceptance, or poorly framed objections can affect legal rights.

Employees are often told that a layoff is temporary, unavoidable, or simply part of a restructuring. In Ontario, a layoff may still trigger important legal rights, especially where the employment contract does not clearly allow temporary layoffs.

Employees affected by downsizing, shortage of work, business closure, restructuring, mass termination, or job elimination may be entitled to severance, benefits continuation, and other compensation.

Our lawyers review the layoff notice, employment contract, employer communications, timing, and return-to-work prospects to determine whether the layoff can be challenged as a termination or constructive dismissal.

We help employees avoid accepting a “temporary” label that may not reflect their legal rights.

Employment contracts can affect rights before a dispute ever begins. Offer letters, employment agreements, promotion documents, bonus plans, commission terms, non-solicitation clauses, confidentiality provisions, termination clauses, and exit agreements can all impact severance, compensation, future job opportunities, and legal claims.

Employees should understand what they are signing before accepting a new role, changing positions, or leaving employment.

Our lawyers review new contracts, existing agreements, severance releases, restrictive covenants, and exit packages to identify legal risk, explain practical consequences, and negotiate better terms where appropriate.

We help employees understand the fine print before it becomes the dispute.

Workplace harassment can include bullying, intimidation, humiliation, threats, sexual harassment, abusive supervision, repeated mistreatment, retaliation, or a poisoned work environment. These situations can affect health, performance, reputation, and job security.

Employees often worry that raising concerns will make the situation worse or lead to discipline or termination. That concern is real. The answer is not silence; it is a careful record and a strategy.

Our lawyers advise employees on documenting misconduct, making workplace complaints, responding to investigations, and protecting employment rights.

Depending on the facts, harassment may support a human rights claim, occupational health and safety complaint, constructive dismissal claim, reprisal claim, or negotiated exit.

Employees are protected from workplace discrimination based on disability, race, sex, age, family status, pregnancy, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other protected grounds. Discrimination can arise in hiring, scheduling, discipline, promotion decisions, accommodation requests, performance management, harassment, or termination.

Employers also have a duty to accommodate protected needs unless doing so would cause undue hardship. These issues can become high-risk quickly when the employer treats the accommodation request as a performance problem or attendance issue.

Our lawyers advise employees facing discrimination, failure to accommodate, reprisal, poisoned work environments, and human rights violations.

We help employees understand their rights and pursue practical remedies, compensation, and accountability.

Disability-related workplace issues often involve employment law, human rights, benefits, and insurance disputes. Employees may face denied short-term disability benefits, terminated long-term disability benefits, pressure to return to work too early, refusal of modified duties, discipline for medical absences, or termination while on medical leave.

These situations can also involve accommodation, benefits continuation, severance, workplace safety, and insurer communications.

Our lawyers help employees navigate medical documentation, disability claims, return-to-work plans, accommodation requests, and employment disputes connected to illness or injury.

The objective is to protect health, income, dignity, and employment rights.

Employees may be owed unpaid wages, overtime pay, vacation pay, public holiday pay, commissions, bonuses, incentive compensation, expense reimbursements, or amounts wrongfully deducted from their pay.

These disputes often arise when an employer changes compensation terms, refuses to pay commissions after termination, labels a bonus as discretionary, miscalculates overtime, or excludes variable compensation from a severance package.

Our lawyers review employment contracts, pay stubs, payroll records, bonus plans, commission agreements, sales records, and termination documents to help employees recover compensation they earned but were not properly paid.

We help employees turn payroll confusion into a focused compensation claim.

Many workers are labelled as independent contractors even though the real working relationship looks like employment. A written contractor agreement does not decide the issue by itself.

Control, exclusivity, scheduling, ownership of tools, chance of profit, risk of loss, integration into the business, and economic dependence may all matter. Misclassification can affect severance, vacation pay, overtime, public holiday pay, EI, CPP, tax treatment, benefits, and termination rights.

Our lawyers review the actual working relationship and help misclassified workers pursue unpaid entitlements, severance, and recognition of their legal rights.

We help clients test the label against the reality of the work.

Employees should not be punished for asserting workplace rights, reporting unsafe work, requesting accommodation, making a harassment complaint, taking medical leave, asking about unpaid wages, or refusing dangerous work.

Reprisals can include termination, discipline, demotion, reduced hours, threats, exclusion from opportunities, negative performance management, or other adverse treatment. Workplace safety issues may also involve violence, harassment, unsafe equipment, lack of training, or pressure to work in unsafe conditions.

Our lawyers advise employees on occupational health and safety concerns, reprisal claims, workplace complaints, and terminations connected to protected workplace rights.

We help employees identify whether the timing and facts support a protected-rights claim.

A workplace injury can create serious financial, medical, and employment-related issues. WSIB claims may involve wage-loss benefits, health care benefits, return-to-work obligations, medical restrictions, modified duties, accommodation, and disputes about whether an injury or illness is work-related.

Employees may also face pressure to return before they are ready, refusal of suitable work, discipline for injury-related absences, or termination after filing a claim.

Our lawyers advise employees on workers’ compensation issues, WSIB disputes, return-to-work problems, employer reprisals, and terminations connected to workplace accidents or occupational illness.

We help employees protect both the compensation claim and the employment relationship where possible.

Employees may become involved in workplace investigations as complainants, witnesses, or accused parties. These investigations can affect reputation, discipline, termination, accommodation, workplace relationships, and future career prospects.

Employees are often asked to attend interviews, provide documents, respond to allegations, or accept findings without fully understanding their rights.

Our lawyers advise employees before, during, and after workplace investigations. We help employees prepare for investigation meetings, respond to allegations, raise procedural concerns, protect against retaliation, and challenge investigation processes that are unfair, incomplete, biased, or being used to justify discipline or termination.

We help employees participate in investigations without walking in blind.

Some employees require a more tailored legal strategy because their workplace rights do not fit neatly into a standard severance or wrongful dismissal claim.

This may include federally regulated employees, unionized employees, professionals, regulated workers, employees with ownership interests, employees facing overlapping shareholder or partnership disputes, or employees dealing with reputational, licensing, or fiduciary concerns.

Our lawyers help employees identify the correct legal forum, preserve evidence, assess strategic risks, and pursue the appropriate remedy. These matters often require careful coordination between employment law, human rights, labour relations, commercial issues, and professional obligations.

We help employees match the strategy to the real dispute, not a generic template.