Here's what employers need to know about worker entitlements, holiday pay
With businesses in full swing again after the holiday festivities, employers should not overlook the coming rest days this year.
Employers in Ontario should take note: There are 9 statutory holidays in the province that will fall on weekdays.
These are:
Three optional holidays are also going to fall on weekdays:
“Remembrance Day is not a statutory holiday in Ontario, which is controversial, and some employers still give employees the day off,” said Kiljon Shukullari, HR advisory manager, at consultancy firm Peninsula.
“Civic Holiday is an optional holiday and provincially regulated employers are not required to give it off, although many do. It is also important that employers know that Ontario is the only province where Boxing Day is a statutory holiday, which may cause confusion for nationwide companies.”
In Canada, holidays exist on the federal level, but each province and territory have the jurisdiction to adapt these federal holidays and to add their own regional holidays.
According to Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA), if a public holiday falls on a day that would ordinarily be a working day for an employee and the employee is not on vacation that day, the employer “shall give the employee the day off work and pay him or her public holiday pay for that day”.
But “the employee has no entitlement” if he or she “fails, without reasonable cause, to work all of his or her last regularly scheduled day of work before the public holiday or all of his or her first regularly scheduled day of work after the public holiday”.
An employee and employer, however, may agree that the employee will work on a public holiday that would ordinarily be a working day for that employee. If they do, the first rule would no longer apply.
Also, an employee’s public holiday pay for a given public holiday shall be equal to,
(a) the total amount of regular wages earned and vacation pay payable to the employee in the four work weeks before the work week in which the public holiday occurred, divided by 20; or
(b) if some other manner of calculation is prescribed, the amount determined using that manner of calculation. 2017, c. 22, Sched. 1, s. 16; 2018, c. 14, Sched. 1, s. 7 (1).
An employer who is required to pay premium pay to an employee shall pay the employee at least one and one half times his or her regular rate.
