Employees who agreed to work past layoff required new layoff notice: Board
A British Columbia employer who asked a few employees to work past their layoff date was required to issue a new notice of layoff, the B.C. Arbitration Board has ruled.
Haakon Industries, a manufacturer of air conditioning equipment based in Richmond, B.C., decided in the spring of 2009 that it would close its two plants due to a drop in sales. It announced to its employees that they would be laid off for an unknown period of time. Provincial employment standards legislation required employers to provide a certain amount of written notice — or the equivalent in compensation — to employees being laid off based on their service time. The maximum notice required was eight weeks. The collective agreement deferred to the employment standards requirements.
Haakon gave all its employees, regardless of service time, eight weeks’ notice of the layoff, set for July 10, 2009. At one plant, employees were given notice on May 11, 2009, that they would be laid off on July 10. The employees at the other plant were notified on May 21 of a July 24 termination date.
However, Haakon still had orders to fill and it became apparent it wouldn’t be able to fill them all before the scheduled closings. The company asked five of the workers at the first plant to stay on until July 24 and gave them a written “lay-off date extension.” As the later date drew near, there was still work to do and 13 employees accepted further extensions until July 29.
On Aug. 21, after the plants had closed, the union filed a grievance alleging Haakon had violated the Employment Standards Act (ESA) and the collective agreement by not providing new notice periods once the layoff dates were extended. The union said the notices of extension should have constituted new notices of layoff with the requisite notice for each employee. Based on the service of the various employees, those who received extensions should be entitled to between four and seven weeks notice after their extension notices, said the union.
The board found the ESA stipulated a layoff notice had no effect “if the employment continues after the notice period ends.” There was no mention of extensions or changes to the notice period; the act was “resolute,” said the board. The board also said the province’s employment standards Interpretation Guidelines Manual stated “notice of termination is without effect if the employee(s) work past the notice period” with no mention of an extension of the notice period.
Despite the fact the employees voluntarily accepted the extensions and Haakon kept the union apprised of the circumstances, the board found there was no room for variation from the requirement that a new notice requirement had to start from the extension notices, not the original layoff notice.
