Manitoba proposes changes to employment standards

Recommendations include additional unpaid leave, restricting hours youth can work

For the first time in several decades, Manitoba is considering a number of changes to its Employment Standards Code, including new unpaid leave and restrictions on when young employees can work.

The province has released the consensus report on the Employment Standards Code from the Labour Management Review Committee (LMRC), which is made up of an equal number of labour and business representatives.

"I would like to thank the LMRC for their dedicated work and for developing a consensus package of recommendations for change," said Nancy Allan, the province's labour and immigration minister. "The Employment Standards Code has not been extensively reviewed in almost 30 years and I will be looking closely at the package as it relates to updating and modernizing the act."

Manitoba launched a review of the code last year to look at updating the legislation to reflect the current realities of the economy, the changing face of the labour force and the demands on families. The review generated more than 100 submissions from employers, employees and stakeholders throughout the province.

Recommendation highlights

•three new unpaid family responsibility/sick days and three new unpaid bereavement days for death in an employee's family;

•improved statutory holiday pay provisions for part-time workers;

•clarifying hours-of-work and overtime provisions for managers and salaried employees;

•new graduated termination notice rules based on employees' years of service;

•guaranteeing employees who report for work minimum pay of three hours or the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less;

•defining and limiting pay deductions to prevent deductions where there is no direct benefit to the worker;

•new measures to promote compliance with the legislation including fines for repeat offenders;

•reducing red tape by simplifying the process employers are required to follow to obtain permits for certain industries for averaging daily or weekly hours over a specified time frame;

•new protections for children including restrictions on the hours and type of work children may undertake and prevention of anyone under the age of 18 from working alone between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.;

•improving the ability to recover earned wages; and

•improving provisions for overtime pay for incentive-based workers.

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