First, I would say that even if they were not related. My brother can often be found working 48 hours straight to meet ridiculous deadlines. My mother shows up for work 2 hours ahead of time to do the work others are supposed to be doing because she knows that if she doesn't do it, it won't get done. You can believe I am lying... I don't care. But I stand by my assessment.
Second, going through labour boards and lawyers is a giant hassle and usually fruitless. When I worked for a consulting company we were told that we all had to do 15 hours of mandatory overtime a week. The guy in the cubicle next to me was taking care of his dying mother and he just didn't have the time so he talked the team lead and she said he was exempted. That afternoon the team lead was let go. She had already invited the team over to her place for a party that weekend and she said she didn't want to cancel as it would give her a chance to say goodbye to everyone. She said she was told she was being let go because "she wasn't being a team player; she didn't always have the company's best interests at heart; she was insubordinate to the upper management." We asked if she was going to fight it since she was one of, if not THE, best team leads we had. She said she started looking at lodging a wrongful dismissal case, but the company didn't violate her human rights nor did it breach the Employment Standards Act. In addition, from her readings the proceedings are too slow, take up a lot of time and can be expensive, particularly if you need to hire your own council. Since she was a damn good team lead, she said she was just going to look elsewhere for a job. And that's the case for most people... they don't have the support to fight the company, so they just find another position.
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