Alberta Employment Standards Code changes effective January 1, 2018

[FlamesKickAss]

The way I'm reading this rememberance day is not a holiday that has to be paid or day off in lieu now regardless when it is?

Old https://work.alberta.ca/employment-s...days-2017.html

And new

https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-gener....aspx##p8003s7

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by FlamesKickAss

The way I'm reading this rememberance day is not a holiday that has to be paid or day off in lieu now regardless when it is?

Old https://work.alberta.ca/employment-s...days-2017.html

And new

https://www.alberta.ca/alberta-gener....aspx##p8003s7

I don’t think that’s correct:

Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day is a statutory holiday in Alberta – a paid general holiday for employees who are eligible.
Remembrance Day is on November 11 every year.
All Alberta government offices are closed on this holiday.
Employee eligibility
To be eligible for general holiday pay for Remembrance Day, employees must:
work their scheduled shift before and after the holiday (unless employer consent is given for the absence)
work on the general holiday if required and scheduled to do so

Holiday pay rates
If an employee doesn’t work on Remembrance Day, then they are entitled to general holiday pay of an amount that is at least their average daily wage.
If an employee works on Remembrance Day, then the employee is entitled to general holiday pay of an amount that is equal to:
- at least their average daily wage, and at least 1.5 times their wage rate for each hour worked on that day, or
- standard wage rate for each hour worked on the general holiday and a day off with pay where the pay is at least as much as their average daily wage

[Ironhorse]

Remembrance Day is now a paid stat regardless of whether it is on a weekend or not.

[Regorium]

Been hearing some stories from my friends lately where their consulting firms are telling them to take any non-chargable time as unpaid vacation.

When I first heard about this, I was thinking that it's complete BS - as full time employees, they should be paid 40 hours a week (or whatever their contract states) regardless of whether or not they have work. It is up to the leaders/business development people to find them work, and up to managers to lay people off if they are over-staffed.

If they are doing this non-chargable time as unpaid vacation thing, then they should be more like contractors, with the associated risk premium that contractors charge.

Is this even allowed? How common is this practice? How should my friends take this issue forward?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Been hearing some stories from my friends lately where their consulting firms are telling them to take any non-chargable time as unpaid vacation.

When I first heard about this, I was thinking that it's complete BS - as full time employees, they should be paid 40 hours a week (or whatever their contract states) regardless of whether or not they have work. It is up to the leaders/business development people to find them work, and up to managers to lay people off if they are over-staffed.

If they are doing this non-chargable time as unpaid vacation thing, then they should be more like contractors, with the associated risk premium that contractors charge.

Is this even allowed? How common is this practice? How should my friends take this issue forward?

They would need to contact employment standards. The legality of this policy would depend on the specific terms of their employment and how they define non-chargeable time.

[Lubicon]

CBC had Michel Noble (ff Notable and Nash restaurants) on this morning as part of a discussion regarding how the changes to the labor laws may affect businesses. One example he gave was New Year's Day which fell on Monday. His restaurants are never open on Mondays (slowest day of the week). This year he had to pay all his staff due to it being a Stat. $11 000 in wages, which wiped out his entire margin from New Years Eve (typically one of the better days) and then some.

[Ducay]

Still don't get how many of these rules got passed; they're the type of thing you'd see negotiated into a generous CBA.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

CBC had Michel Noble (ff Notable and Nash restaurants) on this morning as part of a discussion regarding how the changes to the labor laws may affect businesses. One example he gave was New Year's Day which fell on Monday. His restaurants are never open on Mondays (slowest day of the week). This year he had to pay all his staff due to it being a Stat. $11 000 in wages, which wiped out his entire margin from New Years Eve (typically one of the better days) and then some.

So essentially it was the same outcome as any year when the stat falls on a day his restaurants would have been open but were closed due to the holiday?

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Been hearing some stories from my friends lately where their consulting firms are telling them to take any non-chargable time as unpaid vacation.

When I first heard about this, I was thinking that it's complete BS - as full time employees, they should be paid 40 hours a week (or whatever their contract states) regardless of whether or not they have work. It is up to the leaders/business development people to find them work, and up to managers to lay people off if they are over-staffed.

If they are doing this non-chargable time as unpaid vacation thing, then they should be more like contractors, with the associated risk premium that contractors charge.

Is this even allowed? How common is this practice? How should my friends take this issue forward?

Our engineering firm office did that a couple of years ago. They laid off a bunch of people and put the rest of us on 32 hour weeks for nearly a year. It was like a 20% temporary pay cut. Nobody said anything, they were just happy to still have a job.

I know the answer already: UNIONIZE!

[spetch]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

So essentially it was the same outcome as any year when the stat falls on a day his restaurants would have been open but were closed due to the holiday?

Not really because he wouldn’t have to pay his ENTIRE staff pay on previous years, just those who qualify.

[Kjesse]

I met with the VP Finance of a large restaurant group today on unrelated matters.

We got on the topic of recent legislative changes in Alberta. This is what he had to say.

He says the changes in minimum wage have caused them to cut hours to all staff (they have around 1000 front line staff), and close one restaurant pre-preemptively because they saw there was no possible way to become profitable with the changes and the landlord would not reduce rent to make up the different -- the REITs simply don't care and figure they will get other tenants.

They raised prices across the board, otherwise they would not have even broken even on the restaurants that remain open. He still does not expect a break-even in most of their properties.

They have noticed that some customers tip the same, which is now more due to the higher prices but same percentage, but tips going through the till have overall decreased as many patrons are not tipping as much.

Since the wage increase in October, their sales figures have improved so they're hoping the fall was the bottom and now things will go up in terms of sales.

Everyone kept their jobs with regular attrition, except for the restaurant that closed, those lost their jobs but they re-deployed 1/4 of them, leaving 3/4 without work.

He said the other changes, which were just implemented to the code are too complex to be calculable in terms of cost with any precision -- they've tried. They do expect it will add costs similar to the wage increases. Once they have a year of data they'll have a better idea.

He called the NDP release of job data "garbage" and that it was most significantly public hiring in Edmonton when you look at the figures. They with their organizational group met with the government a few times now, but all the NDP touts about is their reduction of the small business tax, which he says helped some but did not come close to mitigating the other costs imposed.

Their goal is to survive 2018 as intact as they can be, and they hope for and expect a change in government in 2019. He commented that the servers themselves seem to not like the changes either, or at least a majority of them, as they've lost hours and tips have overall eroded.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by spetch

Not really because he wouldn’t have to pay his ENTIRE staff pay on previous years, just those who qualify.

I stand corrected, all of the non salary, commission, hourly paid unionized/non union employees who’s employer paid them stats regardless of scheduling previously, would not have needed to be paid prior to this change if the stat happened to fall on a day they were scheduled off.

[GGG]

Nm

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Kjesse

Their goal is to survive 2018 as intact as they can be, and they hope for and expect a change in government in 2019. He commented that the servers themselves seem to not like the changes either, or at least a majority of them, as they've lost hours and tips have overall eroded.

This is a good thing. The redistribution of wages from the front of the house to the back of the house is a good thing. As is a reduction in tipping. Personally as a result of the minimum wage increase I now tip 8%. It's enough to cover the highest tip out so a server will never lose money my serving me and if a server has four tables per hour and $100 totals and a 6% tip out would still add $8 to their salary.

Good news is cooks and bus boys will make more now.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Kjesse

Their goal is to survive 2018 as intact as they can be, and they hope for and expect a change in government in 2019. He commented that the servers themselves seem to not like the changes either, or at least a majority of them, as they've lost hours and tips have overall eroded.

Makes you wonder what they are hoping for with a different government if they are already in such a difficult spot. I highly doubt Kenney will be reducing the minimum if he were to get elected. And if I’m not mistaken the federal government will be implementing their carbon tax by 2019 in provinces who don’t already have one, so he’s likely not getting rid of that either. Unless Kenney’s plan is to decimate public infrastructure spending he won’t have much wiggle room in the budget to give a very big tax cut to the business world if he intends on balancing the budget anytime soon. How much will a change in government really help them if none of the issues they are complaining about will be addressed?

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Makes you wonder what they are hoping for with a different government if they are already in such a difficult spot.

Growth, not the shrinkage they're going through now. That's what they're hoping for.

The rest of your post is the usual platitudes from you and there's no need to respond.

[spetch]

Originally Posted by GGG

The burden for stat pay would have been the same aside from the new employee exclusion. The total amount paid by a business with X employees hasn't changed. The distribution between employees has.

Yes it has changed. You didn’t have to pay somebody who hadn’t worked day that stat day (ex. Monday) in the last 5 of 9 weeks. Now that person has to be paid reguardless.

Depending on the size of your staff, that can add up in a hurry.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Kjesse

Growth, not the shrinkage they're going through now. That's what they're hoping for.

The rest of your post is the usual platitudes from you and there's no need to respond.

I think he’s suggesting that not a lot is going to change regarding the minimum wage or certain taxes, so if their pinning their hopes for growth on a reversal of some of these things, they’ll be disappointed.

The rest of your post could’ve just been left out. No need to take a shot at iggy every chance you get.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Kjesse

Growth, not the shrinkage they're going through now. That's what they're hoping for.

According to a lot of sources(all of them if I’m not mistaken) we are currently the fastest growing economy in the country, and that’s with the price of oil still slumping and with all of the NDP policies that Kenney has been claiming are killing our economy.

https://www.google.ca/amp/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4414153

Unemployment continues to drop and we’ve now recovered the jobs which were lost from the collapse of oil prices.

https://www.google.ca/amp/calgaryher...last-month/amp

https://www.google.ca/amp/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4474767

You can choose to ignore the facts, but the economy is improving quickly. If unemployment is down and jobs are up for Albertans what exactly is the UCP going to be improving on? History show’s the old PC’s weren’t too successful with budgets whenever oil wasn’t booming and all indications are that Kenney wants to go back to a model similar to that.

The rest of your post is the usual platitudes from you and there's no need to respond.

Yet you choose to take the time to honour these “platitudes” by acknowledging them and letting us all know how you feel about them. Do you really believe your opinion of said “platitudes” or your opinion on whether or not you should respond to them is relevant to anything we’re discussing? I’m not here for your approval

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

The rest of your post could’ve just been left out. No need to take a shot at iggy every chance you get.

I actually don’t mind at all. To me it comes off as Donald Trump’s ‘insult people who challenge you’ style of debate so if nothing else I’m glad others get to read it and consider that while also reading and considering everything else he is posting.

But that aside I definitely agree that it could’ve just been left out. I believe it adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.