Canadian Payroll Reporter

APRIL 2014 8 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2014 Published 12 times a year by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. Subscription rate: $179 per year Customer Service Tel: (416) 609-3800 (Toronto) (800) 387-5164 (outside Toronto) Fax: (416) 298-5106 E-mail: carswell.customerrelations @thomsonreuters.com Website: www.carswell.com One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1T 3V4 Director, Carswell Media: Karen Lorimer Publisher: John Hobel Managing Editor: Todd Humber todd.humber@thomsonreuters.com (416) 298-5196 Editor: Sheila Brawn sbrawn@rogers.com Marketing Manager: Mohammad Ali mm.ali@thomsonreuters.com (416) 609-5866 Circulation Co-ordinator: Travis Chan travis.chan@thomsonreuters.com (416) 609-5872 ©2014 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd/ ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-7798-2810-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys- tem or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher (Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business). Return Mail Registration # 1522825 Return Postage Guaranteed Paid News Revenue Toronto Canadian Payroll Reporter is part of the Canadian HR Reporter group of publications: • Canadian HR Reporter (www.hrreporter.com) • Canadian Occupational Safety magazine (www.cos-mag.com) • Canadian Safety Reporter (www.safety-reporter.com) • Canadian Employment Law Today (www.employmentlawtoday.com) • Canadian Labour Reporter (www.labour-reporter.com) See carswell.com for information www.payroll-reporter.com • Employers would be allowed to pro- vide employees with electronic pay statements as long as employees could print them. • Employees who wish to quit would have to provide at least two weeks' written notice if they worked for their employer for at least 13 consecutive weeks. Yukon: The territorial government is considering changes affecting leaves and terminations. Late last year, it asked for public feedback on: • increasing the maximum length of an unpaid leave for an employee whose child is missing because of a suspected crime from 35 weeks to 52 weeks, and from 35 weeks to 104 weeks for a child who has died because of a suspected crime • reducing the number of months (cur- rently 12) that an employee must work for an employer before being eligible to take leaves related to a critically ill child or to the death or disappearance of a child • lowering the threshold at which no- tice of termination is required from six months of employment to three months. The government is now reviewing the input it received. Employment standards changes Continued from page 6 by the number of days worked. In Ontario, statutory holiday pay is calculated by adding up the regular wages the employee earned in the four workweeks before the holiday and the vacation pay payable to an employee in those weeks and dividing the sum by 20. The four-week period is based on the employer's workweek, not necessarily a calendar week. When calculating the amount to pay entitled employees for the hours actually worked on a holiday, employers have to be aware of the legal requirements. "In some jurisdictions, you pay regu- lar rate for the hours worked plus (give) an additional day off for the stat or pay them time and a half for the hours worked plus payment for the stat. Some jurisdictions have choices and some ju- risdictions dictate what you owe if they work it," Lindsey says. Most provinces and territories require employers pay 1.5 times an employee's regular rate for each hour worked (with exceptions for employees in continuous operations such as hotels or hospitals). But not all jurisdictions follow this rule. B.C. specifies the 1.5 premium ap- plies for the first 12 hours worked on a holiday. For any hours beyond that, em- ployers must pay double the employee's regular rate. In Newfoundland and Lab- rador, employers must pay entitled em- ployees at least double their regular rate for hours worked on the holiday or give them another day off or an extra vaca- tion day. It is the employee's choice. In Ontario, employers can pay en- titled employees their regular wages for the hours worked plus provide a day off with pay at a later date or, if the employ- ees agree, employers can pay statutory holiday pay plus 1.5 times the employ- ees' regular rate for the hours worked. Paying regular wages for the hours worked and offering another day off for the holiday is something other jurisdic- tions also allow. Paying employees for working on a statutory holiday can be further com- plicated by shift work and overtime requirements. Lindsey says she fields many calls on Carswell's payroll hotline asking about how to compensate an em- ployee whose shift begins the day before a holiday and ends on the holiday. She says she receives even more calls about overtime calculations in a week in which there is a holiday. To learn about the specific require- ments, Lindsey advises payroll practi- tioners to refer to the employment stan- dards law in their jurisdiction. "You don't want (employees) coming to your office every stat holiday and ask- ing, 'Did you calculate it correctly this time?" This article was edited for space. To view the full article, go to www.payroll- reporter.com, click on "Advanced Search" and enter article #20624. Continued from page 3 Statutory holidays

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