| Historical Information |
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| This post is about a previous Session of Parliament. Any legislation here that did not receive Royal Assent has been terminated. |
C-276 – An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (replacement workers) – restricts an employer’s ability to replace staff during a strike or lockout.
First up, there’s a bit of a weakening of protections for striking workers. Right now, when a strike ends, an employer is required to bring back all the striking employees before hiring on anyone else. This Act allows the employer to not bring someone back if they have “a valid reason” not to.
Next we’ve got the list of people that can’t be used to replace workers during a strike or lockout. An employer can’t replace striking/locked out workers with:
- Anyone hired during the strike/lockout
- Anyone that works for another employer (staffing agencies) or contract workers
- Anyone that’s a member of the union that’s on strike or locked out
- Employees from another location (so if a Starbucks goes on strike the striking workers can’t be replaced with people from another Starbucks)
- Anyone else who works at the location that’s on strike/locked out
Employers also won’t be allowed to have striking workers work at another location. There’s also exceptions here, none of this applies to members of the management team, nor does it apply in cases where the employer is protecting their property. So if one of the striking positions involves critical maintenance of equipment the employer is allowed to fill that position to protect the equipment.
The penalty for breaking this is a fine up to $10,000 for each day that the offense was committed.
Progress of C-276
C-276 is currently outside of the Order of Precedence.
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