Employment and Labour Law

“… arbitrators should hesitate to interfere with employer’s decisions on whether probationary employees have attained the required performance standard, or with the standards themselves” (extract from judgment below) Our laws allow employers to hire new employees on a probationary basis, and doing so can give both parties time to assess how good the “fit” actually is and whether the employee should become a permanent one. Employers must however avoid falling into the trap of thinking that they can dismiss a probationary employee

“…the employer has a duty to investigate all possible alternatives short of dismissal, and this duty accords with the onus of proving the fairness of the dismissal” (extract from judgment below) An employee who fails to perform adequately at work is by definition not fulfilling his or her side of the employment bargain, but that doesn’t mean that dismissal is necessarily an appropriate remedy. Guidelines for dismissal The onus is on you as employer to prove that the dismissal was fair, and the

“The employer has a duty to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious freedom unless it is impossible to do so without causing itself undue hardship. It is not enough that it may have a legitimate commercial rationale. The duty of reasonable accommodation imposed on the employer is one of modification or adjustment to a job or the working environment that will enable an employee operating under the constraining tenets of her religion to continue to participate or advance in employment” (Extract

“Prohibition of unfair discrimination: No person may unfairly discriminate, directly or indirectly, against an employee, in any employment policy or practice, on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, family responsibility, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, HIV status, conscience, belief, political opinion, culture, language, birth or on any other arbitrary ground” (from the Employment Equity Act) Our employment laws and labour courts come down heavily on any unfair discrimination in the workplace,