Marijuana & Substance Abuse Policy
Ensure you have a “Fit to Work” policy that encompasses your firm’s position on substance abuse. Here is one of the “Policy” statements I use in my client’s “Fit to Work” policy. It is a good starting point and addresses the “appropriateness” of drinking at work, a unique hurdle for brewers and distillers. The rest of the policy is relatively straight forward.
The use of illegal or legal drugs and the inappropriate use of alcohol, medications and other psychoactive substances can have a negative effect on an Employee’s health, safety and job performance. It can also negatively affect or even endanger co-workers, customers, the public and others with whom we interact in the course of our business.
Please note that any policy should include “illegal or legal drugs and the inappropriate use of alcohol, medications and other psychoactive substances.”
All brewers, no matter how small, should have a set of Policies and Procedures that new staff acknowledge and sign at the time of hiring. They are cheap, easy insurance that several of my clients have used to their advantage.
BC Human Rights Commission
No matter what your political or social opinion is on the value of a Humans Rights Commission (Opinions are varied), be aware that the new Commissioner is *not* employer friendly. The time limit for filing a complaint has been lengthened from six months, to one year. To my clients reading this, you know the rules on record keeping documenting events, such records will become more important and need to be more detailed and kept for longer.
This commission has also ham strung employer’s rights to respond by limiting the length and detail of the reply (Effective Jan 10, 2020) to just seven pages. This means you and your lawyers may face something of a muzzle when responding to allegations, especially complicated and detailed defenses. Again, it is critical that your HR program include some sort of acknowledgement of understanding by your staff.
Labour Code and Employment Standards Act Changes
The NDP government has made changes to both of these documents and none of it is good news for employers.
Labour Code
The current government is union friendly to the extreme. They have doubled the amount of time a union card is good for during a union drive from 6 months to one year. They have increased their power to impose unionization on employers who speak against unions, a process called “remedial certification”. This means employees may not even get a chance to vote, the Labour Board will certify the union into the workplace, based on employer speech. Speaking of voting… *if* the employees get a chance to vote, it will happen within 5 days of the union applying to certify them, half of what it used to be, 10 days. All this means that if a union wants into your workplace, you will be very limited in what you can say, have very little time to say it, and if you say it wrong, the Labour Board can unionize your workers whether the workers want it or not.
Employment Standards Act
I will be covering this topic in greater detail for my clients, so if you number among them, I will be reaching out shortly. I urge any none-clients of mine to acquaint yourself of these changes.
The Employment Standards Act has limited what Wage Assignments can be used for when an employee has a “credit obligation”. You can still deduct for repayment of advances, repayment of goods or services and some other things. Tips and Gratuities have new restrictions but don’t worry you are still allowed to “tip pool” but there are limits on the employer’s ability to share in tips. In my words, not my lawyers, the employer must be performing, to a substantive degree, the same work as their employees. Again, I am keeping this short.