China: Harsher Personal And Corporate Penalties For Work Safety Accidents In China

China will impose harsher penalties on companies and their executives in order to prevent work safety accidents and to protect workers.

On 31 August 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved the Amendments to the Work Safety Law which will come into effect on 1 December 2014 (the “Amendments”). The Amendments make more than 70 changes to the existing law with a view to:

improving accident prevention and emergency response systems;
enhancing law enforcement; […]

By | November 17th, 2014 ||

Canada: Discrimination Can Occur Even Where Accommodation Needs Are Not Known

In the recent decision of TWU v Telus Communcitations Inc, 2014 ABCA 154, the Alberta Court of Appeal addressed the issues of when accommodation is required and whether there is a procedural duty to accommodate, in Alberta human rights legislation.

The employee was unionized and worked in a call centre. During the probationary period at the start of his employment the employee had significant performance issues. As a result of his poor performance he was terminated shortly […]

By | November 15th, 2014 ||

United States: #Insubordination: NLRB Affirms Refusal To Re-Hire Employees Based Upon Facebook Exchange

In prior articles, we have discussed various decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or the “Board”) protecting employee social media activity as concerted activity under Section 7 the National Labor Relations Act (the “Act”).  Although those decisions appear to suggest that employees generally have no limits as to what they can say on social media, a recent decision by the Board provides employers with the right to terminate employees whose comments indicate […]

By | November 15th, 2014 ||