by Nettie Logan
The government of Ontario recently passed Bill 66, Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, 2019. It amends several of Ontario’s workplace laws, including the Employment Standards Act (the “ESA”) and the Labour Relations Act.
To learn more about Bill 66, you can find details on the website of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Bill 66’s changes to the ESA include that employers are longer be required to obtain the Director of Employment Standards’ (the “Director’s”) approval for hours of work agreements-this means that employers are no longer required to obtain approval from the Director when they make a written agreement with an employee or group of employees to:
- work more than 48 hours in a week; or
- average hours over a period of up to four weeks in order to calculate overtime entitlements.
Posting ESA Posters: Bill 66 also changes the ESA posting requirement so that employers no longer are required to physically display a poster in the workplace with information about the ESA and its regulations. Instead, employers are required to distribute to each employee a copy of the most recent version of the poster.
When is this Happening?
Bill 66 received Royal Assent on April 3rd, 2019 and took effect immediately.
Who is Impacted by this Change?
Bill 66 only impacts employers who optionally choose to enter into an overtime averaging agreement with their employees.
We are working to introduce configuration and calculations for Workforce Now Time and Attendance to help our clients better support overtime averaging agreements in the second half of 2019. If your company is looking to enter into an averaging agreement with employees prior to this date, you will need to manually calculate the overtime averaging.
