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Canadian employers subject to federal regulation will want to take note of changes to the Canada Labour Code that came into force on September 1, 2019. These reforms apply to a large number of minimum employment standards with vacation, breaks, leaves of absences, and predictive scheduling impacted, among others. As a result of the far-reaching nature of the changes, they will have a significant impact on federally regulated workplaces.

French law No. 2018-771 of September 5, 2018, which is a law “for the freedom to choose one’s professional future,” modified various subjects of interest to companies, including secondment and illegal work. Enforceable since September 7, 2018, unless specified otherwise, this legislation only applies to companies seconding employees in France. This Act reduces the employer’s obligations in order to make secondment easier and strengthens protections for secondees by increasing administrative penalties for noncompliance with such obligations.

Globalization, technology developments, and the world’s economy, among other factors, have changed our day-to-day dynamics and have transformed the way we work. This means that employees must deal with emotions and circumstances that in the past were not significant but today are studied and classified by scientists as “psychosocial risks.”

Ogletree Deakins’ Cross-Border Practice Group is pleased to announce the publication of the latest issue of its international newsletter, the International Employment Update, which updates employers on key employment law changes and other significant developments in the countries in which they have employees.

After only five months in office, President López Obrador—who won by a landslide during the last presidential election and whose political party holds the majority of Congress—amended the Mexican Federal Labor Law and other applicable laws on May 1, 2019.

The UK government has lost its case defending the multiple convictions rule, which requires an individual to disclose all spent convictions if he or she has two or more such convictions.

Mexico is in a new era when it comes to labor law, with several significant developments affecting the country’s labor landscape.

There are about 2.4 million domestic employees in Mexico, 95 percent of whom are women and do not have social security benefits. The Mexican Supreme Court of Justice recently held that it is not legal to exclude domestic employees from the country’s social security system, which is administered by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS).

The Netherlands is one of the few places in the world where dismissing an employee requires prior authorization from the government (unless it is done summarily for urgent cause). 

In response to the yellow vests movement (mouvement des gilets jaunes), which calls for measures to increase purchasing power of France’s working class, a law adopted on December 24, 2018, which was then clarified in two government circulars (Circ. DSS/5B/2019/29, dated February 6, 2019) recently introduced an “exceptional purchasing power bonus.”

The latest version of Article L. 1235-3 of the French Labor Code, based on the “Macron Ordinances,” has recently been the subject of major dispute, with several labor tribunals issuing conflicting decisions.

On December 6, 2018, the government of Ontario unveiled Bill 66, Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act, 2018. The bill is designed to reduce the regulatory and financial burden of operating a business in a number of areas, including employment and labour relations.

The questions of whether limitation periods in employment contracts must expressly exclude claims to the statutory minimum wage and whether limitation/forfeiture clauses in employment contracts without such an exception are ineffective in their entirety or only partially with regard to minimum wage claims are especially important in practice.