Thoughts from a Management Lawyer

Ontario Proposes Legislation to Allow Retirement of Firefighters At 60

The government of Ontario recently tabled legislation that, if passed, would allow the retirement age 60 for the province's firefighters (Bill 181, Fire Protection and Prevention Amendment Act, 2011).

You can read the Minister of Labour's statement to get some of the background. 

Algorithms in Employment Decision Making

I saw an article yesterday in the Globe called The algorithm method: Programming our lives away.  According to the article:

"Some companies now use algorithms to make decisions around hiring and firing. At Google, which boasts that “almost every [personnel] decision is based on quantitative analysis,” engineers have developed an algorithm to identify those employees most likely to leave to work for a competitor or strike out on their own. Employee surveys, peer reviews, evaluations, promotion and pay histories feed into the algorithm. It helps us “get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave,” a Google manager told The Wall Street Journal last year."

I recall having a call with a company that developed computer decision making software, presumably based on algorithms, to assist employers make better decisions. The context of my call was to look into options to help a client make better decision in a downsizing.   Who should stay and who should go, that sort of thing.  Feed information into a computer, press a button and out comes information to assist the employer with its decision making.  

In the end, no matter how you slice it, the one constant in employment related decision making is people.  People make the decisions and people are impacted by them.  Trite to say, of course, but so important in understanding the area we work in.  All decisions, whether in employment or otherwise, involve a degree of uncertainty and risk.  We decide by trying to whittle down the uncertainty to a manageable standard (whatever that is for the individual), but without entirely eliminating it - especially where decisions involve people.  

If algorithms and mathematical models help us make better decisions, why not? I would not be a supporter of a purely scientific application of a mathematical model in employment decision making to the exclusion of "instinct" and the other human aspects, but whatever helps make better decisions I'm in (recognizing that "people" decisions require a personal touch above all else).   

 

 

Vale Workers Approve Collective Agreement

A few days ago I posted that Vale and Steelworkers Reach Tentative Deal and that this was subject to ratification.  Well, the Globe and Mail reports that the Nickel workers approve contract with Vale thus ending one of the longest strikes in Canadian history.  

Vale and Steelworkers Reach Tentative Deal

It may well be that the long and sometimes bitter strike at Vale may be coming to an end. The strike that started on July 13, 2009 and resulted in a fair amount of litigation both at the Ontario Labour Relations Board before the Courts may (depending on the wishes of the members) be coming to a close.  

According to the Sudbury Star, the parties have reached a tentative agreement.  The Toronto Star also has an article and the tentative deal will now be put to the membership on Wednesday and Thursday who will decide whether it is acceptable.

Increase in Minimum Wage in Ontario

On March 31, 2010, the general minimum wage in Ontario increased from $9.50 per hour to $10.25 per hour.  More information can be found in the Ministry of Labour's publication on Minimum Wage.  This wage increase will impact many sectors, including hospitality and food services among others. 

Have a read of some of the opinions on what the increase in minimum wage will mean including "How to Kill Jobs", Restaurateurs cry foul, servers fret as Ont. minimum wage goes up 8 per cent and A reason to celebrate: The lowest paid in Ontario just got a raise

A New Year and a New Beginning

Happy New Year and I wish you all the best for 2010!

I've been getting some email asking why the blogging has been so light.  Well, now I can explain.

After 17 wonderful years practicing labour and employment law with one of Canada's largest national law firms, I have decided to take my career in a different direction and have resigned as a partner with the firm effective December 31, 2009 in order to start my own labour and employment law boutique called Watershed LLP with my good friend and now partner Steve Mendelssohn.

This was, as you'd expect, a pretty tough decision.  I have worked with some great lawyers at my old firm and have made some great friends there over the years and I will miss our daily dealings greatly.  Sometimes, though, an opportunity presents itself that hits home with such force that you simply have to pursue it.   The opportunity to found something that was my own and on which I could directly put my mark was simply too much to pass up. 

For a long time I have seen that the practice of law and the way in which legal services were delivered was at a fork-in-the road.   The recession sped things along, but even before that the signs were there that change was coming.  Steve and I have talked about this for some time and decided that we can either keep talking about it or do something.   

Steve is, of course, a lawyer, but more than that, he's a lawyer with 20 years of business experience working at a senior level as a labour and HR practitioner in some of Canada's largest companies and, more recently, as the president of an HR consulting firm.  His experience is quite unique among lawyers and Watershed's "Two Lenses One Focus" approach is what we strive to bring to every project.   Steve knows first hand what it means to be "the client" and understands the issues that a client faces when engaging outside counsel.  That allows Watershed to offer something that is unique in terms of services and delivery.

We're also joining a growing list of lawyers and law firms including employment lawyer Jay Shepherd (Shepherd Law Group) and Patrick Lamb (Valorem Law Group) and with a nod to the vision of my friend  Jordan Furlong that are moving away from hourly-billing in favour of more innovative approaches built on transparency and predictability.   We firmly believe that billing by the hour is not sustainable (for lawyers or clients) and that law firms will have to change, whether or not they want to.   We're not alone in holding this view or in wanting to change things.  These "alternate" (Jay calls it "open" which I like) pricing models force efficiency onto the lawyers, which is not a bad thing.

Some clients are currently comfortable with and have become accustomed to hourly based billing.  We get that and we can accommodate those situations in our model though will be discussing with our clients options that bring efficiencies to our relationships. 

Law is a conservative profession and change does not come easily or quickly despite the fact that the writing has been on the wall for a while.  Have a read of Jordan's award-winning blog Law21 and his posts including, among others, Ready or not here come the clients where he suggests that "we’re entering the Decade of the Client".  That's a great thing so far as I'm concerned.

To say that I'm excited about this new venture would be an understatement.  So stay tuned as I’ll be posting more about the goings on at Watershed LLP and, of course, about labour and employment law.

Ontario Violence in the Workplace Bill Passes

On December 9, 2009, the Ontario Legislature passed Bill 168 (An Act to amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act with respect to violence and harassment in the workplace and other matters).  Though the Act comes into force 6 months after receiving Royal Assent many employers are try to proactively get a handle on what the legislation requires. 

Specifically, and among other things, Section 32.0.1 of the Act requires an employer to prepare policies with respect to workplace violence and workplace harassment,  and to review the policies at least annually while Section 32.0.2 requires an employer to develop a program to implement the workplace violence policy.  The program must include measures for workers to report incidents of workplace harassment and set out how the employer will deal with incidents and complaints of workplace harassment.

The impact of domestic violence on the workplace and the employers responsibility to take action has been much in the news.  Under section 32.0.4 of the Act, if an employer is aware or ought to be aware that domestic violence that is likely to expose a worker to physical injury may occur in the workplace, the employer must take every reasonable precaution to protect the worker.

This legislation is huge and the obligations on the employer are both new and profound.  This post just touches the surface.  Employers are well advised to proactively address what the legislation requires of them and this is way more than simply putting together a policy. 

Additional Information

McGuinty Government Confronts Violence In The Workplace

Protecting People At Work

Ontario passes workplace violence legislation

Social Media as a Recruiting Tool

Going directly to your market ("fish where the fish are") through the use of social media like Twitter and LinkedIn seems to be gaining ground in recruiting according to this Globe and Mail article. 

Sleep, Work and Safety

On November 24 NOVA has a program called What Are Dreams? and joins leading dream researchers as they "embark on a variety of neurological and psychological experiments to investigate the world of sleep and dreams." (thanks to Moleskinerie for the tip). 

The link between sleep, safety and impairment is one that occasionally crops up in employment law for example, where there is a request for accommodation of a shift worker or where there is an accident.  The Harvard Medical School has a helpful site that reviews, in part, the link between Sleep, Performance and Public Safety.  Here are some of the links:

• The demands and expectations of our modern society have placed increasing demands on our time, and more than ever people are making up for those demands by cutting back on sleep.

• At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that the cost of insufficient sleep is much higher than most people recognize.

• Scientific research is revealing, for example, how sleep loss, and even poor-quality sleep, can lead to an increase in errors at the workplace, decreased productivity, and accidents that cost both lives and resources. Awareness can help you improve your sleep habits and in turn your safety.

NOVA offers some great links if you're interested in further research.

Is there a better way to cut costs?

That's what McKinsey & Company ask in a short Conversation Starter article.  The article starts:

According to a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey, 79 percent of all companies have cut costs in response to the global economic crisis—but only 53 percent of executives think that doing so has helped their companies weather it. Yet organizations continue to cut. Cost reductions often go wrong, we believe, and our experience suggests that they can be done in a better way.

That is startling - only 53 percent of executives think that doing so has helped their companies weather it [the global economic crisis].   Cutting costs often means reducing headcount and taking salaries and benefits and other associated costs out of the business.  If 53% don't think that the cost cutting measures they've employed have helped, it makes you wonder what they're going to look like once this financial crisis ends.