Cutting back work hours in Ontario

[vickyp]

#79546

Forum: Community

Good afternoon,
We have an employee (Ontario) who is a 62 year old female bookkeeper.
23 years of service.
We are reorganizing our staff and their duties. This employee does not have enough work to keep her busy and we have tried to give her other duties but she keeps refusing.
So we want to scale back her hours from 5 days a week (7.5 hrs per day = 37.5 hrs) to 3 days a week (7.5 hrs per day = 22.5 hrs).
Also, will this affect her vacation calculation and sick days?
Please advise on any negative repercussions on this situation, and or what can the company do?

[vickyp]

#79547

Shouldn’t impact her vacation entitlement to the extent she gets at least the vacation time and pay required in that province for an employee with 10+ years of service.
Cutting back her workload would definitely involve legal risks. The first would be constructive dismissal if the reductions in hours and resulting wages are significant enough. Constructive dismissal depends on a bunch of factors but big hours and wages cuts are definite red flags. The other risk would be age discrimination. Again, that would depend on the context and whether there’s any evidence to suggest that the company is trying to force the employee out due to her age, e.g., derogatory remarks or inappropriately asking her about retirement plans.

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