‘If a legal letter contains alarming information, a reasonable person will feel the heat of added hostility’
“Blindly using template employment agreements or making unintentional errors resulting in a demotion or some other significant change can end up costing much more than simply getting legal advice at the outset.”
So says Ioana Pantis, an employment and labour lawyer at McMillan LLP in Toronto, after an Ontario court awarded more than $300,000 in constructive dismissal and moral damages to a worker who was informed of a significant pay cut and job title change on the day she returned from maternity leave.
King Ursa is an advertising company in Toronto. It hired the worker in 2019 to be its director of analysis and insights.
By 2021, the company was feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as business was down significantly. In March, it decided to reduce its workforce from between 40 and 50 employees down to 10. It also promoted the worker to the role of associate partner and vice-president of media and analytics.
In October, King Ursa promoted the worker again, this time to the position of executive vice-president, with a salary increase from $220,000 to $300,000.
In July 2022, the worker went on maternity leave. She trained the employee who had been filling the role of her original position, director of analytics, to cover her duties during her leave.
However, only about a week after the worker began her leave, the CEO contacted her to say that...
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