Recognizing that an organization’s workforce is one of its most valuable assets, our Employment and Labour Group works with your in-house team to provide practical guidance and valuable insight on the day-to-day challenges faced by human resources professionals. By thinking long-term, we are able to provide proactive and strategic advice to ensure your business is consistently delivering best employment-related practices and minimizing risk or liability. In many situations, our employment lawyers are able to calm relations before they escalate by providing timely legal counsel. When workplace issues do lead to complaints or litigation, Cassels is able to deliver skilled and effective representation.
As part of our commitment to provide value-added services to our clients, we offer in-house training and assistance in drafting the human resource documents needed to effectively protect your business interests. As the employment law landscape is constantly evolving, we strive to keep clients up-to-date on new legislation and court decisions that could affect their business, and to provide innovative solutions on how to address potential new challenges.
Cassels takes pride in not only understanding your legal issues, but the business factors shaping them. Let us address your needs, so you can get down to business.
Employment Law
Our professionals have both comprehensive employment law expertise, along with more specific knowledge of niche areas in this vast and diverse area. We partner with clients of all sizes – from startups to mid-size retailers to multinational corporations – and from across all sectors, including the government and public sector.
Our clients call upon us for advice on:
- Workplace investigations
- Executive employment agreements
- Executive terminations
- Employment standards compliance and claims
- Enforcement of obligations involving departing employees
- Privacy issues
- Sexual harassment
- Human rights claims
- Major restructurings
- Wrongful dismissal
- Independent contractor agreements
- Response to pandemics or other large-scale business continuity events
Labour Law
Our focus is on representing management on labour and union-related issues. We have the experience needed to offer the strategic and tactical advice critical to properly managing your labour relations. We can provide guidance on collective bargaining, union organization attempts, grievance arbitrations and proceedings before labour relations boards. We can also provide the strong, effective counsel needed to address strikes, lock-outs and other forms of union-related industrial conflict.
Representative Experience
A snapshot of our employment and labour-related work from the past few years includes:
- Defending a client from a CAW union organizing campaign and succeeding in having application for certification of multiple locations dismissed by the Ontario Labour Relations Board
- Successfully arguing just cause for cases before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice
- Defending allegation of harassment and discrimination before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario
- Successfully defending motion for injunction to enforce non-competition covenant by former employer against client’s new employee
- Guiding client through implementation of appropriate drug and alcohol testing policy for safety-sensitive positions across Canada
- Conducting workplace investigations into allegations of misconduct against the executive team of a high profile public housing agency