The province is proposing changes to employment law that would see greater protections for those who work remotely.
Under proposed changes to the Employment Standards Act (ESA), the Ontario government said employees who work solely from home would be eligible for the same enhanced notice as other employees in mass termination situations.
“Whether you commute to work every day or not shouldn’t determine what you are owed. No billion-dollar company should be treating their remote employees as second-class,” said Labour Minister Monte McNaughton in a news release.
If passed, the proposed changes to the ESA would broaden the definition of “establishment” to include employees’ remote home offices, making those who solely work remotely from home eligible to receive enhanced notice.
In the case of a mass termination, an employee could be entitled to eight to 16 weeks’ notice, depending on the number of employees terminated.
According to figures released by the province, around 2.2 million people worked from home in the fourth quarter of 2022. Of those, 1.4 million did so exclusively while around 800,000 did so on a hybrid basis.