An employer may limit the damages it is required to pay a dismissed employee upon dismissal by inserting
language into the employment contract that limits the employee's entitlement to damages upon termination.
The second rationale for tenure — a safe harbor from discrimination and favoritism — deserves to be taken seriously, but the codification in constitutions and statutes of innumerable due process and anti-discrimination protections radically shrinks the rationale for inserting additional tenure
provisions into employment contracts for this reason.
Non-compete, non-solicitation and non-dealing clauses will need further consideration and should only be inserted
into the employment contract where the organisation considers such protection is required.
Anything
goes into employment contracts — but not all written contracts are enforced Daniel A. Lublin, Toronto Metro News Published Wednesday June 27, 2007 Written employment contracts represent employment law's most ambivalent feature.
An employer can insert language
into an employment contract offered to a new employee that will provide it with the right to unilaterally change the terms of employee's employment without employee's consent.
Given the court's finding that minimum Code standards are incorporated by force of
statute into the employment contract, the existence of an express or implied term of the employment contract requiring overtime to be paid to an FLS was a question of fact to be determined at trial.
Employers often place a restrictive covenant, such as a non-competition or a non-solicitation clause,
into their employment contracts in an attempt to protect their business interests from competition from departing employees.
A contractual provision on termination can be good for both parties entering
into an employment contract because it provides certainty in the event of termination, and avoids costly litigation and recourse to lawyers and courts.
unlike with many other contracts, especially business to business contracts, it is common for the courts or Employment tribunal to vary employment contract terms or imply
terms into employment contracts.
A court may be reluctant to allow an employer insert
language into an employment contract that attempts to significantly deviate redefine what will constitute just cause for summary dismissal at common law.
In order to qualify for this, the Temporary Work Agency (TWA) providing agency workers (in this case, Mainstream, a major supplier of agency truck drivers based in Kent) must enter
into an employment contract with their agency workers, containing particular written terms, covering details including minimum hours of work and remuneration.
Employers considering inserting non-competition or non-solicitation clauses
into employment contracts should be aware that these type of clauses may result in a dismissed employee being entitled to a longer notice period.
Instead, the employer will have to provide the employees with fresh consideration to support the inclusion of the termination clause
into the employment contracts and ensure that the employees are aware that they are giving up their right to reasonable notice of dismissal in exchange for the fresh consideration.
Employers typically insert termination clauses
into their employment contracts to reduce the cost of terminating employees.
However, as stated above, fresh consideration is not sufficient to support the insertion of a binding termination clause
into an employment contract.
«Armies of lawyers will simply put substitution clauses, or clauses denying any obligation to accept or provide work,
into employment contracts, as a matter of form, even where such terms do not begin to reflect the real relationship.»