While I currently am not a staffing agency, am not employed as a contractor to a staffing agency, and do not use temporary help (not at present anyways), I am compelled to post this quick update just in case you have not been paying attention.

Back on May 6 of 2009, Bill 139 passed royal assent in the legislative Assembly of Ontario. You may recall my December 2008 post speaking about the composition of Bill 139 to Amend the Ontario Employment Standards Act as it pertains to the treatment of temporary workers employed by agencies, among other things. Well, as planned, it is now 6 months later and the Bill is officially in force. Are you ready?

The impacts, or rather additional questions about the interpretation of the legislation is outlined quite well in an ERE article on the subject from a couple of months ago.

Some of the biggest “issues” with the legislation deal with how agency workers on assignments are notified of terminating assignments and their rights upon the termination of those assignments. If nothing else, it stands to create much more administration for agencies managing the temporary employees, and likely the addition of costs passed along to clients. Oh, and I bet there is going to be much future discussion on what constitutes an employee versus a temporary employee vs a contractor (age old battle here of what passes the muster of the 4 indicators as set out by the government to differentiate an independent contractor from a contract employee).

Here is a copy of Bill 139 – An Act to Amend the Employment Standards Act, 2000

Here is a copy of Regulation 398/09 – Terms and Conditions of Employment In Defined Industries : Temporary Help Agency Industry

It is interesting to note, and probably worth doing reading on Bill 212 (in second reading and not yet law) regarding mass terminations, and will affect the application (in a positive way) of the impacts of Bill 139 with the Regulation 398/09 amendments. The employment aspects of Bill 212 can be found in Schedule 20.

Happy reading and planning!