When Canada Goose employees received an email on Monday, March 25, telling them not to come into the office the following day, they feared the worst.
The last time they received a directive like that was in August and it preceded a round of layoffs.
This time around there were terminations too, but with one key difference: people were informed of their layoff from the luxury parka maker via email.
The decision to approach terminations this way was described as “inhumane,” and “disheartening” by three former employees who spoke with Global News and shared some of the email communications they received on condition of anonymity.
Global is protecting their identities as they fear repercussions for speaking with the media and worry it may harm their future employment prospects.
“Being terminated after years of being successful at your job is traumatic,” one laid off worker tells Global News. “It’s being done through emails and you really feel like you’re just a number and you didn’t matter.”
In a statement to Global News on Thursday, Canada Goose’s chief human resources officer Jess Johannson said: “decisions like this are heartbreaking — we understand the human impact they have, and we know there’s no perfect way to share this kind of news.”
She went on to say, “our focus was to ensure that our team members were treated with respect and dignity and given the grace to process the news on their own time.”
Shortly after 9 a.m. that day, employees received two emails: one from Reiss laying out the restructuring plans; another from Canada Goose Human Resources contained notices of termination for those who were being laid off.
“I was completely shocked and I was truly blindsided,” one former employee said.
Johannson points out that every employee affected was invited to schedule a virtual meeting with “a Human Resources Business Partner.” She says that while some employees chose to schedule those immediately, others opted to speak at a later time.
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Canada Goose said the meeting could happen “as soon as they [the former employee] want to.”
Two of the former workers say that putting the onus on people who had just received termination notices to schedule a follow-up with HR was “traumatic.”
One of them claimed they didn’t “get human contact for hours after notice” and human resources was “not proactively reaching out.”
When asked about these specific claims, Canada Goose referred to its earlier statement from Johannson that said the focus was “to ensure that our team members were treated with respect and dignity and given the time to process the news on their own time” and that affected employees were able to schedule a meeting “at a time that worked best for the employee.”
The company reiterated: “We know there’s no perfect way to share this kind of news” and “some employees chose to schedule those [meetings] immediately, while others appreciated the opportunity to speak at a later time.”
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The former employee called it “disheartening because I think they deserved a little bit more sympathy, empathy and a human conversation rather than an electronic communication.”
All three expressed disappointment at Canada Goose’s email strategy. One said they were “extremely disappointed that a Canadian icon would go down this route.”
One of the restructuring casualties is a longtime employee who says they have dedicated themselves to building up the storied brand. They say the email-first layoff approach “wasn’t aligned” with the company’s wholesome image.
“The Canada Goose culture has always prided itself on treating people fairly, with as much respect as possible.”
Global News asked Canada Goose about these claims, but the company did not directly address them in its response.
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With the rise of remote work, email pink slips are becoming increasingly common, according to labour and employment lawyer Lior Samfiru, national co-managing partner of Toronto-based Samfiru Tumarkin LLP. Before the pandemic he says instances of it were rare; he had dealt with two such cases in two decades.
Samfiru says layoff notifications via email aren’t illegal, but he advises against them because they leave too much to chance.
He says they’re “a bad idea” because employers have a duty to inform employees of their termination in a timely fashion but a digital-first email process means some communication can slip through the cracks, going unopened because it was missed, undelivered or ended up in a spam folder.
“The timing of when someone received that notice of termination may be very important,” Samfiru told Global News on Thursday.
Best layoff practices allow laid-off employees to ask questions, without putting the burden on them to take the next steps while they’re in shock over losing their job. When that doesn’t happen, frustrated employees often seek legal counsel.
In fact, he tells Global News that about a dozen former Canada Goose employees have reached out to his law firm with questions.
“When an employee terminates by email, it potentially exposes them to legal action because they’re essentially driving their employees to a lawyer,” Samfiru says.
Email layoffs ‘distressing’: HR expert
Andrew Monkhouse, adjunct professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, has expertise in both the legalities of being let go as well as HR practices. He tells Global News that traditionally, people were told in person that they were being let go but the pandemic has upended both the way that we work and the way that terminations are conducted, ushering in trends such as email layoffs.
“It’s becoming more common because more people are working from home, including HR staff,” he said Thursday. Cost-cutting and the need to let many people know about terminations, while using the smallest number of resources possible, are factors too.
Monkhouse says the best practice remains letting an employee know they’re laid off through one-on-one direct communication, whether that’s in person or remotely and following up with written correspondence. Like Samfiru, he also advises against using email as a first method of contact.
“People expect that there’s a certain level of dignity in being let go,” he says. “Receiving an email letting you know that you’ve been terminated can be quite distressing.”
From an etiquette perspective, Samfiru warns that an email approach may further exacerbate an already stressful situation.
“That employee may leave employment with a bad taste in their mouth and bad feelings towards that employer,” he says.
Samfiru says the remote work trend is not an excuse to bypass workplace courtesy.
“We still have the ability, technology, means and resources to arrange for the employee to meet with the person letting them go, have their questions answered, to be treated respectfully.”
MONTREAL – The employers association at the Port of Montreal has issued the dockworkers’ union a “final, comprehensive offer,” threatening to lock out workers at 9 p.m. Sunday if a deal isn’t reached.
The Maritime Employers Association says its new offer includes a three per cent salary increase per year for four years and a 3.5 per cent increase for the two subsequent years. It says the offer would bring the total average compensation package of a longshore worker at the Port of Montreal to more than $200,000 per year at the end of the contract.
“The MEA agrees to this significant compensation increase in view of the availability required from its employees,” it wrote Thursday evening in a news release.
The association added that it is asking longshore workers to provide at least one hour’s notice when they will be absent from a shift — instead of one minute — to help reduce management issues “which have a major effect on daily operations.”
Syndicat des débardeurs du port de Montréal, which represents nearly 1,200 longshore workers, launched a partial unlimited strike on Oct. 31, which has paralyzed two terminals that represent 40 per cent of the port’s total container handling capacity.
A complete strike on overtime, affecting the whole port, began on Oct. 10.
The union has said it will accept the same increases that were granted to its counterparts in Halifax or Vancouver — 20 per cent over four years. It is also concerned with scheduling and work-life balance. Workers have been without a collective agreement since Dec. 31, 2023.
Only essential services and activities unrelated to longshoring will continue at the port after 9 p.m. Sunday in the event of a lockout, the employer said.
The ongoing dispute has had major impacts at Canada’s second-biggest port, which moves some $400 million in goods every day.
On Thursday, Montreal port authority CEO Julie Gascon reiterated her call for federal intervention to end the dispute, which has left all container handling capacity at international terminals at “a standstill.”
“I believe that the best agreements are negotiated at the table,” she said in a news release. “But let’s face it, there are no negotiations, and the government must act by offering both sides a path to true industrial peace.”
Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon issued a statement Thursday, prior to the lockout notice, in which he criticized the slow pace of talks at the ports in Montreal and British Columbia, where more than 700 unionized port workers have been locked out since Nov. 4.
“Both sets of talks are progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved,” he wrote on the X social media platform.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Employers and the union representing supervisors embroiled in a labour dispute that triggered a lockout at British Columbia‘s ports will attempt to reach a deal when talks restart this weekend.
A spokesman from the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has confirmed the minister spoke with leaders at both the BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, but did not invoke any section of the Canadian Labour Code that would force them back to talks.
A statement from the ministry says MacKinnon instead “asked them to return to the negotiation table,” and talks are now scheduled to start on Saturday with the help of federal mediators.
A meeting notice obtained by The Canadian Press shows talks beginning in Vancouver at 5 p.m. and extendable into Sunday and Monday, if necessary.
The lockout at B.C. ports by employers began on Monday after what their association describes as “strike activity” from the union. The result was a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals across Canada’s west coast.
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint against the employers for allegedly bargaining in bad faith, a charge that employers call a “meritless claim.”
The two sides have been without a deal since March 2023, and the employers say its final offer presented last week in the last round of talks remains on the table.
The proposed agreement includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker.
The union has said one of its key concerns is the advent of port automation in cargo operations, and workers want assurances on staffing levels regardless of what technology is being used at the port.
The disruption is happening while two container terminals are shut down in Montreal in a separate labour dispute.
It leaves container cargo traffic disrupted at Canada’s two biggest ports, Vancouver and Montreal, both operating as major Canadian trade gateways on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
This is one of several work disruptions at the Port of Vancouver, where a 13-day strike stopped cargo last year, while labour strife in the rail and grain-handling sectors led to further disruptions earlier this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Judicial recounts in British Columbia‘s provincial election should wrap up today, confirming whether Premier David Eby’s New Democrats hang onto their one-seat majority almost three weeks after the vote.
Most attention will be on the closest race of Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP were ahead by a mere 27 votes, a margin narrow enough to trigger a hand recount of more than 19,000 ballots that’s being overseen by a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
Elections BC spokesman Andrew Watson says the recounts are on track to conclude today, but certification won’t happen until next week following an appeal period.
While recounts aren’t uncommon in B.C. elections, result changes because of them are rare, with only one race overturned in the province in at least the past 20 years.
That was when Independent Vicki Huntington went from trailing by two votes in Delta South to winning by 32 in a 2009 judicial recount.
Recounts can be requested after the initial count in an election for a variety of reasons, while judicial recounts are usually triggered after the so-called “final count” when the margin is less than 1/500th of the number of votes cast.
There have already been two full hand recounts this election, in Surrey City Centre and Juan de Fuca-Malahat, and both only resulted in a few votes changing sides.
A partial recount of votes that went through one tabulator in Kelowna Centre saw the margin change by four votes, while a full judicial recount is currently underway in the same riding, narrowly won by the B.C. Conservatives.
The number of votes changing hands in recounts has generally shrunk in B.C. in recent years.
Judicial recounts in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky in 2020 and Coquitlam-Maillardville in 2013 saw margins change by 19 and six votes respectively.
In 2005, there were a record eight recounts after the initial tally, changing margins by an average of 62 votes, while one judicial recount changed the margin in Vancouver-Burrard by seven.
The Election Act says the deadline to appeal results after judicial recounts must be filed with the court within two days after they are declared, but Watson says that due to Remembrance Day on Monday, that period ends at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
When an appeal is filed, it must be heard no later than 10 days after the registrar receives the notice of appeal.
A partial recount is also taking place in Prince George-Mackenzie to tally votes from an uncounted ballot box that contained about 861 votes.
The Prince George recount won’t change the outcome because the B.C. Conservative candidate there won by more than 5,000 votes.
If neither Surrey-Guildford nor Kelowna Centre change hands, the NDP will have 47 seats and the Conservatives 44, while the Greens have two seats in the 93-riding legislature.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
