Glossary - Employment and Work
In Employment and Work, Housing Law, Human Rights
Ontario’s laws say that harassment happens when someone says or does things that they know, or should know, will bother you. This could be because what is said or done is offensive, embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning, or not welcome. This usually has to happen more than once to be considered harassment, but a single incident can be considered harassment if it causes you to feel very uncomfortable.
Harassment can include sending emails, posting materials or pictures, making jokes or other comments about:
- your race, gender identity, gender expression, sex, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or age
- things like the way you dress, how you talk, or your religious practices
- in housing law, if you are receiving social assistance
- in employment law, your record of criminal offences
Harassment like this goes against human rights laws and is a kind of discrimination. For example, if an employer harasses you because of your record of criminal offences or a landlord harasses you because you are on welfare.
Harassment is also against the laws that protect a workers’ health and safety, and the laws that protect tenants.
In most jobs, people get public holidays off with holiday pay. To figure out your holiday pay:
- add up your earnings, which are your regular wages plus vacation pay, for the 4 work weeks before the work week with the holiday in it
- divide that total by 20
Under the Employment Standards Act, homeworkers are employees who do work out of their own homes for an employer. Examples of homework are sewing, stuffing envelopes, online research, answering calls for a call centre, and telemarketing.
