The Obligation of the Employee to Be Available Outside of his/her Working Hours and Place of Work: The Teachings of the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in Association of Justice Counsel v Canada (Attorney General)
Can an employer impose mandatory on-call periods on its employees during which they must be reachable at all times in order to be able to get to work quickly and perform their work? In a judgment rendered in 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada considered that such a policy does not constitute a reasonable exercise of an employer’s management rights, but that it does not affect the employees’ freedom of rights protected by the Canadian Charter. The approach taken by the Court in assessing what constitutes the reasonable exercise of management rights is the main outcome of this judgment. However, the analysis of the obligation of availability in terms of the violation of employees’ fundamental rights remains to be done.