Can employer fire you for being sick

Employees in Ontario are entitled to a minimum of three (3) personal illness days per calendar year under the Employment Standards Act. Employers must accommodate their employees’ needs to take sick leave and cannot fire an employee for requesting or using the days.

Beyond employment standards, the Human Rights Code applies and requires an employer to provide sufficient leave to the employee as may be medically required, unless to do so would cause the employer ‘undue hardship’. Proving ‘undue hardship’ is, however, difficult and requires an employer to prove that they have done everything they can to support the employee and that any further support would result in significant difficulty and/or expense to the employer. For this reason, an employer is at serious risk of a human rights claim if they fire an employee for exercising their legal right to take sick leave. Furthermore, it is important to note that, while an employer cannot fire you for taking too many sick days, they may terminate your employment while you are on sick leave, provided that the reasons for termination are unrelated to the illness. It is strongly advised that employees should seek legal advice in any circumstance involving negative treatment, including being fired, in relation to a leave of absence for illness.

For further details to determine entitlement in your specific case contact a reliable and well-informed employment lawyer. If you believe your termination is a reprisal for taking a medical leave and are seeking legal advice with respect to possible remedies, please contact Toronto employment lawyers, Sultan Lawyers at 416-214-5111 or via email to [email protected].

If you were fired for being sick, you may have a claim for wrongful termination. Employers cannot fire you for being sick. Our wrongful termination attorneys can help if this happen to you:

• You were fired because you were sick or injured.
• Your job was eliminated because you took, filed for, or requested disability
• Your position was terminated because you took, requested, or provided your employer with your intent to take maternity leave.
• You have been harassed, discriminated against, bullied, or had your hours cut because you requested, or took disability, maternity, or a leave of absence.

Our Wrongful Termination Lawyers Can Help You:

• Return to your job after your employer terminated you for being sick.
• Arrange reasonable accommodations to return to work with a disability.
• Get your job back after taking maternity leave, disability leave, sick leave, or other types of leave.

It happens to everyone every few years. A bad flu season hits. A bad bronchial infection makes the rounds. Somehow, you get sick. You are inevitably going to have to take a few days, call in sick and rest and recuperate. Your boss may get upset but what are you going to do? You are sick and not able to work. That is what sick pay is for after all.

What happens if the sickness drags on for a while? What happens when you run out of sick time and cannot return to work? What happens when your employer starts getting angry about your time off? You may start to ask yourself, can you get fired from a job for being sick?

Your Employer Cannot Fire You for Being Sick

The question is simple: can my employer fire me for being sick? The short answer is no, but with some conditions. Let us get the most important piece of information out of the way. An employer cannot terminate an employee just for being sick or calling in sick. There are exceptions to this rule, such as if you are a food worker and have a communicable disease, in which case you can be terminated at no fault.

But you cannot legally be let go from a job just for being sick. Now there are things an employer can do to protect themselves. If you have missed more than three days then your employer can, and should, ask for a doctor note’s stating you were under care and can now return to work.

Example When Employer Cannot Fire for Being Sick

There was an instance of a man coming into work, obviously in distress. He was dizzy, unbalanced, and his speech was slurred. He could not focus on his work cause of all these symptoms. His employer declared he was intoxicated and fired him on the spot.

Well, the poor man had those symptoms continue for a month. After several doctors’ visits, it was declared that he had a severe hypoglycemia. His employers were unwilling to listen to the doctor’s notes and would not reinstate him. He contacted a civil litigation lawyer to file an employment law case. He received a healthy settlement which helped him pay his bills until he found his next job.

So what can you do if you miss work due to a verifiable illness and feel you were wrongfully terminated? A skilled wrongful termination lawyer can help you. A wrongful termination attorney can negotiate with your former employer and sue if needed in order to make sure your work continues with as little interruption as possible.

Get Help and Get Compensate

When you file a claim against your employer with our employment lawyers, you may get a settlement offer very quickly. Our civil litigation lawyer will advise you whether you have a strong claim and what the value of your case should be. If you just lost a good job it usually takes tremendous effort and time to find a new job. Having someone represent you may be the difference between unpaid time off and full compensation for lost wages and damages.