BUILDING SERVICES PROVIDERS
Welcome to our Ministry of Labour employment standards podcast. In today's podcast, we're going to talk about some special provisions in the Employment Standards Act that apply to building services providers.
A building services provider is a person or company that provides cleaning, security, or food services for a location. A provider can also offer property management, parking garage, parking lot and concession stand services related only to a building, its occupants and visitors.
The owner or manager of a building is considered a building services provider if that owner or manager provides these services to the building that they own or manage.
Employers or employees in the building services sector have some specific rights and responsibilities outlined in the Employment Standards Act. These additional rights and responsibilities are in addition to the regular standards such as minimum wage, hours of work, overtime, payment of wages, public holidays, vacations.
The additional rights and responsibilities focus on termination and severance.
If a building services provider is replaced by a new provider at a specific location, the new provider may choose not to hire the employees of the former provider.
In this case, the termination and severance due must be paid by the new provider, not the previous one, if the old employees are not hired or are terminated or severed by the new provider. The amount of termination and severance due is based on how long the employee worked for the previous building services provider.
There are special circumstances where the new provider does not have to pay termination or severance to an employee.
For example, termination or severance would not be paid if the employee continues to work for the previous provider at a different location.
Also, the previous building services provider is responsible for termination and severance pay if the employee refuses an offer of employment with the new provider that is reasonable in the circumstances.
There are also a number of situations dealing with periods and locations of work where the previous provider is required to pay termination and severance to an employee who is not retained.
The general principle is that if the employee did not spend most of their time working at the location where the building service provider is changing - that is, the employee had not been working there for a significant period of time before the change in providers - the new provider will not be responsible for termination and severance if they don't hire that employee.
Please go to our website or call the employment standards information centre for detailed information regarding termination and severance pay for workers in the building services sector.
We'll give you the phone number and address at the end of this podcast.
Building services providers considering a bid to take over building services are entitled to certain information regarding employees working for the current provider.
This information includes:
• each employee's job classification or job description;
• the wage rate actually paid to each employee;
• a description of any benefits provided to each employee, including the cost of each benefit and the benefit period to which the cost relates;
• the number of hours each employee works
• the date each employee was hired by the provider
• Any period of employment attributed to the current provider because of the continuity of employment provisions of the ESA.
In addition, the provider bidding for the contract can ask for specific information on the number of weeks the employee worked in the premises during the 26 weeks before the request for information was made.
Once a building services provider is awarded the contract and becomes the new provider of the services at a building, it has the right to ask for the name, residential address, and telephone number of each employee.
Anyone who receives information about employees under this provision must use it only for the purposes of bidding on a new contract, and must ensure that the information remains confidential.
This has been an overview of special provisions in the Employment Standards Act that apply to building services providers.
More detailed information can be found on our website.
Go to Ontario.ca - forward slash - labour - l-a-b-o-u-r. That's Ontario.ca - forward slash - labour - l-a-b-o-u-r.
Go to the employment standards section. There, on the left side of the monitor, you‘ll see "Topics and Publications". Go to topics and publications, and you'll find a link to Building Services Providers.
Or, you can call our information Centre at 1-800-531-5551. That's 1-800-531-5551.
Our specialists can help you with your employment standards questions.
That's it for this Ministry of Labour employment standards podcast.
Thank you for listening.