Hi, my name is Eric Pedersen I’m a lawyer for Velletta and Company practicing employment law. Today we’re going to talk about another employment law topic which is constructive dismissal. Now the constructive dismissal is really just a fancy way to say, “I quit” to your employer to also at the same time exercise and enforce all of the rights that you would have if you were an employee who was fired without cause.
The general rule of thumb in British Columbia is that an employee who quits their position isn’t going to be entitled to any severance pay or any notice they’re walking away from the job and that’s on them. But constructive dismissal is a very specific category in the law that allows an employee who quits to bring a claim against the employer for severance. The idea is that although the employer hasn’t fired the employee they have by their conduct in the way that they might have changed the employee’s workplace duties changed their employment. Such to the point that they’ve pretty much been fired and have all of the rights of a fired employee.
Not every minor change that an employer might make to an employee’s employment contractor to their workplace will result in an employee having the rights of a constructively dismissed employee. A really obvious example would be if you were a CEO one day and then you showed up the next day you were demoted to janitor. Well you haven’t been fired but you have pretty much been fired.
So you have all of this same rights to claim for severance as an employee who was fired but not all cases are black and white. And there’s a lot of grey area. It’s important that you do consult a lawyer before exercising the option of constructive dismissal.
W. Eric Pedersen is a lawyer practising in Velletta & Company’s civil litigation department. Mr. Pedersen has worked with the civil litigation department to achieve successful outcomes for individuals and businesses, appearing in Provincial Court, Supreme Court, and the British Columbia Court of Appeal. His practice is focussed primarily on the following areas: Personal injury and motor vehicle claims, Employment and Human Rights Law, Commercial litigation, Real estate litigation, General insurance litigation, Disability insurance litigation and General civil litigation.