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As an American working in Canada: Canada has a much stronger workers rights culture, and tends to have regulatory agencies that can produce results. (At the in

As an American working in Canada: Canada has a much stronger workers rights culture, and tends to have regulatory agencies that can produce results. (At the individual level, regulatory capture at the macro scale is just as prevalent, if not more so in the case of extractive industries). It wouldn’t surprise me if vague clauses don’t get upheld, or if requiring an employee to be connected also comes with the responsibility of compensation and expenses. When I worked for a company that required me to do on-call on holidays or weekends, I was given an extra vacation day in compensation even if I hadn’t actually done anything but triage. Work life in Canada seems generally much more balanced from an anecdotal perspective.

whimsicalism 5y ago
> When I worked for a company that required me to do on-call on holidays or weekends, I was given an extra vacation day in compensation even if I hadn’t actually done anything but triage. This also occurs in the US and is more due to tech labor market tightness.
- dghlsakjg 5y ago
  This was true for employees across the organization (outside of the dev/it department), which was in the hospitality industry. It wasn’t done to retain hard to recruit tech employees, it was done because that is the expectation in many office environments in Canada.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Expectations of employees is the market
    - eru 5y ago
      It's part of the market. But it's not the only driving force. Employees can't magically 'expect' their total comp up or down. But expectations can drive how that comp is commonly split between eg salary and benefits like longer lunch hours.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        You and the other reply are conflating expectations of a single employee with aggregate expectations
        eru 5y ago
        Could you please elaborate?
    - franga2000 5y ago
      No, expectations of employees + supply and demand are the market. If your job is in high supply, your expectations matter very little because there will always be someome more desperate willing to work in worse conditions.
      - eru 5y ago
        > If your job is in high supply, your expectations matter very little because there will always be someone more desperate willing to work in worse conditions. 'Always' is an exaggeration, but yes, that's the gist of it.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> It wouldn’t surprise me if vague clauses don’t get upheld, or if requiring an employee to be connected also comes with the responsibility of compensation and expenses. According to the link, this is not the case. It seems very clear that the only requirement is that the policy is written down. > When I worked for a company that required me to do on-call on holidays or weekends, I was given an extra vacation day in compensation even if I hadn’t actually done anything but triage. That's been standard practice every place I've worked in the United States, too. Not by law, just because it's a decent thing to do.
- eru 5y ago
  When I was working for Google as an SRE, oncall hours counted like 2/3 of normal hours. Whether an incident happened or not. (To give teams an incentive to clean up their service!) You had the choice of idling off those extra hours with extra vacation or to get them paid out. Oncall hours tracking was capped at 15% of normal hours, to give you an incentive to distribute oncall equally around the team. (I never heard of anyone seriously hitting that cap.) Overall, seemed like a well-thought-out and fair system to me.
doubled112 5y ago
As an IT Professional (I've always assumed this was intentionally vague) You are not entitled to: daily or weekly limits on hours of work daily rest periods time off between shifts weekly/bi-weekly rest periods eating periods overtime pay https://www.ontario.ca/document/industries-and-jobs-exemptions-or-special-rules/government-employees-and-professionals#section-3 https://www.ontario.ca/document/industries-and-jobs-exemptio... Canada (Ontario specifically in this case) gets a lot wrong as well. Any movement in the right direction is a good thing.
- amcoastal 5y ago
  I'm in the US, and here very very few jobs have even 1 of those things you listed here. What proportion of the world has those things? Like 7-8 countries total? Edit: I guess I need to stop commenting at this hour, HN is ridiculous with their down votes when the Europeans are on. God forbid someone tries to ask a question here.
  - monetus 5y ago
    My state has legally mandated lunch every 6 hrs and overtime pay past 40 - mind my asking which state you're in? It sucks if those are all absent in both Ontario and in general here.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Regulations are often different for hourly and salaried workers. At least where I am all tech is salaried.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    The thing is the above things are not a general thing. Those are rights that IT workers specifically don't have, that are otherwise mandated by labour law. So, one of the countries that has these things is actually Canada (or more strictly speaking, the provinces of canada, since this is provincial jurisdiction but they all broadly follow the same formula including afaik this exemption). IT is not the only field with these exemption but it is perhaps one of the least motivated. Afaik, it was added to the list when most IT workers were working in critical infrastructure like telecom. It's not really justified anymore, if it ever was (imo it isn't justified for anyone, but I am probably rare in thinking that in an entrepreneur-focused space).

whimsicalism 5y ago

> When I worked for a company that required me to do on-call on holidays or weekends, I was given an extra vacation day in compensation even if I hadn’t actually done anything but triage. This also occurs in the US and is more due to tech labor market tightness.

dghlsakjg 5y ago
This was true for employees across the organization (outside of the dev/it department), which was in the hospitality industry. It wasn’t done to retain hard to recruit tech employees, it was done because that is the expectation in many office environments in Canada.
- kortilla 5y ago
  Expectations of employees is the market
  - eru 5y ago
    It's part of the market. But it's not the only driving force. Employees can't magically 'expect' their total comp up or down. But expectations can drive how that comp is commonly split between eg salary and benefits like longer lunch hours.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      You and the other reply are conflating expectations of a single employee with aggregate expectations
      - eru 5y ago
        Could you please elaborate?
  - franga2000 5y ago
    No, expectations of employees + supply and demand are the market. If your job is in high supply, your expectations matter very little because there will always be someome more desperate willing to work in worse conditions.
    - eru 5y ago
      > If your job is in high supply, your expectations matter very little because there will always be someone more desperate willing to work in worse conditions. 'Always' is an exaggeration, but yes, that's the gist of it.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> It wouldn’t surprise me if vague clauses don’t get upheld, or if requiring an employee to be connected also comes with the responsibility of compensation and expenses. According to the link, this is not the case. It seems very clear that the only requirement is that the policy is written down. > When I worked for a company that required me to do on-call on holidays or weekends, I was given an extra vacation day in compensation even if I hadn’t actually done anything but triage. That's been standard practice every place I've worked in the United States, too. Not by law, just because it's a decent thing to do.

eru 5y ago
When I was working for Google as an SRE, oncall hours counted like 2/3 of normal hours. Whether an incident happened or not. (To give teams an incentive to clean up their service!) You had the choice of idling off those extra hours with extra vacation or to get them paid out. Oncall hours tracking was capped at 15% of normal hours, to give you an incentive to distribute oncall equally around the team. (I never heard of anyone seriously hitting that cap.) Overall, seemed like a well-thought-out and fair system to me.

doubled112 5y ago

As an IT Professional (I've always assumed this was intentionally vague) You are not entitled to: daily or weekly limits on hours of work daily rest periods time off between shifts weekly/bi-weekly rest periods eating periods overtime pay https://www.ontario.ca/document/industries-and-jobs-exemptions-or-special-rules/government-employees-and-professionals#section-3 https://www.ontario.ca/document/industries-and-jobs-exemptio... Canada (Ontario specifically in this case) gets a lot wrong as well. Any movement in the right direction is a good thing.

amcoastal 5y ago
I'm in the US, and here very very few jobs have even 1 of those things you listed here. What proportion of the world has those things? Like 7-8 countries total? Edit: I guess I need to stop commenting at this hour, HN is ridiculous with their down votes when the Europeans are on. God forbid someone tries to ask a question here.
- monetus 5y ago
  My state has legally mandated lunch every 6 hrs and overtime pay past 40 - mind my asking which state you're in? It sucks if those are all absent in both Ontario and in general here.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    Regulations are often different for hourly and salaried workers. At least where I am all tech is salaried.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  The thing is the above things are not a general thing. Those are rights that IT workers specifically don't have, that are otherwise mandated by labour law. So, one of the countries that has these things is actually Canada (or more strictly speaking, the provinces of canada, since this is provincial jurisdiction but they all broadly follow the same formula including afaik this exemption). IT is not the only field with these exemption but it is perhaps one of the least motivated. Afaik, it was added to the list when most IT workers were working in critical infrastructure like telecom. It's not really justified anymore, if it ever was (imo it isn't justified for anyone, but I am probably rare in thinking that in an entrepreneur-focused space).