Federally Regulated Employers Cannot Terminate "Without Cause"

The Supreme Court of Canada has rendered the decision employment experts have been waiting for in Wilson v. Atomic Energy of Canada, reinforcing the views of the overwhelming majority of arbitrators and labour law scholars that the purpose of Part III of the Canada Labour Code ("Code") was to ensure that non-unionized federal employees would be entitled to protection from being dismissed "without cause".

The Code applies to federally regulated employers primarily in the banking, broadcasting, telecommunications, interprovincial transportation and aeronautics sectors. In Part III of the Code, the unjust dismissal provisions create a mechanism to protect non-unionized, non-managerial employees with twelve (12) consecutive months of service from being dismissed "without cause" or for reasons other than lack of work or discontinuance of a function.