Chapter 5 GOING TO WORK

Everyone Has Rights at Work

Before we talk about young people’s rights under labour law, let’s make it clear that all people, regardless of age, have rights at work. Although there are special rules about what jobs a young person can do, and at what age, once you do get a job, you generally have the same rights and responsibilities as an adult when it comes to things like work safety, entitlement to pay, vacation and sick leave, your performance at work, and other issues connected with your relationship with the employer.

Once you start working—or even before you get a job—it’s a good idea to become familiar with the rights and responsibilities that employees have in the province or territory where you live. General labour law and workers’ rights are beyond the scope of this book, but you can find information about your rights as an employee on the website of your province’s Ministry of Labour or a similar government agency. Also, if you work in a unionized job, you can participate in the activities of the union and get to know the terms and conditions that it has agreed on with your employer, which are laid out in a document called a collective agreement.

If an employer violates one of your rights (for example, if you are not paid, if you are fired for no apparent reason, or if your boss sexually harasses you), there are government offices that you can complain to, such as Employment Standards in Alberta or the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail in Québec. You should report a complaint as soon as possible after the incident, as there will be rules about how much time you have to do so—and, the longer you wait, the harder it will be to prove that the incident happened. If you belong to a union, you can consult with it about filing a grievance (that is, a formal complaint), and the union will help you do this. Otherwise, before you report a complaint, you should try to find out what the law says about the rule you think your employer has broken. But you may need to get help from a lawyer.¹

Child Labour Laws

On top of the laws that apply to all workers and employers, there are child labour laws that lay down rules for hiring youth. One purpose of these laws is to protect you from doing work considered too dangerous, too physically demanding, or otherwise inappropriate for a child or teenager, as well as to prevent exploitation of children by adults. Another is to make sure work doesn’t interfere with your education.

From what age may I work?

One of the main ways in which the law attempts to protect you is by simply laying down a minimum age for starting to work. In the vast majority of provinces and territories, the hiring of youth is forbidden or restricted until the child reaches a certain age (see table 3). Working ages are not always absolute: most provinces allow those under the minimum age to get at least some kinds of jobs with permission from a parent and/or a provincial government official. In this matter, Canadian law is relatively tolerant. In some countries, young people are prohibited from working until they are somewhere in their teens, and it is all but impossible to hire a young person who is below the minimum age.

Table 3 Minimum age for employment

To be employed by the federal government, you must be at least 17, except in an occupation allowed by regulations, subject to any conditions governing employment in that occupation (Canada Labour Code, s. 179).

Besides minimum age, there are many other rules that limit when, where, and under what conditions you can work. For example, jobs in construction or heavy industry (such as welding), as well as jobs that require you to lift heavy loads, will often be off limits until you’re 16 to 18. These restrictions, which differ from one province or territory to another, can range from bans on working during school hours to rules that set specific minimum ages for specific professions to restrictions that say you can do only relatively light work. In Prince Edward Island, for instance, the Youth Employment Act says that, until you are 16:

• You can’t be employed in a job that is or is likely to be harmful to your health or safety or harmful to your moral or physical development, nor can you be employed in any construction-related jobs (ss. 4 and 5).

• You can’t work between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. or during normal school hours (except in a vocational training or apprenticeship program) or for more than three hours on any school day, eight hours on any day other than a school day, or forty hours in the whole week (s. 6[1]). Exceptions can be made by the provincial inspector of labour standards if your parents or guardians consent and the inspector thinks that the work won’t interfere with your education and school attendance (ss. 6[2] and 6[3]).

Note that the Youth Employment Act doesn’t apply to work that is part of your study program at a trade school, nor does it apply if you work in a family business that employs only family members (s. 2).

There are also a few practical obstacles to consider. The fact is that, even if it’s legal to work below the standard working age with your parents’ and/or the government’s permission, the paperwork involved means that relatively few people may consider hiring you. In addition, compulsory school attendance means that you can’t usually get a full-time job until you graduate from high school. And, of course, you won’t be a candidate for some jobs simply because you don’t yet have the level of education or training that the job requires.

What about working in family businesses?

One limitation of child labour laws is that they generally cover only paid employment, carried out under formal hire, as opposed to helping someone for free. So a young person working in a parent’s business may have no legal protection. In Alberta, for instance, employment standards legislation specifically exempts a farm or ranch owner’s family members from its rules. Unpaid labour performed by children is especially common on family farms, and yet laws covering the safety of agricultural workers typically don’t cover children who provide free work to their family. It is also legal in some places for children to drive tractors before they can legally drive a car, as long as, for example, they don’t drive along a public road.

Moreover, even when laws about workplace safety apply to farms, officials may be reluctant to enforce these laws when it comes to family members. In 2014, following a complaint about underage labour, an inspection of a Saskatchewan farm confirmed that the owners’ two daughters, aged 8 and 10, were working in the chicken processing plant, as were several local teenagers under the age of 16—in violation of the provincial Occupational Health and Safety Act. The parents duly received an order forbidding them to allow anyone under 16 to work in the plant. After the parents protested, however, the Saskatchewan Labour minister decided that the children (but not the other youth) could continue to work in the plant, as it was considered part of the family farm.

The law assumes that parents will not force their children to do unpaid work that could put them in danger or be so heavy or demanding as to amount to exploitation. The question then arises about where to draw the line between reasonable duties and exploitation, or what the law calls “unjust enrichment”—a situation in which a person profits at someone else’s expense. For example, in Antrobus v. Antrobus (2009 BCSC 1341 [CanLII]), the BC Supreme Court ruled in favour of a daughter who had spent her teen years and much of her adulthood cooking meals, doing heavy housework, and helping out in shops and later on farms that her parents owned, all for nothing in return. In other words, the daughter was doing the sort of work that would normally be done by hired help. In the court’s judgment, this was a case of exploitation, and the parents were ordered to pay their daughter damages of $190,000 (on appeal, this was reduced to $100,000).

Not all hard work qualifies as exploitation, however. In a more recent case, McDonald v. McDonald (2017 BCCA 255 [CanLII]), three adult siblings were angry when, several years after their father died, they learned that their parents, who owned a sizable dairy farm, had transferred most of the shares in the farm to their brother. They took the case to court, arguing that their relatively meagre inheritance would not adequately compensate for the hard work they had done on the farm when growing up. In making this claim, they relied partly on the Antrobus decision. Initially, the trial judge agreed and awarded each of them $350,000 from the estate minus the value of their existing inheritance. The BC Court of Appeal overturned the earlier decision, however, ruling that the unpaid work they had done on the farm as teenagers, even if hard and unpaid, was not sufficiently unusual or demanding to be considered exploitation.

What about babysitting or other self-employment?

Laws regulating child labour typically don’t apply to occasional work, such as babysitting or mowing a neighbour’s lawn, that a young person might do to earn some money. Subject to certain conditions, young people are also generally allowed to earn money by performing, whether as singers, musicians, or actors. In particular, if you want to have a performance career, your parents and employers must make sure that you still receive an education. You can also start your own business at any age, provided it doesn’t interfere with your education and as long as operating the business doesn’t involve actions (such as signing contracts) that are beyond your legal capacity as a minor. To incorporate a business company, however, or to sit on the board of directors of an incorporated company, you must be at least 18 (Canada Business Corporations Act, ss. 5[2][a] and 105[1][a]).

Minimum Wage

Minimum wage is the least amount of money that an employer is allowed to pay an employee. As we write, it ranges from $14.15 an hour in Manitoba to $16.77 an hour in the Yukon. Although, as a general rule, everyone hired for regular work must be paid at least this wage, in Ontario there is an odd exception that affects young workers’ pay. The general minimum wage in Ontario is currently $15.50 an hour, but a different minimum wage applies to several groups, including students under the age of 18 who work no more than twenty-eight hours a week when school is in session or during a school break or summer holidays. Their minimum wage is $14.60 an hour. It’s not that big of a difference, but students over 18 working under the same conditions must get full minimum wage. Doesn’t that seem like discrimination?

It seems that lawmakers presume that, because young people under 18 must have less need for money because they’re supposedly being supported by their parents. However, some young people already support themselves or help to support their family. Also, this idea goes against the principle that you don’t pay people on the basis of how much money you think they need; rather, you pay them on the basis of the work they do. The same kind of reasoning was once used to justify paying women less than men. Until equal pay for equal work laws were passed, many employers conveniently assumed that, while a man needed money to support a family, a woman could be supported by a man and therefore didn’t need to be paid as much. Today, we know that this is wrong. Men and women should be paid the same, and so should youth and adults.

Can I keep the money I earn?

It used to be common for parents to hire their children out and then use their earnings to help support the family. The idea that parents are entitled to the earnings of a child who has not yet come of age took hold in the United States, where, in most states, a minor’s earnings generally belong to his or her parents. However, we have found no Canadian law that explicitly upholds such a principle. In fact, in 1923, in Haas v. Nyholm (1923 CanLII 300 [SKQB])—a case involving a father who was trying to lay claim to income earned by his underage son—a Saskatchewan superior court ruled: “A parent cannot, in that capacity, nor in His own right, recover the wages earned by a minor child.” As the writeup of the judgment further stated, “There would appear to be no authority for the proposition that a parent has the right to hire out his children who are under age living with and supported by the parent.” Presumably, then, in Canada, money you earn is legally your own property, not that of your parents.

As we saw in chapter 1, in Québec, article 220 of the Civil Code specifically entitles you to manage the money you have earned through your work, as well as allowances given to you for meeting your usual needs. However, the article also says that if your revenues are “considerable,” or “where justified by the circumstances” (for example, if your parents feel that you’re wasting your money), a court may decide how much of your money you will be allowed to manage yourself.

So much for the letter of the law. In practice, because parents are sometimes called upon to manage a minor child’s property (including financial assets), they may simply assume that they have a right to decide what is done with it—that they somehow “own” the property. This is especially tempting when children earn substantial sums of money. In British Columbia, the law gives some income protection to children who work in the entertainment industry by requiring the government to hold part of their earnings for them until they reach the age of majority (19, in BC). According to BC Regulation 396/95, which pertains to the Employment Standards Act, if a child under 15 who works in the film, radio, video, or television industry earns more than $2,000 on a production, the employer must give 25 percent of his or her earnings over $2,000 to the Public Guardian and Trustee to hold in trust for the child (s. 45.14). The same goes for a child who works in the live entertainment industry and earns more than $1,000 in a single week (s. 45.20). In Ontario, s. 8 of the Protecting Child Performers Act, 2015 also gives some protection of this kind to a child performer's income.

Elsewhere in Canada, ACTRA, the union to which Canadian film, television, and radio artists belong, administers a Minors’ Trust through its Performers’ Rights Society. Once a minor’s earnings reach $5,000 (and beyond), 25 percent of the earnings are deposited in the trust, much as in BC, and held in safekeeping until the child comes of age. This isn’t a “law,” in the sense of a statute. It’s a contractual provision that the union negotiated—perhaps because the law wasn’t doing enough to protect children’s earnings.

So what are we to make of Canada’s child labour laws? Like labour laws in general, they place a lot of emphasis on protecting people from exploitation. This is because employers are the ones with the power. Much like parents, they expect their employees not only to do the work they’ve been hired (that is, told) to do but also to behave in certain ways. So labour laws exist to make sure that employees are treated fairly. As we’ve pointed out, though, these laws apply almost entirely to “regular” employment, when one person is formally hired by another. When it comes to family labour, the law usually intervenes only when a complaint is made or a case is brought to court.

What do you think? Should the law do more to regulate how much work children can be obliged to do for their parents, and of what sort and at what age? Or, to put it another way, should labour law do more to recognize that “work” doesn’t always involve paid employment? As it is, the law seems to assume that, as long as children are minors, parents have a right to act as their employers—but it doesn’t offer children much protection from these employers, unless they do something pretty extreme. And there’s no such thing as a children’s union, at least not in the sense of an organization that would work to protect young people’s rights as family workers. We also wonder whether the law is too swift to assume that, because parents are expected to “protect” their children, they will automatically give them the sort of protection that the law gives to paid workers. But maybe these are two different kinds of protection.