Even before the pandemic struck, remote work was accelerating . . . . Now, the coronavirus outbreak has triggered an anxious trial run for remote work at a grand scale. . . . What we learn in the next few months could help shape a future of work that might have been inevitable, with or without a once-in-a-century public-health crisis.

Right now, remote work isn’t working for most companies . . . . That’s because we spent the last 120 years learning how people can be productive in an office. The rise of the telegraph and the railroad in the late 19th century didn’t just give us retail, advertising, and mass distribution; it also gave us managerial capitalism–middle managers, top managers, and modern hierarchies at corporate headquarters. The 21st-century economy has already changed retail, advertising, and mass distribution. Perhaps inevitably it will also change work and management. . . . But first, companies will have to learn that remote work is different work.

. . . [A] pandemic is not an appropriate time to determine what kind of labor arrangement is optimally productive on a per-worker basis. It is rather a moment for companies to build out the kind of technology and culture that, when the economy is back to full force, could make remote work easier for those who want to take advantage of it . . . .

If you’re somehow not familiar with the name, Bob Ross is probably America’s most famous painter. With his distinctive hair, gentle voice, and signature expressions such as “happy little trees,” he’s an enduring icon. Even 25 years after his death, he’s popular not only with viewers who remember him fondly, but also with kids who weren’t even born when his show was originally on the air.

. . . [O]ur study is the first to show that swearing raises pain threshold (the time at which pain onset is reported following presentation of a painful stimulus, here immersing the hand in ice-water) building on previous findings showing that swearing raises pain tolerance (the time at which the hand is removed from the ice-water). It is also the first study to investigate mediation via distraction, finding no evidence that distraction is involved in the mechanism by which swearing brings about pain alleviation. Instead, our data suggest that swearing brings about its effect on pain alleviation via another route, possibly emotion arousal. However, emotion was not found to mediate the pain alleviation effects of swearing, so this remains a theoretical possibility rather than one that was evidenced.

On the question of law posed, I conclude that, as a matter of law, the double criminality requirement for extradition is capable of being met in this case. The effects of the US sanctions may properly play a role in the double criminality analysis as part of the background or context against which the alleged conduct is examined. Ms. Meng’s application is therefore dismissed. I make no determination of the larger question under s. 29(1)(a) of the Act of whether there is evidence admissible under the Act that the alleged conduct would justify Ms. Meng’s committal for trial in Canada on the offence of fraud under s. 380(1)(a) of the Criminal Code. This question will be determined at a later stage in the proceedings.

If you can get over your fear of dirt, grime, and sweat, you have the potential to make a far better living than your office-dwelling peers. And you may even discover that it feels good to be using your body and hands every day, that it’s satisfying to be in touch with the elements, even when those elements are grimy, and that nothing feels better than taking a well-earned shower when you actually have dirt to clean off.

It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.

Purposefully changing the lines of world supply in the midst of a global crisis is an ambitious move. China is the world’s largest manufacturer, and the pandemic has highlighted just how dependent the rest of the world is on their production of medical supplies, among other products. If trading countries like Japan, the US, and Canada want to find an alternative to being as reliant on China as they have been in the past, it won’t come easily. But COVID-19 might give them the incentive to attract businesses away from Chinese manufacturers.

“Well, you have to understand, it was never depressing. Because despite all those circumstances, I never ever wavered in my absolute faith that not only would I prevail—get out of this—but I would also prevail by turning it into the defining event of my life that would make me a stronger and better person. Not only that, Jim, you realize I’m the lucky one.” I said, “No, I don’t.” He said, “Yes, because I know the answer to how I would do, and you never will.” A little later in the conversation, . . . I asked him who didn’t make it out of those systemic circumstances as well as he had. He said, “Oh, it’s easy. I can tell you who didn’t make it out. It was the optimists.”

Do you sleep in fresh air? The average person will answer, ‘Yes.’ Nearly everyone has experienced the effects of sleeping in a closed room, and, in doing so, has roused with a feeling of suffocation or dull headache. An open window in the sleeping room seems almost a necessity. –Suburban Life Magazine, 1913

The best approach when first presenting yourself to another is . . . to allow the fundamental pieces of your personality to come to the fore, while minimizing the minor differences between you that might lead either participant to prematurely write the other one off.

Employees are entitled to claim damages for loss of alternate compensation methods, particularly where that benefit is an integral part of their compensation, unless there is a contractual term limiting that employee's common law rights upon termination. Where a plan contains terms that limit or place conditions on the payment of a bonus, the question the Courts must determine is whether the wording of the bonus plan was sufficient to limit the employee's common law right to damages for lost compensation. . . . In that regard, the plan language must be clear and unequivocal, and it must be understood by the employee that their right to entitlements under the plan will not persist through the reasonable notice period.

A recent decision of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (the “Tribunal”) held that a professor telling a subordinate employee (the “Complainant”) that “you will have to let me know if this is a misstep but I am crazy about you” (the “Comment”) did not constitute sexual harassment pursuant to the B.C. Human Rights Code.

The conflict of our time is between people who are challenging our shared objective reality by claiming that their shared cultural reality takes precedence over what we’ve discovered. And vice versa–objectivists who insist that cultural reality doesn’t matter. It does. It makes us human and helps us find meaning. They’re different, but we need them both. One way to accomplish this is to not confuse them.

The BC Supreme Court rejected the employee's argument and stayed the action in favour of arbitration. In doing so, the Court noted a distinction between the wording of the respective "minimum standards" provisions of the BC and Ontario ESA. Regarding the BC ESA, the Court stated that "it is not obvious that a statutory complaint/investigative mechanism becomes an employment standard itself rather than a procedure for enforcing employment standards."

On January 24, 2020, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the decision in Bank of Montreal v. Li (2018 FC 1298). This decision serves as confirmation that federally-regulated employees who sign releases in favour of their former employers will not be barred from bringing complaints for unjust dismissal under the Canada Labour Code ("CLC"), provided that they do so within 90 days of the dismissal.

1. the enforceability of a new or varied employment contract;
2. when a dismissed employee may succeed with a claim for aggravated damages; and
3. when an employer is entitled to the benefit of a dismissed employee's mitigation earnings in cases of a fixed term contract.

Many promotions mean moving up a corporate ladder and managing people you previously worked with on the same level. That’s just how business hierarchies work. Even if you were already a manager, maybe you moved up a rung and are now leading other managers. No matter the scenario, there’s often some awkwardness and politics to navigate.

2019 brought several notable cases impacting employment and labour law. We have put together a brief summary of 10 Canadian decisions we . . . should be aware of as we head into 2020.

Studies show that people remember the beginning of something, and the end of it, the best. The middle of it is recalled a little more hazily. Once a novel experience starts, your brain really starts focusing on what’s going on and quickly makes judgements about the new people you meet. And you clearly remember the last part of an experience, because it ends up being the freshest in your memory. Given this phenomenon, people understandably spend a lot of time thinking about how to make a great first impression — which indeed has an outsized influence on how people see you, lasting for even months after you’ve gotten to know them. But the other part of the equation is frequently ignored, though it’s also important. You not only want to make a dynamite first impression, you want to make a great last impression too.

. . . Perhaps the better question about Trump is not “What is he?” but “What will he do to us?”

By all early indications, the Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law—and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world. The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question—the most important near-term question in American politics. It is also an intensely personal one, for its answer will be determined by the answer to another question: What will you do? And you? And you?

Of course we want to believe that everything will turn out all right. . . .

The duty to resist should weigh most heavily upon those of us who—because of ideology or partisan affiliation or some other reason—are most predisposed to favor President Trump and his agenda. The years ahead will be years of temptation as well as danger: temptation to seize a rare political opportunity to cram through an agenda that the American majority would normally reject. Who knows when that chance will recur?

A constitutional regime is founded upon the shared belief that the most fundamental commitment of the political system is to the rules. . . .

What happens in the next four years will depend heavily on whether Trump is right or wrong about how little Americans care about their democracy and the habits and conventions that sustain it. If they surprise him, they can restrain him. . . .

Those citizens who fantasize about defying tyranny from within fortified compounds have never understood how liberty is actually threatened in a modern bureaucratic state: not by diktat and violence, but by the slow, demoralizing process of corruption and deceit. And the way that liberty must be defended is not with amateur firearms, but with an unwearying insistence upon the honesty, integrity, and professionalism of American institutions and those who lead them. We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you and me. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.