This edition has been fully updated to reflect significant recent amendments to the legislation. It summarizes court and Employment Standards Board commentary on matters still requiring judicial clarification, and it also identifies issues now rendered moot by these amendments.

Highlights for this edition

The Alberta Employment Standards Code has recently been the subject of numerous legislative amendments intended to reduce regulatory burdens for employers and increase flexibility for businesses.

An Act to Make Alberta Open for Business introduced significant changes to Divisions 4 and 5 of the Code. These amendments purported to allow employers to offer overtime hours more often, develop flexible schedules to accommodate employee requests, and allow for more flexibility for employers and employees to bank overtime. These amendments also purported to reduce labour cost burdens on employers and sought to allow employers to pay for more employee hours.

The Restoring Balance in Alberta's Workplaces Act took further steps to streamline inefficiencies in the Employment Standards Code, amending the former legislation with respect to rest periods, calculating average daily wage, and employer obligations in group termination scenarios.

In response to the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2020 the government also took steps to amend temporary layoff provisions for employers responding to the pandemic. These changes extended the time for which an employee may be temporarily laid off to 180 days and provided for other mechanisms that will allow employers to adjust to government-required business closures and uncertainties.

Legislative Amendments (Since May 2018)

Since the previous version of this Annotated Employment Standards Code was finalized in May 2018, the below legislative amendments have come into force. The annotations to this revised legislation reflect the impact of these updates, as well as recent judicial interpretation.

• Statutes Amendment Act, 2018, SA 2018, c 11, given Royal Assent on June 11, 2018
• Farm Freedom and Safety Act, 2019, SA 2019, c 19, given Royal Assent on December 5, 2019
• Ensuring Fiscal Sustainability Act, 2019, SA 2019, c 18, given Royal Assent on December 5, 2019
• An Act to Make Alberta Open for Business, SA 2019, c 8, given Royal Assent on July 18, 2019
• Restoring Balance in Alberta's Workplaces Act, 2020, SA 2020, c 28, given Royal Assent on July 29, 2020
• COVID-19 Pandemic Response Statutes Amendment Act, 2020, SA 2020, c 13, given Royal Assent on June 26, 2020