Do You Have the Right to Work From Home?
In September 2024, Amazon announced that its employees would need to return to the office five days a week effective January 2, 2025. The decision marks a significant change from Amazon’s previous return to work policy which required employees to work in the office at least three days a week. Given Amazon’s decision to require all employees to return to work in person, it raises the question: do you have the right to work from home?
Do Employees in Ontario Have a Right to Work from Home?
In Ontario, employees do not have an automatic right to work from home. If your employment contract specifies that you are a full-time remote worker, then you have the right to work from home. Otherwise, an employer is not obligated to permit its employees to work from home if the employer can demonstrate that the nature of the work requires an in-office presence or if the employee’s health condition does not specify requiring the employee to work from home. Further, personal lifestyle preferences such as avoiding a commute do not fall within the scope of the duty to accommodate.
Employees may seek accommodation to work from home if the employee is a member of a protected group under the Ontario Human Rights Code and working from home would accommodate the employee’s protected characteristic, as demonstrated by the recent arbitration decision in International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (I.B.E.W.) Local 636 v. Hydro Ottawa Limited. Human rights characteristics that are protected include age, race, ethnicity, religion, colour, sex, gender, family status and disability amongst other. The duty to accommodate has been used successfully to secure remote employment for employees if the employee can demonstrate that their protected characteristic would be best accommodated by permitting him or her to work from home. In Mazzariol v. London District Catholic School Board, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario held that the employee was discriminated against because she was not permitted to work from home when her disability symptoms, including dizziness and light sensitivity, prevented her from working in the office. The case demonstrates that employers should conduct a thorough analysis of whether permitting the employee to work from home would best address the employee’s protected characteristic under the Human Rights Code.
Are Employers Required to Allow Work from Home?
All human rights accommodation requests must be handled on a case-by-case basis and the question of whether an employer must accommodate by permitting the employee to work from home must be considered based on the specific facts and circumstances at issue. If an employer can demonstrate that permitting the worker to work from home would cause undue hardship on the employer, the employer can avoid providing accommodations.
To answer the question, do you have the right to work from home? In short, the answer is no. Given the above information on human rights accommodations, it is critical for employees to provide sufficient information for employers to determine whether to provide a work from home accommodation. This may include providing medical notes and information to justify that a work from accommodation is necessary, not merely preferable.
How can Whitten & Lublin help?
If you are an employee seeking further information about work from home accommodations, contact us for further information online or by phone at (416) 640-2667.
Author – Abby Leung