Shawnee Love   •  
April 13, 2011

With the Canadian election looming less than a month away on May 2nd, it is a good time to think about how you will ensure your employees have time to vote.  The law says almost all employees (exceptions here) need to have three consecutive hours free from work when the polls are open and that you can’t penalize employees for taking those hours off. What you can do is choose which 3 hours your employees have off.

For employers, that means you need to:

1. Know when the polls are open in your area’s riding(s),
2. Compare your employees’ schedules with polling hours, and
3. Ensure each employee has at least 3 hours free. Examples below:

If a polling station is open from 8:30 AM to 8:30 PM, and:

1. Your employees work 8:30 – 4:30, you are fine. No additional time is required, because they have 4 hours off in a row before the polling station closes.
2. Your employees work a split shift from 9:00 to 12:00 and 2:00 to 6:00, you can choose either to give an extra hour off in the middle of the day (e.g., let employees leave at 11 instead of 12 or come back at 3 instead of 2) or you can let your employees come in late (at 11:30 AM) or leave early (at 5:30 PM).
3. Your employee works 10 hour days from 9:00 – 7:00, you can again let your employee come in late or leave early in the same fashion as outlined in example #2.

Good luck. Hope your party wins. Frankly, I just hope one party wins clearly, so we aren’t doing this again in 9 months.

Any questions, let me know.