Labour & Employment

Workplace law for both employers and employees in Nova Scotia, from the drafting of a contract to the fight over how it ends.

Scope of work

• Wrongful & constructive dismissal
• Employment contracts & policies
• Wage, hour & labour-standards claims
• Human rights & workplace discrimination
• Occupational health & safety
• Union representation & collective bargaining
• Whistleblower & reprisal claims
• Workers’ compensation appeals

Unions and labour standards have, over more than a century, been central to establishing and protecting workers’ rights and wages. That conviction runs through this practice. The firm represents employees who find themselves facing a far more powerful counterpart across the table, and it advises employers who need their workplaces to be compliant, fair, and defensible. Both perspectives sharpen the work.

In Nova Scotia, the non-unionized workplace is governed primarily by the Labour Standards Code, which sets minimum entitlements for wages, hours, leaves, and termination, and by the common law of reasonable notice: the body of case law, anchored by the long-standing Bardal factors, that determines what a dismissed employee is actually owed. Discrimination and harassment are addressed under the Human Rights Act; workplace safety under the Occupational Health and Safety Act; and unionized workplaces under the Trade Union Act, with federally regulated employers governed instead by the Canada Labour Code.

Much of this work unfolds before administrative bodies and investigators rather than in open court. Derek Brett comes from a union background of teachers and factory workers and has devoted years to advocacy in collective bargaining, whistleblower protection, and the representation of public-sector workers, including police officers, firefighters, and teachers, through administrative and investigative proceedings. That experience informs how the firm approaches reprisal claims, grievances, and the agencies that decide them.

Beyond representation in disputes, the firm helps employers get the foundation right: enforceable employment agreements, restrictive covenants that will actually hold, and workplace policies that reduce the risk of the very claims litigated elsewhere in this practice. Too often the balance of power is left tilted; our role, on either side of it, is to make sure the law is applied as it was written.