Who is eligible

Eligible employers

To be eligible for a Work-Sharing agreement, your business or organization must:

• be a year-round business in Canada for at least 2 years
• be a private business, a publicly held company or a certain type of non-for-profit:
  • A publicly held company is a for-profit company whereby its shares/stocks are owned by the general public. Public sector employers, including government or publicly owned corporations, such as crown corporations, are not eligible for Work-Sharing.
  • Non-profit organizations are eligible if they engage in activities where they retain the profit to support the goals of the organization. Temporary layoffs in a non-profit organization resulting from a reduction in revenue levels alone (such as reduced grants, donations, memberships, investment income or other disruptions in funding streams) do not meet the Work-Sharing eligibility criteria
• have experienced a decrease in business activities of at least 10% in the last 6 months in order to establish the need for the Work-Sharing program:
  • demonstrate the decrease, for example: comparison of sales figures/production levels, comparison of current quarter to previous quarter or a year over year comparison, etc.
  • reason for the decrease beyond the employer control, for example: lost or delayed contracts, unexpected market changes, decreased sales, raw material supply issues, etc.
• have at least 2 eligible employees in the Work-Sharing unit that must share the available work equally

Eligible employees

To be eligible for Work-Sharing Employment Benefits, your employees must:

• be year-round, permanent, full-time or part-time employees needed to carry out the day-to-day functions of the business (your “core staff”)
• be eligible to receive Employment Insurance benefits*, and
• agree to reduce their normal working hours by the same percentage and to share the available work equitably

Some employers may have been unable to avoid layoffs prior to applying to participate in Work-Sharing. Core staff recently laid off may be included in the Work-Sharing unit.

*Please Note: Employees participating in Work-Sharing must qualify to receive Employment Insurance benefits. An employee’s eligibility will be determined after the employee has filed for Employment Insurance benefits. The employee does not have to inform their employer of the status of their eligibility for Employment Insurance benefits. Employees may refuse to be part of a Work-Sharing agreement or may not be eligible for Employment Insurance benefits. In either case, they are required to reduce their hours of work on an equitable basis with employees who are members of the Work-Sharing agreement.