Disability insurance salary covers the payment of salary in case of disability to accomplish work tasks during a certain period generally determined in an insurance contract. Disability is defined in the individual or collective insurance contract.
Proof of disability consists of a medical certificate issued by the attending doctor or specialist. At the end of the disability period, the question of return to employment arises.
Some employers oppose themselves to the return of employment and ask for a second expertise to confirm the employee’s ability to return to work. Certainly, the employer can legitimately require a second expertise and even refuse that the employee returns to work meanwhile. In this case, is the employer allowed to not pay the employee?
The nature of an employment contract establishes that the worker’s remuneration is not a privilege, but rather a right. When it is demonstrated by a medical certificate that there is a restriction stopping the worker from being able to work, the remuneration obligation is once again imposed to the employer.
If the second expertise confirms the worker’s availability, he must assume the cost of the employee’s lost salary during the procedures to obtain a second expertise. The employer’s right to verify the employee’s health condition or to postpone their return to employment does not exempt them of the ultimate obligation to pay the employee.
An employment contract, whether it’s of individual nature or supervised by a process of collective reports of work, implicates three (3) essential elements: the employee’s work performance, the salary payment by the employer and the subordination link between the parties.
The parties engage to respect certain obligations one towards the other. Referring to articles of the Civil code of Québec concerning employment contracts, the judges Le Bel and Fish, in the Cabiakman case, emphasize that the employer engages himself, among other things, to allow the employee to perform his work and to pay him. On the other hand, the judges emphasize that the worker must execute his work with caution and diligence.
It is only exceptionally that we will allow the employer to suspend the performance of work without any remuneration of an employer capable of working.
Your employer is complicating your return to employment. Inform yourself!