The Common Law Obligations of the Employee under the Contract of Employment
| Author | Geoffrey England |
| Pages | 37-65 |
THE
COMMON
LAW
OBLIGATIONS
OF THE
EMPLOYEE
UNDER
THE
CONTRACT
OF
EMPLOYMENT
An
employee owes
his or her
employer obligations under
both
the
express
and the
implied
terms
of the
employment
contract.l
Regarding
the
employee's express obligations,
we saw in the
previous chapter that
employment contracts generally
do not
contain
a
detailed
and
compre-
hensive list
of the
employee's duties, except perhaps
for
higher echelon
executives,
sports
stars,
and
entertainers. Usually,
the
contract
of
employment will state little about
the
employee's obligations beyond
providing
a
brief
job
description
and
summarizing
the
basic pay,
the
basic
hours
of
work,
and
annual vacations.
The
most common excep-
tion
is a
restrictive covenant that prevents
the
employee
from
compet-
ing
with
his or her
employer within
a
defined
area
and for a
defined
period
of
time
after
the
employment relationship ends.
We
examine
the law on
restrictive covenants
in
this chapter.
The
explanation
for the
relative dearth
of
express terms
in
employment contracts
is
that
the
parties cannot, when they
are
negotiating their contract,
foresee
all
possible
contingencies that might occur over
the
lifetime
of
their rela-
tionship
and
deal with them
in
advance. Consequently,
the
courts have
had to
fill
the gap by
implying terms into
the
employment contract,
and the
scope
of the
employee's obligations
to his or her
employer
at
common
law
depends almost exclusively
on
these implied terms.
1 For
further
detailed elaboration
on
this topic
see G.
England,
I.M.
Christie,
& M.
Christie,
Employment
Law in
Canada,
3d
ed., looseleaf (Markham, Ont.:
Butterworths,
1998)
c. 11
(II-III).
37
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38
INDIVIDUAL
EMPLOYMENT
LAW
According
to the
general
principles
of
contract
law,
term