Termination: With Cause, Without Cause, and Layoffs

If you’ve just been told your employment is ending, or you suspect it’s about to, read this page before you sign anything.

Termination Without Cause

This is the most common form of termination. Your employer is ending the employment relationship and is not alleging that you did anything wrong.

When an employer terminates without cause, they generally must provide either:

Working notice (you keep working through the notice period and get paid normally), or
Pay in lieu of notice (you stop working immediately and get paid out for the notice period), or
A combination of the two.

The minimum notice period under the Manitoba Employment Standards Code scales with your length of service:

Length of service	Minimum notice
Less than 30 days	None
30 days to less than 1 year	1 week
1 year to less than 3 years	2 weeks
3 years to less than 5 years	4 weeks
5 years to less than 10 years	6 weeks
10 years or more	8 weeks

(Verify these figures for yourself against the current code, they are the minimum.)

The Statutory Minimum Is Unconditional

The notice (or pay in lieu) in the table above is owed to you automatically on a without-cause termination. You do not have to sign anything to receive it. That includes:

A release waiving your right to file a claim or sue for more.
A termination letter acknowledging the employer’s version of events.
Any settlement agreement, non-disparagement clause, or confidentiality clause.

The statutory minimum is your entitlement under the Employment Standards Code, not a favour the employer is doing for you. If your employer is withholding the minimum notice or pay in lieu unless you sign a release, that is a violation of the code, and you can file an Employment Standards claim to recover it. See How to file a claim.

Releases come into play when an employer is offering more than the statutory minimum, see Severance: The Negotiation That Follows below. The minimum itself is never conditional on signing.

Common-Law Reasonable Notice

The minimums above are the statutory floor. At common law, i.e. through the courts, many employees are entitled to substantially more notice or pay in lieu, sometimes many months’ worth, depending on factors like age, length of service, position, and how hard it will be to find comparable work.

A signed termination release may close off your access to common-law notice and leave you with only the statutory minimum. This is the single biggest reason not to sign anything before getting advice.

Probation Periods

The Manitoba Employment Standards Code sets a statutory probation period of 30 days. During those 30 days, the employer can end the employment without notice or pay in lieu of notice. After 30 days, the standard notice rules in the table above apply.

This 30-day window is the only probationary period the code recognizes. A lot of employment contracts use a longer “probation” of 90 days, six months, or even a year. That language is the employer’s internal policy, not a legal extension of the statutory window. Once you’ve been employed more than 30 days, the employer owes you statutory notice (or pay in lieu) on termination, regardless of what the contract calls the period.

Two nuances worth knowing:

Common-law notice may still apply. Even within the first 30 days, an employee who was recruited away from another job may have a common-law claim to reasonable notice. The 30-day rule governs the statutory minimum only, not what a court might award.
Probation isn’t a free pass to fire for any reason. Human rights protections, the prohibition on retaliation, and contractual obligations still apply. An employer can’t lawfully terminate during probation for a discriminatory reason, in retaliation for asserting a right, or in breach of a written contract term.

If you’ve been let go and the employer is pointing to a “probationary period” longer than 30 days as the reason for not paying notice, that reasoning doesn’t hold up under the code. Check it against your actual length of service.

Termination With Cause

“With cause” means the employer is alleging serious misconduct and is ending the employment without notice or pay in lieu. The bar for valid cause is high. Performance issues, personality conflicts, or one-off mistakes generally don’t meet it.

If you’ve been told you’re being terminated for cause, ask:

Has the employer documented the alleged misconduct?
Was there progressive discipline (warnings, performance improvement plan)?
Did you have a chance to respond?
Is the alleged conduct genuinely serious, or is it being used as cover to avoid paying notice?

A termination labelled “with cause” that doesn’t actually meet the legal threshold is functionally a termination without cause, and you’d be entitled to notice or pay in lieu. This is sometimes resolved through an Employment Standards claim, sometimes through court, depending on amounts and facts.

Layoffs

A layoff is a temporary suspension of work, not a termination. The employer’s intention is to bring you back. Under the code:

A short layoff is usually treated as still-employed.
A layoff that goes on long enough is deemed a termination, triggering the same notice/pay-in-lieu obligations as a termination without cause.

The exact thresholds (how long a layoff can run, how it’s counted, whether the employer needed to specify a recall date) are set in the code and matter a lot in practice. If you’ve been “laid off” for an extended period, you may already be entitled to termination pay even though no one has used the word “terminated.”

Mass Layoffs and Group Terminations

When an employer ends the employment of a large group of workers within a defined period, often as part of a plant closure, sale, restructuring, or sudden downsizing, the Manitoba Employment Standards Code treats this as a group termination and adds notice obligations on top of the individual rules above.

The trigger is 50 or more employees terminated within a 4-week period. Once that threshold is crossed, a tiered group notice period applies:

Group size (within a 4-week period)	Group notice period
Fewer than 50 employees	Individual rules only
50 to 100 employees	10 weeks
101 to 300 employees	14 weeks
301 or more employees	18 weeks

(Verify these figures against the current code, they are the minimum.)

This notice must be given to the affected employees, the Minister of Labour and Immigration, and any trade union or employee representative where one applies. As with individual termination, notice can be working notice, pay in lieu, or a combination.

The group-termination period applies in addition to, not instead of, the individual notice rules. The employer owes you whichever notice (or pay in lieu) is greater. If you were part of a mass layoff and the employer paid out only the individual minimum, and the group size triggered a longer period, the difference may be money owed.

What to Do If You Were Part of a Mass Layoff

Count the heads. Find out how many people were let go in the same period. Co-workers, internal announcements, news coverage, and LinkedIn updates can give you a working count.
Save the announcements. Internal emails, town halls, press releases, and the letter or notice you received personally.
Compare what you received against the table above. If the employer paid only individual notice and the group size triggered a longer period, you may have additional pay in lieu owed.
File an Employment Standards claim if the employer missed either the individual or the group notice requirement. See How to file a claim.

Severance: The Negotiation That Follows

Even where the code only requires the statutory minimum, employers regularly offer severance packages above that minimum, in exchange for a signed release. That release typically waives your right to:

File a claim for additional unpaid wages, vacation, overtime, or stat holiday pay
Sue for common-law reasonable notice
Make any further claim arising from the employment

There’s nothing inherently wrong with accepting a release in exchange for a fair package. The problem is when the package isn’t actually fair and the release is signed under time pressure, before the employee knows what they’re really giving up.

What to Do Right Now If You’ve Been Let Go

Don’t sign anything today. Take it home.
Get the termination in writing if you don’t already have it.
Save everything, emails, performance reviews, contracts, handbooks, pay stubs, schedules, recordings of meetings if you have them.
Get advice. A free 15-minute consult with an employment lawyer is usually enough to know whether the offer is reasonable.
Consider whether the situation is actually a constructive dismissal if you “quit” or were pushed out after major changes to your job.
Know your claim window, generally 6 months from the end of employment to file with Employment Standards. See When to file a claim.