Offer of employment (asset sale)

Ontario’s continuity-of-employment guide gives examples on both sides of an asset sale: a buyer offers to continue to employ an employee, who agrees to work for the new owner, and a new owner decides to manage a restaurant himself and does not hire an employee. How far that choice goes is covered in can a buyer choose which employees to hire in an asset purchase.

What follows from an accepted offer

Ontario ESA s.9(1) applies if an employer sells a business or part of one and the purchaser employs an employee of the seller. Section 9(2) disapplies it if the purchaser hires the employee more than 13 weeks after the earlier of the employee’s last day with the seller and the day of the sale. British Columbia’s Employment Standards Branch guide says employees who choose not to work for the purchaser, where their conditions have not substantially changed, are deemed to have quit. It also says outstanding pay for someone the seller terminated before the sale is the seller’s responsibility.

• Ask what terms each offer carries and who signed it
• Ask whether any employee was terminated by the seller before the sale
• Check dates against the time limit in the governing statute