Employer is reporting my income lower to insurance

my employer has a 2.50 “bonus” on every hour worked (the only requirement is that I am working)

they say the contract with the insurance company doesn’t cover bonuses. (this makes sense as we also have monthly incentives and other contests)

In the contract and job posting, this is listed as the hourly wage with a break down claiming a base wage and this amount as being able to be altered across the line of business.

they are claiming that the above ^ means it is a bonus and not a wage.

turns out they are also taking this to the point of not paying this hourly bonus on any holidays, vacations or including it in overtime calculations.

dose my understanding make sense? as I can not find case law as it seems no company has done this the closest cases I can find more or less assume non-discretionary are part of wage as per law.

from my readings:

wage definitions

wage vs (salary) pay : a wage earner is payed by the hour

“base” pay = wage
wage includes any contracted bonus and is defined by compensation for hours worked (remuneration)

vacation, sick days, overtime and stat holidays are to be paid at the rate of wage

ergo the bonus as outlined in the contract is based on hours worked, and performance-based and thus is a non-discretionary. this means it is to be included when calculating “wage” pay, as well the monthly incentives are to be included for calculating the “wage” for that month for anything accrued such as vacation time earned, overtime worked, sick pay and stat holidays.

company has failed to include the bonus as outlined in the contract for the calculation and payment on sick days, vacation time, overtime and stat holidays.

as well the monthly incentive for many employees it seems has not been included in these calculations as well.

This all boils down to how your LTD insurance plan defines income and the wording of the benefit calculation. Then it would be a common sense view of how your company is actually paying you and other employees. Likely not a black and white answer and you might have to sue to get a more favourable treatment of your benefit amount.


David Brannen

Disability Lawyer with Resolute Legal

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thank you for your response

My insurer uses base pay for my LTD payments as well. They didn’t include bonuses, overtime, holidays and vacation pay. Never inquired about that but pretty sure they have an answer.

You can contact your HR and see what they have to say. Please share with the findings with us.

The only update I have so far is that my union now filed a group grievance for the above related to all employees not being paid vacation and etc useing the correct calculation.

However, they seem to be prioritizing this over my case, even though I brought this now potentially national issue to light for them.

Basically told me the grevence is still filled and will remain open but no other updates before covid 19 (ccp virus) hit and they are now overwhelmed dealing with the fallout of employee employer issues from that. (understandable)

Good to hear that your union is dealing with it. Yes, unfortunately everything is on hold right now. They can barely deal with all this inflow of unemployment claims.

I had some non-Covid19 questions to CRA and Service Canada but hesitant to call.