Domestic workers

This does not apply to you if you are a short-term or occasional baby-sitter.

This does apply to you if you work in your employer’s household providing domestic services or care, supervision or personal assistance to children, seniors or persons with disabilities.

Special rules or exemptions

You are generally entitled to minimum wage. However, your employer can pay you less than minimum wage if your employer gives you room and board and your employer deducts the costs from your pay.

Your employer cannot deduct more than the maximum amounts set out in O. Reg. 285/01:

  • $31.70 for a private room per week
  • $0 for a non-private room per week
  • $2.55 per meal up to $53.55 per week
  • $85.25 for meals and a private room per week
  • $53.55 for meals and a non-private room per week

Your employer must tell you in writing:

  • your regular hours of work, including your start and finish times
  • your hourly rate of pay

Homecare workers

This applies to you if you work providing homemaking or personal support services in someone’s home but your employer is not the owner or renter of the home.

Special rules or exemptions

You are generally entitled to minimum wage. However, you are entitled to be paid minimum wage for no more than 12 hours per day. If this is how you are paid, then you are not entitled to:

  • daily or weekly limits on hours of work
  • daily rest periods
  • time off between shifts
  • weekly/bi-weekly rest periods
  • eating periods
  • overtime pay

Your employer does not need to keep a record of your daily or weekly hours of work if you are paid minimum wage for hours worked up to 12 hours per day.

If you work more than 12 hours in a day and are paid for more than 12 hours at the minimum wage rate or higher, then the regular rules relating to overtime pay and hours of work will apply to you.

If you work for a temporary help agency, there may be more special rules that apply to you.

Landscape gardeners

This applies to you if you work maintaining or changing land and gardens for aesthetic purposes. Landscape gardening includes:

  • raking, watering and weeding
  • planting, trimming, maintaining or moving plants and trees
  • preparing land for planting
  • installing rock gardens, ponds and planters
  • park gardening
  • keeping golf course greens

Landscape gardening does not include:

  • building retaining walls for structural purposes
  • installing lighting systems
  • spraying roads and industrial sites for weeds

Special rules or exemptions

You are not entitled to:

  • daily or weekly limits on hours of work
  • overtime pay
  • public holidays or public holiday pay

Residential building superintendents, janitors and caretakers

This applies to you if you work as a superintendent, janitor or caretaker of a residential building and you live in that building.

Special rules or exemptions

You are not entitled to:

  • minimum wage
  • the three-hour rule
  • daily or weekly limits on hours of work
  • daily rest periods
  • time off between shifts
  • weekly/bi-weekly rest periods
  • overtime pay
  • public holidays or public holiday pay