Sorry for the confusing title. My question is when it comes to labour board regulations or the employment standards act should a workplace/employer have to let employees know their rights or is it the employee’s responsibility to find out and advocate for themselves?

For example a few years ago before i went back to school I was working at a call centre doing tech support for cell phones. Christmas time was coming up and I was disappointed knowing that the call centre would be open and there was a chance that I could get scheduled to work on Christmas and miss the holiday with my child. The call centre I worked at had a system where for each holiday you could choose your preference and they said they would try to accommodate if they could, so at the beginning of the year or when you’re hired they give you a list of all statutory holidays with three options: volunteer to work, request off, no preference. I had requested Christmas off.

A few weeks before the holiday I decided to google what my rights were on having to work the holiday or not and found out that in Canada the employment standards act states that you cannot require an employee who has requested a stat holiday off to work unless it is an employee in an industry that cannot close down for safety reasons (for instance emergency workers, nursing home and hospital staff, hotels, etc). There are only a handful of industries that fall under this category by the employment standards act and mine wasn’t one of them. Before debating this with my boss I wanted to be sure so I called the employment standards act number and spoke with a representative there who told me that they could not require an employee in my line of work to work a statutory holiday and that since I had filled out the form to request the day off months in advance they were already in breach of the employment standards act as the main stipulation states that you need to provide your work written notice that you do not want to work the stat holiday at least 48 hours before the holiday and since I had filled the sheet out requesting it off I should have been given it off when they made that schedule. I sent HR and my boss an email letting them know I was giving my more than 48 hours notice and that I would not be working the holiday and I provided them the phone number for the employment standards representative in case they needed more information. They gave me the day off but also told me that they did not know this was the law and they would not be letting other employees know about this or giving the ones who had selected “request off” the day off since “they had business needs,” however I told a few other people about this and anyone who went to them directly requesting it off was given it off. A few months after this they started following through by giving everyone the day off who had selected “request off” for stat holidays.

Do you think it was unethical of the employer to not let others know that they had the right to have the day off with their families? Do you think employers should be responsible for letting employees know their rights or is it each persons responsibility to do their own research and advocate for themselves?