In a volunteer retirement savings plan (VRSP), employers must automatically enrol their eligible employees. An eligible employee is an employee who is 18 years of age or older, carries out work in Quebec and has at least one year of continuous service in accordance with the Act respecting labour standards.
What is meant by continuous service?
In the Act respecting labour standards, continuous service means “the uninterrupted period during which the employee is bound to the employer by a contract of employment, even if the performance of work has been interrupted without cancellation of the contract, and the period during which fixed term contracts succeed one another without an interruption that would, in the circumstances, give cause to conclude that the contract was not renewed.”
To help you distinguish between continuous service and interrupted service for the purposes of the VRSP, a few examples are provided below:
| Continuous service | Interrupted service |
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Fixed-term employment contract (of less than one year) without automatic renewal
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Temporary position, fixed-term contract (of less than one year)
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Resignation
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Dismissal
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Layoff
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Layoff for longer than six months with no specified return to work date
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Summer student without recall rights
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To find out more about continuous service, you can read the interpretation of section 1 of the Act respecting labour standards.