What about severance pay?

In the ESA, severance pay is not the same thing as termination pay. Severance pay is another payment that some people get when they lose their jobs.

You get severance pay only if you have worked at least 5 years for your employer and:

your employer pays out wages of at least $2.5 million a year, or
at least 50 people will be losing their jobs within a 6-month period because the employer is permanently closing some or all of their business.

You will not get severance pay if your employer is closing down their business because it was affected so badly by a strike that they cannot continue.

There are other reasons why you could lose your right to severance pay. For example, this could happen if your employer offers you another job and you do not accept it.

The basic rule is that severance pay is one week’s pay for each year you worked for your employer. And the most you can get is 26 weeks. But the rules about severance pay are complicated.

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