contract-law employment canada
Can a person be fired for not agreeing to a contract at work?
<p>I have seen contracts (relating to employment) which contain terms like "by accepting this position you agree to sign an NDA that you will be provided on your first day of work". To my understanding these are unenforceable. </p>

<p>Can a person be fired for refusing to agree to a contract? Assuming my above understanding is correct, does it make a difference if they had at any point agreed to agree to a contract? Often times when a person is hired there is an on boarding process which contains a bunch of paperwork. Hypothetically could a person refuse to sign it and not get penalized? </p>

<p>There can be many (legitimate and illegitimate) reasons why someone must sign something relating to their employment. For example I was given the added responsibility to do work on the servers which were located in a rented secure building. This building had their own paperwork I needed to fill out for clearance purposes (like a background check). If I refused to do this could I have been fired? </p>

<h2>An agreement to agree is void</h2>

<p>There is a multitude of case law on this point. </p>

<p>If the NDA was not available to you when you signed the employment contract and the term was couched as you describe; then the term would be unenforcable. That is, your employment contract would be binding except for that term i.e. you could not be compelled to sign the NDA. Now, there may be a requirement on you to <em>negotiate</em> in good faith in an attempt to find an NDA you <em>can</em> agree to but if you can't find one you can't find one.</p>

<p>You cannot (legally) be fired for this reason.</p>

<p>Now, if the NDA was available, and you were told where to find it, and irrespective of if you did or didn't find it, you would be bound to the NDA.</p>

<p>Yes, exactly as DaleM says, a contract can't oblige you to sign another contract.  But this gives you no relief. </p>

<h2>Most employment is consensual.</h2>

<p>You can be terminated for any reason or no reason at all, <em>except certain protected reasons like religion, race, sexual orientation etc.</em>. <strong>Refusing to sign an NDA is not a protected reason</strong>.</p>

<p>However, the mechanism here is that the employer is trying to place you a job assignment that requires the NDA.  That doesn't work, <em>and they don't have any other assignments available to you</em>, so they are laying you off through the usual layoff process for your country, e.g. There is a notice period for Canada. </p>

<p>I'll make a metaphor.  A defense contractor branched into computer video games.  When the games division folded up, they tried to protect the jobs by transitioning the game programmers into defense work.  Some of them <em>did not want the coercive rules of DoD employment</em>. The gamer isn't compelled to work in defense, and the company isn't compelled to find other work.  This adds up to "layoff for lack of work".  </p>

<h2>So they don't owe you much</h2>

<p>They don't owe you a job (unless for other reasons they do; union, tenure etc.)  And you can't get any damages out of them unless you can show that they misled you in some way and cost you money. </p>

<p>So that takes you down to whatever layoff/severance they would owe you under CA law, and they could try to go to court to fight that, but probably would not, because the litigation would cost more than the severance. </p>

<p>One last point: I see you having no relief, if all the NDA terms are things <em>that are already required of you</em> (because they simply restate law, case law or the contract you did sign.) For instance, an odd UK practice is asking people to "sign the Secrets Act". Well, the Secrets Act  <em>is already law, and UKers are already bound to it whether they sign it or not</em>. </p>
