Department of Community Services

Employment Standards

General Exemption Regulation

The following questions and answers are for information purposes only. For actual interpretation and application purposes refer to the Employment Standards Act and regulations, or contact an Employment Standards Officer in the Employment Standards Office at 307 Black Street, Whitehorse, Yukon or call (867) 667-5944 (toll free within the Yukon 1-800-661-0408 extension 5944).

What is the General Exemption Regulation?
This regulation identifies an industry or class of employees not subject to some provisions of the Act.

Why are certain employees singled out?
The regulation deals mainly with the hours of work provisions.  The employees exempted tend to be those whose hours of work vary from day to day, who normally work alone and who work in remote or isolated locations.

Who is exempted by this regulation? 
Sitters and persons working on an EI "top-up" program are exempted from the entire Act.

Exemptions from Part 2, Hours of Work and Overtime include:

• Guides, outfitters, farm workers, domestics, watchmen or security guards (unless working for a security firm); and

• a person other than a percussion drill or diamond drill operator or drill helper, employed in staking, line cutting, geological mapping, geochemical sampling or testing, geophysical surveying or manual stripping activities.


What is the difference between a sitter and a domestic?
Sitters are persons employed in a private residence solely to care for a child or a disabled, infirm or other person. Nurses, therapists, domestics, homemakers, day care workers or employees of a business providing that service are not sitters.

Domestics are persons employed to provide cooking, cleaning, gardening, maintenance, chauffeuring, sitting, nursing, tutoring or other services to households.  

Are the employees of placer miners exempt from overtime?
Employees of placer miners are not exempt. The employer must comply with the hours of work requirements set out in Part 2.

Only employees working in specified occupations in the course of mineral exploration are exempt from Part 2, Hours of Work of the Employment Standards Act.