Kosovan foreign workers win case against boss who overworked, underpaid them

Employer to serve two-year term in community, pay $40,000 compensation

EDMONTON Azem Segashi was promised a better life in Canada.

His boss recruited him from Kosovo, promising 40 hours of work a week laying tile for $30 per hour. It was enough for Segashi to leave his family behind and move half a world away, with hopes of eventually reuniting with them in Canada.

But instead of a better life, he endured a miserable year and a half in which his boss threatened him, worked him more than 50 hours a week without overtime and paid him about half of what was promised.

That boss, Bujar Rushiti, pleaded guilty in Edmonton provincial court Friday to breaking Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Rushiti pleaded guilty to inducing immigration to Canada and employing immigrants with wages substantially different from the original offer, ending a lengthy legal saga that began when he recruited the first off our employees from his native Kosovo.

“There were moments the work was very heavy, which caused stress and panic on me,” Segashi said in a victim impact statement read outside court by an Albanian translator. “A few times I thought to talk to Mr. Rushiti but I was afraid … things would get worse if I talked to him.”

Four men — Segashi, Arton Krasniqi, Lavdim Gashi and Nuredin Hetemi — will split $40,000 in court-ordered compensation. Rushiti will also serve a two-year conditional sentence in the community.

Court heard Rushiti was 19 years old when he came to Canada in 1999 in the aftermath of the war in Kosovo. He taught himself English, and eventually established his own company — Pristine Granite — which employed 14 people at its peak.

The company even had a contract for work at the Alberta legislature, an agreed statement of facts states.

Canada’s Federal Skilled Worker program allows employers to recruit employees from other countries if they can prove no Canadians or permanent residents could be found to do the work.

Starting in about 2012, Rushiti began to look for foreign workers in his Kosovo. Rushiti obtained labour market opinions to hire the four workers, who came to Canada on work permits.

Krasniqi said in the agreed facts that Rushiti met him in Kosovo and promised him full-time work at $30 per hour — the amount specified in the labour market opinion.

He uprooted his life and moved to Canada, but when he received his first cheque, he was compensated at $17 an hour. He also had to reimburse Rushiti for airfare — which by law the employer is supposed to pay — and lived in a cramped apartment with five other men which Rushiti rented to them. He worked nearly six months in a row without a day off.

Court heard that when Krasniqi asked about his pay, Rushiti threatened to send him back to Kosovo. The Canadian Border Services Agency launched an investigation after one of the workers complained, federal Crown pros- ecutor Dawn Poskocil said.

Rushiti reimbursed some but not all of the workers with backpay after one of them complained, the agreed facts state. Defence lawyer Scott Kurie said Rushiti is now bankrupt, and his company is no longer operating. He and his wife, who also worked for Pristine Granite, are both unemployed and raising two young children.

Rushiti will serve the first six months of his sentence on house arrest, followed by 14 months with a strict curfew. He had to borrow from family the $40,000 agreed in a joint sentencing submission.

Kurie said his client is “completely starting over.”

Poskocil said labour trafficking cases that take advantage of vulnerable workers are far from rare in Alberta.

“It’s difficult to detect,” she said. “These victims of labour trafficking are reluctant to come forward, and the cases are difficult to investigate.”

She said businesses that underpay foreign workers tilt the playing field against other companies.

“It creates unfair competition (for) other businesses in the Canadian economy,” she said. “He (was) able to gain an unfair advantage.”

These victims of labour trafficking are reluctant to come forward, and the cases are difficult to investigate.