Cleaners caught in contract web
Nine financial district workers claim $20,000 in unpaid wages
For mother of two Mila Viernes, every cleaning shift at 330 Bay St. was a race against the clock: 15 floors, five people, four hours.
“We try to make it fast, fast, fast — no break or anything.”
Time was of the essence, Viernes says, because every minute ate into her hourly wage.
Every month, she was paid a lump sum of $840 before deductions — regardless of her actual working hours.
Based on a four-hour shift, the minimum time Viernes says it took to clean the hulking highrise, that money doesn’t even work out to minimum wage, according to a new set of claims made to the Ministry of Labour.
But holding someone to account is an exercise in confusion.
Viernes and eight of her colleagues have filed complaints in which they seek more than $20,000 in back wages they claim they are owed, according to documents provided by union SEIU Local 2.
The claims are filed against Impact Cleaning Services, which was contracted by multibillion-dollar real estate company Dream Office REIT to clean several of its Bay St. properties.
The twist: Impact then subcontracted its contract to another company, MCC Inc., which is also named in the claims. In October, Impact lost its contract altogether to a new company called Amphora.
That’s left Viernes, who has now seen the cleaning contract at the 330 Bay St. building flip three times in the past nine years, wondering who on earth she actu- ally works for.
The Ministry of Labour has not yet issued a decision on the claims.
In response to questions from the Star, Impact’s vice-president of operations, Paul Raftis, said the company could not disclose “competitive information.”
“In regards to any ESA claims, we would of course co-operate fully with the Ministry of Labour. Our company ensures that all of our practices are compliant with the Employment Standards Act,” he added.
Elmer Crisostomo, a former cleaner at 330 Bay St. and the owner and sole operator of subcontractor MCC Inc., referred the Star back to Impact, who he said provided him with the budget to pay the workers.
Campaigners say that when companies contract and subcontract out services, it makes it difficult to hold anyone accountable for workplace abuses. Diego Mendez, an organizer for SEIU, which represents several thousand cleaners in Toronto, says the practice boils down to businesses wanting “plausible deniability.
“It’s something employers use to try and get around different Employment Standards Act obligations,” he said.
A recent report by Toronto-based labour rights group the Worker’s Action Centre says the practice is becoming increasingly common. It adds that Ontario should amend its outdated employment laws to make companies liable when contractors or subcontractors break the law. That, Mendez says, is a change the cleaners of 330 Bay would benefit from. “At the end of the day we go back and say, Dream Office REIT, they’re a super wealthy investment trust. They need to take some responsibility.”
In an emailed statement to the Star, a spokesperson for Dream Office REIT, which has $15 billion in assets in North America and Europe, said simply that the wage dispute was between its contractors and their employees.
“We have no involvement in this matter,” the statement reads.
“We’re saying that’s exactly what the problem is,” Mendez said. “That they’re trying to wash their hands of any responsibility.”
Critics say that, in addition to creating confusion when workers try to enforce their rights, continually contracting-out services makes lowwage jobs even more precarious.
The Star has previously highlighted how contract-flipping — the practice of contracting out services and changing providers every few years — allows companies to keep pay low and purge unwanted workers.
In Ontario, cleaners are among the few trades with any form of protection against the practice: building service providers are at least obliged to dole out termination and sometimes severance pay if they do not retain existing employees when taking over a contract.
But SEIU says it is also filing an unfair labour-practices complaint against Dream Office REIT’s new contractor, Amphora, after it claimed Viernes and 13 other workers were initially not rehired by the company in October.
All 14 workers had signed union cards to join SEIU Local 2 while working for Impact, according to the complaint.
Amphora president Savvas Krotiris told the Star his company, which settled asimilar labour board complaint in 2012, was not aware the cleaners had been trying to unionize. He said the company has now offered positions to the 14 workers in an effort to show “good faith in trying to resolve the matter.”
For Viernes, the uncertainty has still threatened to derail whatever precarious balance she has achieved in her life. The full-time cleaning job she works on top of her Bay St. night shift is not enough to pay her bills, send money back to her parents in the Philippines and send her eldest daughter to college.
That’s why Mendez says it’s time that Dream Office REIT, which has so far refused to meet with cleaners about their concerns, be held accountable for its contractors’ actions.
Dream Office REIT did not respond to the Star’s questions about how subcontracting and contract flipping impacted workers’ wages and entitlements.