Liberals blamed for inspection backlog
Inspectors directed not to initiate new labour cases, according to memo
Ontario’s Minister of Labour has dismissed a directive instructing staff not to initiate any new proactive inspections into wage theft and other violations as a “low-level internal memo,” after the Star revealed that understaffing has resulted in a halt on workplace blitzes.
The memo, obtained by the Star, said a civil service hiring freeze had contributed to a significant backlog in employment standards complaints, and meant that inspectors should “not initiate any new inspections” in order to triage mounting wait times.
The memo is signed by the ministry’s Director of Employment Standards, who is appointed by the Minister of Labour to administer the Employment Standards Act. That legislation sets the basic floor of rights for all Ontario workers.
“I don’t know of its accuracy … we’re looking to see if that is accurate,” Labour Minister Laurie Scott told reporters after New Democrat MPP Jamie West (Sudbury) raised concerns about the memo in the Legislature’s daily question period.
Scott blamed a backlog of cases from the previous Liberal government, which left office June 29.
The Star has reported extensively on enforcement issues at the ministry. Last year, the government recovered only onethird of the wages owed to individual workers after they filed employment standards claims, compared to an almost 100 per cent recovery rate through proactive inspections.
The Liberal government subsequently committed to hiring 175 new staff to double its complement of employment standards inspectors and conduct more proactive inspections. The stated goal was to inspect one in 10 Ontario workplaces.
Only around half of the new inspectors were hired before the Progressive Conservative government took power and instituted a hiring freeze.
Asked if she would order the memo’s direction reversed, Scott replied “let’s see what the real story is.”
West said the Conservatives can’t blame their Liberal predecessors any longer.
“This wasn’t a memo that came from the previous government. This is a memo that came from their government,” he told the Star. “At some point you’re the government and you have to fix it.”
West, who is the NDP’s labour critic, accused the Conservatives of planning to let Employment Standards Act inspections slide as the government fulfils a promise to cut $6 billion in spending, letting “bad bosses” off the hook.
“They know people don’t file complaints unless they’re quitting or being fired from a job because they’re afraid of losing their job,” West added.
“They’re not investigating, so people know they’re going to get away with it.”
Avvy Go, director of Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, said she raised concerns about enforcement with the ministry after the June election.
“Based on our 30 years of working with low-income vulnerable workers who are in non-union settings, we came to the conclusion that the current system based on complaints-driven compliance doesn’t work,” she said.
“By the time workers file their claims, most of the time they have already lost their jobs. Sometimes the companies have even gone under. Many of these cases, even if they are successful at the (ministry), they are not able to collect the wages,” she added.
“That’s why it’s very important to have proactive enforcement of the Employment Stan- dards Act.”
As previously reported by the Star, Go represented a group of around 60 workers owed more than $675,000 in unpaid wages by the Regal Restaurant chain in Toronto.
It’s a case she calls a “perfect example” of the need for proactive inspections to catch problems early: in 2014, Regal workers filed employment standards claims at the ministry. In 2015, the Ministry of Labour ordered the company to pay. Three years later, Go says workers have only received about 15 per cent of their money from their now-shuttered employer.
“These are low-income clients. Their income is very low to begin with so to not receive their full pay will have a tremendous impact on them and their family,” she said. “Some of them may, as a result of not getting paid, they may be evicted by their landlords, or they will not be able to buy nutri- tious food for their children.”
“If the ministry were to proactively inspect restaurants or factories these workers would not have to wait,” she added. “And (the company) would never have owed that amount to begin with.”
In the past, proactive employment standards inspections — which usually focus on highrisk sectors like temp agencies or the food industry — have routinely found 75 per cent of employers in violation of laws around minimum wage, overtime, public holiday pay, and other workplace rights.
News of the inspections pause comes the same week as the Progressive Conservative government introduced a bill that will significantly roll back recently enacted “job-killing” labour protections.
“Ontario should be open for business,” Go said. “But the businesses we are open to must obey the law.”
“By the time workers file their claims, most of the time they have already lost their jobs.”
AVVY GO