BC Employment Standards Complaints Process - A 3 month saga

[sghyselincks]

I thought I should share some information on what the complaint process is like with BC Employment Standards to familiarize anyone thinking of filing a complaint against an employer. If you would like to file a complaint please reference the BC Employment Standards website for what you need to do. This post is intended to inform of what the process is like. First a little bit of background:

I had an employer this spring based out of Quesnel,BC that was cutting all sorts of corners. Our drinking water came from an open well on the side of the road where we'd fill up our water jugs in the morning. Camp costs were $38 with no lunch included, although we were staying in some cabins with no water or electricity. The blocks were pretty far away by my standards (2 hours each way), so we were doing 11-12.5 hour days portal to portal, they put 9 hours a day on my ROE for some reason. It was written in a pre-season email that treeprices would reflect the long drive blocks, but the pricing was actually lower than comparable stuff that was a half hour away from a previous year. A quick aside, I worked 3 days two years previously for the contractor to help them finish trees because all their planters quit, they money was decent for those days and the drives were only 1/2 hour. A number of experienced vets quit, one person actually walked off the block one morning. The contractor complains about chronic issues with people quitting early, attributing it to people leaving early for other pre-planned contracts since they have an early start in the spring. This is a delusion. The contractor rented a planter's truck for 5 days of work promising payment for it but then never paid after they quit. There were errors and treeprice inaccuracies on my paystub that were consistently not in my favor. They didn't pay on time or with a set schedule. They didn't pay vacation pay.

Because treeprices were agreed upon verbally each morning, I felt it would be difficult to argue a case for the bait and switch scenario that had happened to me. My one leg I had to stand on was going after 4% vacation pay to compensate partially for the other wrongs that had been done. Here is a breakdown of the steps involved in a complaint. If the issue is resolved at any point along the way then it does not, and may not be escalated.

Step 1 - Contact the Employer

With BC Employment Standards they require that you communicate to the employer and try to resolve your issues before initiating a complaint. The employer in my case, to their credit, did correct tree tally inaccuracies on my pay stub, they amended my ROE to 11 hour days (I had asked for 11.5 based on my records). To their discredit, they told me that past tree prices have no bearing on the current year and refused to adjust the treeprice for the long drives, despite what had been implied to us in writing and also verbally after there were complaints about the length of drive. They also refused vacation pay saying it was included in the treeprice. There was never any verbal or written agreement or even mention of this.

Step 2 - Send a Form Letter

At this point I got all of my information together and sent a form letter requesting vacation pay. A good idea is to send a reminder of what is required by law as listed on this factsheet http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/emplo ... re-workers .
The form letter can be accessed through the self help kit: http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/emplo ... f-help-kit

At this point the employer has 14 days to respond before a complaint can be initiated. You must wait for a refusal response before initiating a complaint. In my case the employer responded the same day refusing to pay.

Step 3 - Filing and Initiating a Complaint

There are a few options for filing a complaint but the most convenient way for me was to do it online https://esb-complaintsubmission.labour. ... ation.aspx
Once the complaint has been filed a case manager will get in touch with both you and the employer by phone. At this point you are given more information about the process, as well as the employer. The employer may choose to pay at this point. My employer doctored my pay stub reducing my wages so that they came out to (roughly, not exactly) the same after vacation pay, and sent this into to Employment Standards BC (ESBC). ESBC forwarded it to me and asked if I wanted to continue to a Complaint Mediation, which I did.

Step 4 - Complaint Mediation

A complaint mediation call is an opportunity for both parties to present their case to a mediator. The mediator can offer advice on what the likely outcome of a more formal hearing would be. You have to be available for a telephone call that may last roughly 3 hours. They try to find a date that will work for both you and the employer. In my case I had an irregular work schedule planting and left the ball in the employer's court. He scheduled a date that must have been as far in the future as they would tolerate, roughly a month away. I made myself available for the time and date of that mediation, but the employer cancelled the day before, much to the annoyance of both ESBC and myself. I'm leaving Canada shortly and we wanted to get this complaint resolved soon, so the ESBC required the employer to reschedule within a week or be forced into the next step of the process. We went on to the next step. For more information on the mediation process there is a fact sheet here http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/emplo ... -mediation

Step 5 - Complaint Hearing

The complaint hearing is usually the last step and at this point the stakes are higher. It is all done by telephone conference call. If an employer is found to have not been in compliance with the prescribed employment standards, they may face a fine (paid to the government) as well as interest paid on the amount owing (paid to the worker). All evidence compiled into a a single PDF document, a list of evidence, and a list of witnesses are submitted by both parties. The witnesses are to be called during the teleconference call, and need to be available during the hearing date and time. The evidence from each side is submitted before the hearing and then given to the opposing party for their review before the hearing. This means the employer will be provided with a list of your witnesses, fortunately I wasn't the only disgruntled worker. The whole process is similar to a court in that everyone is under oath. A decision is made on the case within a few weeks of the hearing, and it is a legally binding one. There is an appeals process.

My complaint hearing was today, about 3 months after I initiated my original complaint. The employer requested an extension on the evidence submission date (more delay tactics). I had prepared all my evidence, witnesses, arguments for the big day. The employer called in this morning and decided to pay me the *drum roll* $338.27 of vacation pay owing, citing that they didn't have time for the hearing. I should say that the hearing would have taken place whether or not they were present, and they also never submitted any evidence or witnesses. This was a losing case for them from the start, although it's unclear if they just had their head in the sand or if this was a retributive waste of my time, not to mention all of the tax dollars. I'm sure this case ran into the thousands with all the energy expended. I find it somewhat shocking that it was permitted for the hearing to be cancelled at this point of the process, but as I said at the start of the post, the process can be terminated at any point if the employer meets the original demand for money owing.

Conclusions

I hoped that the contractor might feel the burn of a government fine for being such a time and money wasting miser, but alas no. I have co-workers who were waiting on a decision in order to file in their own complaints once a precedent against the employer had been set. It is a victory in the end, but a bittersweet one at that.

All being said I would still strongly encourage anyone voicing an issue to follow through, none of the other disgruntled coworkers I was in contact with did. We could have had our complaints pooled together helping the case. For some people the payoff might not be worth the time, but there is an element of principle after all. No more working for the Big Lie.

[mwainwright]

which company are you talking about? i see no reason not to name them here.

[sghyselincks]

I wouldn't oppose to it but the post was supposed to focus more on the complaint process. Maybe I'll put a stay away warning in the company thread. That being said there were some planters who seemed fine with the whole situation, I definitely wasn't the only one who decided to quit though.

*Update*

I wrote a company review in the respective thread for it. I think discussion related to the complaint process should be kept in this thread, discussion related to the company could more beneficially be kept in the company thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=64489

[Mike]

Are you not concerned that they'll share your name around with other companies? In particular, you mention working for Coast Range and Folklore in your other post, both of which also to my knowledge might fall afoul of an employment standard law or two --- do you expect to get hired back at either of those places?

[Scooter]

He's worked for me in the past, and I'd quite definitely be happy to hire him back.

And hopefully we're not breaking any employment standards at Folklore. We're certainly trying not to.

[Mike]

Just teasing you. I'm sure things have changed drastically since I was there.

[sghyselincks]

Thanks for the backup Scooter. My username makes me readily identifiable and I don't feel the need to hide much. I'd prefer not to be hired onto a contract that sets the bar so low. The goal of employment standards is to set a level playing field where compliant companies (e.g. Scooter's camp) aren't competing against companies in violation of labour laws.