Workers' Action Centre

The Workers' Action Centre fights for better wages and working conditions for all workers in our province.

Wage theft in Ontario

Jan 072013
 
 Workplaces

Workers' Action Centre lobbies for enforcement, tackles recalcitrant employers.

from the Workers' Action Centre

Our wages are stolen when:

  • We are not paid for all the hours that we work, or we are not paid at all;
  • We are not paid minimum wage, overtime pay or for other legal rights;
  • We are wrongly treated as independent contractors or self employed;
  • We are charged a fee to get a job.

Follow a group of painters as they track down a well-known repeat violator who has a history of hiring workers and not paying them. Inside the luxury condo buildings of downtown Toronto, workers all along the subcontracting chain struggle with unpaid wages and numerous violations of their rights. Cash payments, no records or documentation of hours and a very slippery employer make it even harder to track down this boss. Finally, after much hard work, they encounter the boss in an underground parking lot and put on the pressure.

Workers talk about trying to get their wages from Com-Kote developers.

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Here are 12 simple measures that the government can implement to stop wage theft. Please join us as we work together to win these changes in 2013!

  1. Increase fines and penalties for wage theft.
  2. Make fines for employers who break the law mandatory.
  3. Publicize all employers who are found guilty of wage theft.
  4. Give workers 2 years to claim unpaid wages.
  5. Get rid of the unfair $10,000 limit on the unpaid wages that can be claimed.
  6. Make employers found guilty of wage theft pay workers interest on unpaid wages.
  7. Workers should be paid double the wages owing to them when there are repeat and serious violations.
  8. Increase proactive enforcement of workplaces and target sectors where wage theft is common.
  9. Follow through on commitment to add $10 million in permanent funding to proactive enforcement.
  10. Remove exemptions that deny some workers rights such as overtime and minimum wage.
  11. Ensure equal rights and protections for temporary foreign workers and those without status, including strong protection against recruitment fees.
  12. Increase the minimum wage to bring workers out of poverty.

 

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