FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BC Budget fails to address the crisis of employment standards enforcement
VANCOUVER — Thousands of BC workers are experiencing loss of wages and denial of other basic workplace rights because the provincial Ministry of Labour is not adequately enforcing employment standards and the new provincial budget fails to address this law enforcement crisis, the BC Employment Standards Coalition says.
“Workers are waiting over a year to recuperate thousands of dollars in wages after filing Employment Standards complaints, something that could be prevented if laws were followed by employers in the first place,” says Pamela Charron, Acting Executive Director of the Worker Solidarity Network.
BC’s Employment Standards Branch is supposed to enforce the Employment Standards Act (ESA), which requires protected workers to have basic minimum standards of pay and conditions of employment. However, many workers are not protected because of the systemic failure of the Employment Standards Branch, the Coalition says.
The Coalition will soon release the report, “Justice Denied: The Systemic Failure to Enforce BC Employment Standards”, that documents these failures.
Lengthy delays between 18 months and three years or more in the investigation and resolution of ESA violation complaints is one of the Employment Standards Branch’s main failures. The number of ESA violation complaints received by the Branch increased by 49 per cent in the past three years from 4,958 in 2018 to 7,403 in 2020, but only 47 per cent of complaints were resolved within six months in 2020/21.
“The Employment Standards Branch has the potential to be a powerful tool to provide access to justice for workers in British Columbia. Unfortunately, years of inadequate funding have led to a significant loss of confidence in this institution’s ability to carry out its mandate,” says Jonathon Braun, staff lawyer with the Migrant Workers Centre.
The Coalition says the provincial government must double the Employment Standards Branch budget in order to hire and adequately train substantially more enforcement staff. This would significantly speed up the complaint investigation and resolution process and allow proactive investigation of employers who break employment standards laws, says Coalition co-chair David Fairey, adding that laws being violated include widespread wage theft and other rights violations that must be addressed effectively and fairly.
The legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services agrees with this call as its November 2021 budget consultations report noted that the Employment Standards Branch needs a significant increase in funding. The committee also said the Branch should “Expedite the enforcement of labour protections for gig workers.” However, the government’s latest budget includes no funding increases for the Ministry of Labour for the next three years, signalling a growing crisis in enforcement of employment standards for the foreseeable future the Coalition believes.
For more information please contact:
David Fairey 604.430.6036, david@labourconsultingservices.com
Pamela Charron 705.698.6380, pam@workersolidarity.ca
