Tag Archives: David Fairey

BC Budget fails to address the crisis of employment standards enforcement

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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

Liquor server minimum wage reinforces sexism

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BC Employment Standards Coalition members Kaitlyn Matulewicz and co-chair David Fairey published an important new op-ed in this week’s Vancouver Sun about the often-ignored linkage between provincial tipping regulations and sexual harassment:

the dependence workers have on customers for tips leaves workers vulnerable to enduring sexual harassment and sexualized behaviour from customers as a “price” to be paid for a tip — a form of institutionalized quid pro quo. If workers do resist by, for example, speaking up against customers who are harassing them, they risk losing a tip.

You can read the article in full at this link.

New op-ed on MLA candidates and employment standards

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Adrienne Montani, Provincial Coordinator of First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

Adrienne Montani, Provincial Coordinator of First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

David Fairey, labour economist, a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ BC Office, and Co-Chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition.

David Fairey, labour economist, a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ BC Office, and Co-Chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition.

In this week’s Province newspaper, BC Employment Standards Coalition members Adrienne Montani and David Fairey call on MLA candidates in the upcoming by-elections to clarify their parties’ positions on employment standards. They underscore the opportunity for immediate reform in three areas: minimum wages, child protections, and migrant worker rights and protections.

Read the full op-ed here.

 

 

Which province has the lowest working age for children in the industrialized world?

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Coalition members Marjorie Griffin Cohen and David Fairey wrote a piece for The Tyee this week about the impact of rollbacks affecting workers’ rights since 2001. In Why BC’s Lower-wage Workers are Struggling, they highlight some of the most critical changes to the BC Employment Standards Act affecting employee rights and protections, along with curtailment enforcement of the Act. They also note that BC has Canada’s largest income gap, highest cost of living, highest poverty rate, and the youngest children’s working age in the industrialized world.