Our employers steal our wages. Our government allows it to happen. It’s time we stopped it.
60% of workers that we surveyed experienced wage theft. With the cost of living rising every day, losing a week of wages can mean being forced to choose between paying for rent or food for our families.
Wage theft hurts our families and local communities. When our labour laws are not enforced, the employer profits and this pressures other companies to commit wage theft. This drives down all our wages and working conditions.
The Ministry of Labour enforcement has declined under the Ford government. Inspections, fines and prosecutions have all went down. It’s no wonder that over the last 10 years, the government failed to get employers to pay $80 million in unpaid wages.
What is wage theft? What are the causes?
What we need to fight wage theft
Tell our government: Stop wage theft
Resources
Join a Halloween Action in Toronto to talk to workers, and demand an end to wage theft in Ontario!
What is wage theft? What are the causes?
Wage theft happens when we are not paid for all the work we do. It happens when we aren’t paid our vacation, public holiday, overtime and termination pay. Wage theft isn’t caused by a few “bad apples.” Its a systematic issue that employers take advantage of because our labour laws allow to happen.
Ontario’s ESA enforcement regime is failing workers.
- Under the Ford government, the number of employers’ fined for wage theft dropped 85% while inspections went down 77%.
- And since 2014, the number of Ontario workers has gone up from 6.8 to 8 million. Yet the number of Employment Standards Officers doing the job of enforcement has stayed the same.
- It’s no wonder that over the last 10 years, $200 million was stolen from workers wages across Ontario. Yet $80 million was unrecovered by the government.
Legal business structures allow the corporations holding the purse strings to avoid responsibility.
- Our weak labour laws allow employers to misclassify us as self-employed independent contractors so they can increase their profits and deny us our rights under Ontario’s labour laws.
- Our weak laws also allow employers to use subcontracting, temp agencies and franchising to avoid responsibility for wage theft.
Non-unionized workers are unprotected when they stand up for their rights
- Chronic under enforcement of our laws means we have fight by ourselves recover our stolen wages.
- But our laws do not provide us with the power or protections to enforce our rights on the job. This means workers have to weigh the risk between standing up for their rights and risking being fired.
- As a result, 90% of ESA complaints were made by workers who quit or were fired from the job.
What we need to fight wage theft
Enforcement of the Employment Standards Act
Employers who break the law are rarely caught. And even if they are, there are no meaningful penalties for wage theft. As a result, stolen wages often go unpaid. There is little risk that employers who break the law will be caught and if they are, there is no penalty for wage theft and stolen wages often go unpaid. The Ontario government must stop relying on employer’s voluntary compliance and start enforcing the ESA. We need action now to:
- Identify all employers’ who break the law and steal workers’ wages through proactive and expanded inspections;
- Make sure employers repay all wages owing to workers by improving collections and prosecuting those that do not pay;
- Make sure employers compensate workers for the damage caused by wage theft by paying 3 times the wages stolen; and,
- Penalize all wage theft employers to stop future violations.
Close the gaps in the law that allow wage theft to happen
Outdated labour laws cannot deal with new employer strategies to evade and avoid following the ESA for their employees that make their products or provide their services. Specifically, Mmany layered business subcontracting and misclassifying employees as independent contractors fuels wage theft in our economy. We need action on:
- Make companies at the top of the supply chain responsible (jointly and severally liable) for wages and ESA rights owed down the contracting chain.
- Stop employers who misclassify employees as independent contractors. Modernize the legal test of employees by presuming we are employees unless the company can prove otherwise through a simple, cumulative test to prove we are not an employee (the “ABC test”).
Real power and job protection to enforce our rights while we are on the job.
The government relies on workers with the least power to identify and report wage theft. Yet the government but does not give workers the power to do so. We need action to:
- Employees must have the right to take action together without employer interference to enforce ESA rights and improve working conditions. This is called protection for concerted activity.
- Workers need “just cause” protections that require employers to provide valid reasons before firing employees.
- Employees must have interim reinstatement, where appropriate, while their claim is investigated for reprisals, concerted activity and unjust dismissal.
Tell our government: Stop wage theft now
Resources
Policy Report: The crisis of wage theft in Ontario
In 2024 we surveyed 513 workers in Toronto about the problems they experience at work. Our goal was to document the extent of employment standards’ violations that people in precarious work face and the impact of violations on these workers. This report outlines the scope and causes of what we are calling an epidemic of wage theft in Ontario and proposes meaningful solutions.
