On April 13, 2022, the BC Employment Standards Coalition released its Justice Denied: The Systematic Failure to Enforce BC Employment Standards report. This report exposed the failures of the ESB to effectively and efficiently enforce the Employment Standards Act. Because of this failure, thousands of BC workers are being denied their rights under the law. The report found that over 80% of workers in the private sector have no employment rights relating to wages, benefits, and other basic working conditions. The report found:

- Lengthy delays in the resolution of complaints, from six months up to three years in some cases
- A continued primary focus on the administration of a complaints-based system.
- The failure of the Branch to proactively investigate employers, industries, and sectors with a history of Employment Standards Act violations.
- The barriers to employees in having their complaints addressed.
- The suppression of complaints.
- Employer bias in Branch practices and procedures.
- Procedural unfairness in complaint investigation and adjudication.
- The inadequacy of Branch budgets and staff resources to provide effective enforcement of the Act.

In August 2022, the provincial government recognized these failures. In its Report on the Budget 2023 Consultation, the province’s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services made a call for additional funding for the ESB for the hiring and training of staff to shorten wait times and increase proactive investigation. In addition, to prevent employers from misclassifying workers to skirt the ESA, the same report called for amending legislation to ensure workers in the gig economy are properly classified as employees rather than independent contractors and covered by the ESA, with targeted funding provided to the ESB for compliance.

While the recognition of the issue by the provincial government, and the acknowledgement of the need for additional funding and amended legislation in the Standing Committee’s Budget 2023 Consultation Report are important steps; you must now ensure that the government follows up on these recommendations and includes the necessary funding to the budget set to come out winter of 2023. In addition, you must uphold the Ministry of Labour’s mandated service plan objectives and ensure the laws in place protect workers.

Workers across BC continue to be impacted by the inadequacies of the ESB. The Justice Denied report reveals how there are workers who have waited for years and are yet to hear back, or are yet to be paid thousands of dollars in missing wages. There are workers who have lost their housing and were unable to secure new housing, there are workers who have been pressured by officers to not pursue their rightful complaints. There are workers who have been fired without cause and have not received the wages they are entitled to under the law.

Take the case of a worker who, after waiting almost 6 months, saw a Branch Officer finally start an investigation; only for the Branch Officer to almost immediately decide they needed to pass the investigation on to another Branch Officer due to the amount of the claim. The complainant and their advocate did not hear from the Branch again for another 6 months despite repeated attempts by their advocate to contact the Branch and get an update. The complainant had become unhoused after losing their employment (housing was provided by the employer) and could not afford to secure new housing for a number of months as a result of not receiving their unpaid wages in a timely manner. The worker lost their housing, and was unable to find new housing, due to delays from and being stonewalled by the Employment Standard Branch.

Take the case of a Guatemalan worker through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), they were employed with a construction company between November 2018 and October 2019. The complainant was not paid for the number of hours worked, overtime hours and entitled vacation pay. Following an ESA complaint in September 2019, assisted by the worker’s advocate, Dignidad Migrante, an ESB investigation Determination in April 2021 found the employer owed the complainant $38,229.06. However, the employer unsuccessfully appealed this Determination and so it was not until the Employment Standards Tribunal appeal decision in November 2021 that the worker became eligible to receive these unpaid wages—two years and two months after the date of their complaint. The main cause of the delay in this case being the 19 months it took for the Branch to issue a decision. This complainant has yet to receive this unpaid wage amount. The complainant did not receive wages they were legally entitled to, for hours they worked, due to delays from the branch itself.

These two cases are not unique. The report itself contains countless examples; and this is only what is contained within the report itself. How many other workers are being failed by the ESB and not receiving the compensation that they are legally owed? How many workers have lost housing, or had their lives worsened due to missing thousands in owed wages?

By turning a blind eye and failing to put in place an accessible and effective justice system that can adequately address wage theft, workers’ rights violations, discrimination and exploitative processes, our government becomes complicit in this grave human and labour rights violation.

Fighting the issues facing workers is not about adding new burdens onto law-abiding employers. It is about smarter enforcement of laws that are already on the books, closing gaping loopholes and enacting stronger enforcement tools. The shortcomings of the ESB need to be addressed in the interest of workers, and the ESB must receive the funding it needs to support and benefit workers, and ensure workers protected under the Employment Standards Act are protected from exploitation.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and right now, thousands of workers are being denied justice and their legal rights by the failures of the ESB.

The Justice Denied report calls for:
- Increasing Employment Standards Branch annual funding by at least $14 million.
- Reinstating proactive investigations into problem industries and sectors, like agriculture; construction; hospitality; restaurant/food services; caregiving, including in-home care, long-term care homes, and daycares; food processing; building maintenance services; and retail.
- Proactively investigating and addressing the widespread misclassification of workers as independent contractors, such as in the gig economy.
- Collecting and disbursing all monies found to be owed to workers.
- Shortening wait times to ensure complaints are acted upon and investigated within 90 days of the receipt of the complaint.
- Ensuring procedural fairness in the handling of complaints by clearly setting out and making publicly available expected timelines for each step in the complaints process, increasing communication between the ESB and complainants during the process, and providing specific training to employment standards Officers regarding their duties as administrative decision makers.
- Increasing the monetary value of penalties and award a penalty for each violation that impacts every employee of an employer to deter employers from repeat offenses and to create an environment of compliance.

Justice delayed is justice denied!