Ministry collects $18.7m on behalf of non-unionised workers
CAMEAL Tracy, 28, was laid off one year ago, and she was shocked when she saw her final pay cheque: “I was made redundant, and I was not paid for my vacation time,” said the former supervisor.
Her old employer, a local distribution company, owed her $60,000.
Unable to collect, Tracy, now a sales representative, ended up filing a complaint with the Ministry of Labour and Social Security against her former employer.
Last week, she finally got her cheque, after letters from the labour ministry threatened her old company with legal action.
Tracy has plenty of company.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security says it collected $18.7 million over the past 12 months on behalf of about half of the 5,300 non-unionised workers who lodged complaints against employers.
Employers coughed up money they’d failed to pay in respect to termination of employment, minimum wages, maternity leave, and paid holidays.
According to Julie Dundas, a ministry spokesperson, the ministry has seen a 50 per cent jump of complaints against employees over the past year.
About half of the people who complained, she said, generally don’t have a legitimate case, so the ministry does not get involved. She attributed the increased number of complaints to the tight job market and the fact that more people are becoming aware of the labour ministry’s ability to resolve wage disputes.
“Some of the cases are very simple to resolve. Others may take a lot more time,” said Dundas.
In Tracy’s case, the year-long effort to collect her unpaid vacation pay involved several calls to the ministry and at least one trip there that took a whole day – thanks, she said, to a misplaced file.
“I think that they took way too long,” she said.
But Joanetta Nelson, 39, of Old Harbour, who got laid off from her job as a maid, had only praise for the ministry.
Unable to collect her two weeks’ termination pay totalling $4,000, Nelson went to the ministry last December – and that, in itself, was enough to convince her former employer to pay up.
“I made the complaint on a Monday, and I got the money the next Thursday,” said Nelson, who is still looking for work.