The BC Employment Standards Tribunal recently shined a light on how the Canadian trucking industry is home to one of the largest underground economies and international human trafficking rings in Canada.
As reported by CBC, a worker from India who claimed he was shorted wages and had to pay $25,000 to obtain a job at a truck repair company in Richmond, B.C., has been awarded $115,574.69 by the B.C. Employment Standards Tribunal.
“The horrific immigration and employment situation that Mr. Singh and his family had to experience, is experienced by countless of people coming to Canada each year who want to work in the trucking industry,” said Stephen Laskowski, President & CEO, of the Canadian Trucking Alliance. “CTA has been trying to end this treatment of workers in the trucking industry, but our voice has mostly fallen upon deaf ears in government. Unfortunately, Mr. Singh’s story is one of thousands that is occurring in the trucking industry across Canada.”
The growing labour abuse scam in trucking involves a vast network, which includes immigration consultants, driver training institutes, job placement firms and trucking companies. In many cases, the scheme charges a worker a ‘head tax’. In the case of Mr. Singh, the head tax was $25,000.
While Mr. Singh was awarded all back payments he was entitled under the Employment Standards Act, the sad reality is that the violator of Mr. Singh’s labour and human rights was only assessed a total of $4000 dollars in fines for eight separate contraventions of the Employment Standards Act.
“Since 2016 the Canadian Trucking Alliance has been compelling governments at every level to enact meaningful enforcement against labour rights violators and protect the rights of workers in Canada – both foreign and domestic,” said Laskowski. “The Government of Canada, specifically ESDC and Immigration Canada, need to end this abuse of foreign labour, protect workers and human rights, and in doing so clean up the trucking sector that is rife with these abuses.”
In 2023, a UN expert sounded the alarm of contemporary forms of slavery in Canada.
“For nearly a decade the BC Trucking Association (BCTA) has been calling for significant, sustained improvement of enforcement for all labour and safety regulation in the trucking industry,” said Dave Earle, president of the BCTA. “Mr. Singh’s experience should never have happened, and it’s not unique. It is far past time for governments at all levels to get serious about eliminating exploitation and abuse of workers.”