After months of missing out on royalties he says he was owed, bounced cheques, and toiling at his job of roasting coffee in what he describes as a sweltering, broken-down cottage overrun with mice, Fiorildo Tenace finally decided to approach the Ministry of Labour.

His aim was to stand up for his rights. Instead, he lost his job.

“It was horrible,” he said. “This is Toronto. A lot of people are living paycheque to paycheque.”

Experiences like Tenace’s are why experts say the Ministry of Labour’s current enforcement model needs to rely less on employees coming forward and more on a weapon it already has in its arsenal.

Data obtained by the Star shows that since 2012, the ministry’s so-called proactive inspection blitzes have been resoundingly successful at recovering workers’ unpaid wages and entitlements. These workplace-wide investigations, which happen at the ministry’s initiative, have collected 89 per cent of the money found owing to workers over the past six years.

Last year, a full 92 per cent of money owed to workers was voluntarily paid by employers following proactive blitzes.

Best of all, the blitzes do not require workers to step up and make individual claims — often at the expense of their job.

The latter approach has proved decidedly less efficient at recovering unpaid wages, the Star’s data shows: on average, the ministry has failed to collect one-third of the money owed to workers stuck in the claims system.

“I think it’s very important that there are proactive, preventative measures put in place, as opposed to relying on brave individual workers coming forward,” said John No, a lawyer at Parkdale Community Legal Services who represented Tenace.

But while the ministry assessed about 17,500 individual claims last year, it conducted just 2,477 proactive inspections.

With about 370,000 workplaces in Ontario, that pace means a single workplace has about a 0.7 per cent chance of ever getting “blitzed” by the ministry.

In the absence of more proactive investigations, workers like Tenace risk their livelihoods to flag violations.

Although there are exceptions for vulnerable workers, most employees in Ontario are legally required to inform their bosses when they file an employment standards claim at the ministry.

For Tenace, that requirement had devastating consequences.

His employer, Peter Adamo of Toronto-based Sense Appeal Coffee Roasters, fired him less than nine hours after Tenace told him he had filed a complaint with the Ministry of Labour.

According to Ontario Labour Relations Board documents, Adamo said Tenace lost his job because he “lacked passion” for coffee. But in August 2015, the board found that his termination was reprisal for asserting his rights under the Employment Standards Act.

Tenace, 37, still has not seen a penny of the more than $8,000 he is owed by his boss in lost wages and damages. Adamo did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Star.

Deena Ladd, who heads the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre, says employers are more likely to comply with ministry orders when their entire workplace is investigated and they receive an in-the-flesh visit from ministry officials.

“When an individual officer is assigned to an actual workplace, it’s (incumbent) upon them to actually ensure collections,” she said.

Despite their relative efficacy, the blitzes are happening far too infrequently, critics say — and are still not robust enough.

“The Ministry of Labour needs a lot more employment standards officers on the ground, so they have the capacity to do more,” Ladd said.

The Star has previously highlighted the large number of employer infractions uncovered through proactive inspections. In its last blitz, focused on precarious employment, the ministry found 78 per cent of workplaces inspected had broken the law.

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In a statement to the Star, the ministry said it “sees proactive enforcement as an important part of its strategy to enhance compliance with the ESA.” The ministry has already ramped up its efforts, investing an additional $3 million in protections for vulnerable workers last year.

But expanded inspections could ensure more violators are caught and more workers are paid back in full, Ladd says.

This would mean moving more case officers from the less effective claims process to focus on inspections, she argues. She says the ministry could also use individual claims as a trigger for extended investigations into companies where a worker has already flagged wrongdoing, or design a formal system for dealing with anonymous or third-party tips.

Currently, proactive investigations still give employers advance notice that they will be inspected, and rely on self-audits from employers. It is often difficult to conduct thorough interviews with workers, especially in workplaces where English is not the primary language, Ladd said.

“What we find is that there’s a lot of things that are hidden, and that the ministry doesn’t have the resources to do the kinds of investigations that are needed,” she added.

In the meantime, workers like Tenace are losing out — and losing faith in the system meant to protect them.

“Winning, and then finding out that winning means absolutely nothing, was the worst part.”

How to strengthen inspections

In a recent submission to the provincial government, which is currently reviewing its employment laws, the Workers’ Action Centre made these recommendations to improve proactive inspections:

Increase staffing dedicated to enforcement;

Partner with organizations that work with precarious workers to identify where violations are happening;

Target new practices that allow employers to evade the law, including employee misclassification;

Require companies providing work or services to the provincial government to abide by a fair wage policy and employment standards regulations.

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Sweet dream turns sour for victim of wage theft