HALIFAX—As restaurant and bar staff remain on high alert following multiple dine-and-dash incidents in the Halifax area, a labour lawyer is speaking out to ensure employees know their rights and employers understand their responsibilities.

Halifax Regional Police Const. Carol McIsaac said they have 13 reports on file dating back to March 19 from local establishments that have had a woman bail on her bill.

Photos of a female suspect were shared on social media in recent days by restaurant and bar employees after at least two eateries were conned by the dine-and-dash scam over the weekend. Comments from people who posted online identifying themselves as scammed servers said their employers made them pay either the whole tab or part of the bill.

Jason Edwards, an associate labour and employment lawyer with Halifax firm Pink Larkin, said on Tuesday that in most cases this shouldn’t happen.

“The Labour Standards Code is very, very clear in Nova Scotia. The vast majority of employees in Nova Scotia will be covered by the Labour Standards Code, in particular employees working in the restaurant business,” Edwards explained.

“Section 79A (2) very clearly states that employers cannot deduct from employee wages when somebody leaves without paying.”

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The exception as outlined in the code is if the employer can verify that the loss is the fault of the employee.

“My reading of that is pretty narrow and I would expect that that is basically designed to stop employees from orchestrating thefts themselves,” Edwards said.

“I can’t say for sure but I would guess that in a situation like a dimly-lit bar, a loud bar where a server is covering eight or 10 tables of 30 people or more, it would be very difficult for an employer to show that an employee is at fault.”

Although employees can file a complaint with the employment standards division of the labour board, Edwards said it’s often difficult to say how an employer will react to a complaint and “you can’t always guarantee that they will follow the code and follow the law.”

He decided to share a blog post on Tuesday outlining the provisions as set out under the Labour Standards Code after reading about the dine-and-dash thefts and servers claiming to have been stuck with the bill.

“I find these issues very interesting because there’s such a huge imbalance of power between employer and employee in those situations,” he said.

“In situations where people experience a lot of precarity, where people are sort of transient, there’s a lot of changeover, people work for low wages, work really difficult hours with very tough clientele at times … I think that those people deserve to have their rights respected.”

Although the current code has been in place since 2005, Edwards said it can be difficult for employers who are busy running small businesses keep abreast of all the rules. But he said that doesn’t mean they don’t have to.

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“Ignorance is no excuse,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about the individual cases, I don’t know anything about what happened in these particular instances that have cropped up recently, but what I can say is that the provisions in the labour standards code are very clear and that they will apply to the vast majority of employers and employees in food service in Nova Scotia.”

Clarification: This story has been updated from a previous version.

Yvette d'Entremont is a Halifax-based reporter covering health, environment and education. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

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