Shoddy records. Empty offices. Evasive companies.

This is some of what Ministry of Labour inspectors found as they probed temp agencies that have supplied workers to one of the continent’s biggest industrial bakeries, Fiera Foods.

The ministry launched a proactive inspection of temp agencies, including those supplying the North York factory, following a 2017 Star investigation of the company and its affiliated plants, where three temp workers had died since 1999.

Fiera has said it maintains the highest health and safety standards and cuts ties with temp agencies that do not follow the rules.

Over the past year, the Star has obtained court documents, workers’ compensation records and Ministry of Labour inspection reports that illustrate the company’s relationships with a complicated web of temp agencies that operate with little transparency or accountability. Some do not have a functioning office; others list their address as a UPS mailbox. Layers of temp agencies and subcontractors can make it difficult to know who is a worker’s true employer and who to hold accountable when something goes wrong.

Since 2015, at least 50 temp agencies have received clearance from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board to provide workers to Fiera Foods and its affiliated plants. Fiera’s workforce is around 70 per cent temporary, according to WSIB records.

There is nothing illegal about this set up, but workers’ rights advocates have long argued it is open to abuse because under current labour laws, companies like Fiera are not legally responsible for most of the actions of the temp agencies they use. In Ontario, temp agencies are considered workers’ “employer of record,” meaning they are liable for workplace injuries at the workers’ compensation board as well as most employment rights, such as severance, limits on hours of work, and protections against reprisal. The only area of joint liability for temp agencies and their client companies is unpaid wages.

“Many employers are choosing to use temporary agencies to distance themselves from their employment obligations,” noted one submission from the Centre for Spanish Speaking People’s Legal Clinic to the Ministry of Labour in 2015 as part of a review of Ontario labour laws aimed at updating protections for precarious workers.

An internal audit conducted by the WSIB between 2013 and 2016 also found that hundreds of temp agencies closed after being audited to ensure they were paying accurate insurance premiums and complying with other board requirements. A quarter of them subsequently re-opened under new names.

In a statement, Fiera Foods’ general counsel David Gelbloom said the company “values the health and safety of all its employees, including temporary employees” and that Fiera treats all workers equally.

The Star obtained the ministry’s inspection records related to some temp agencies that supply Fiera via a freedom of information request.

One of the agencies the ministry inspected was GTA Recruitment, which claimed to have five workers at Fiera or its affiliated factories, according to ministry inspectors’ notes. When inspectors checked Fiera’s records, they said the agency actually placed at least 125 to 127 workers at Fiera, according to the investigation records.

Accurate payroll reporting is important for correctly calculating workers’ compensation premiums as well as other contributions, such as employment insurance and the Canada Pension Plan. WSIB premiums, for example, are based in part on the number of employees a company is responsible for insuring. So a smaller payroll can mean lower costs.

GTA Recruitment told inspectors the discrepancy was because it sells its contract with Fiera Foods for “10-15% commission” to two other temp agencies.

The ministry struggled to find one of these agencies, which apparently supplied “about 300 workers” to GTA Recruitment because one of its two listed addresses was a UPS mailbox. The other was an address for a metal distributor who told inspectors they had once been approached by a temp agency about renting a boardroom. They did not have a name or any contact information for the agency. Phone calls to the agency from the Star were not returned.

“You need to start a whole detective agency to figure out where these temp agencies are,” said Ellen MacEachen, a professor at the University of Waterloo and affiliate of the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health. “It’s bizarre to have an employer who you’ve never met. Employers have a lot of responsibilities, including health and safety,” she added. “How are they going to fulfill them if they’ve never met the (worker) face to face?”

A May 2018 inspection at GTA Recruitment’s office found no records of safety awareness training for any of the five workers officially on its payroll.

Advocates have long argued that temp agencies, subcontractors, and their client companies should all be held responsible for employment rights to ensure accountability in the event of abuses.

“My concern is these companies will always find some creative ways to hide behind some kind of corporate veil,” said Avvy Go, director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. “The employees who are there helping them earn their profit should get protection regardless of who employs them on paper.”

GTA Recruitment is run by Vaughan resident Artur Koval, who was found guilty in 2013 of fraud over $5,000 and several other charges, all unrelated to running a temp agency. In 2015, the terms of his probation were eased in order to allow him to handle money on behalf of GTA Recruitment and a Montreal-based construction company, court records show.

Koval did not respond to questions from the Star or to calls and emails from ministry inspectors, according to investigation records.

Inspectors spoke with GTA Recruitment’s HR manager Vadim Lebov, who was formerly the director of TOPS employment agency, according to the Ministry of Labour’s investigation records. (TOPS had clearance from the WSIB to supply workers to Fiera Foods between 2014 and 2015, according to compensation board records. In 2011, a federal tax court found the agency had failed to make the required tax deductions from workers’ pay. TOPS closed two years ago.)

OL and Partners, another temp agency that has supplied Fiera Foods with workers, also sub-contracts to other temp agencies and was difficult for inspectors to contact, ministry records show. OL and Partners employed the fourth temp worker to die at a Fiera-affiliated factory, Upper Crust. The worker died in October after being found on the ground between a loading dock and a tractor trailer.

OL and Partners incorporated on the same day, May 13, 2015, as another temp agency supplying workers to Fiera Foods called Galaktika. The two agencies are located in separate suites on the same floor of the same North York office building, but are registered to two different people.

“Empty office...door locked, no sign of business name,” ministry inspectors’ notes say following a visit to OL and Partners’ listed address in May 2018.

Neither OL and Partners nor Galaktika responded to recent requests for comment from the Star.

Inspectors spoke with a representative of OL and Partners whose name was redacted in the records released to the Star. The representative told the ministry the company had eight workers on its payroll, all of whom were placed at Fiera Foods or its affiliate, Upper Crust.

According to Fiera Foods’ records, OL and Partners actually supplied 220 workers, the inspection notes said. The temp agency told inspectors the additional workers were supplied by a subcontractor called Gold Star Agency.

The woman listed as Gold Star’s director on its incorporation documents told the Star she was a single mother with three part-time jobs and had never owned a business other than working as an Avon salesperson more than a decade ago. She said she had never heard of Gold Star until she recently began receiving phone calls and letters from government agencies, including the Canada Revenue Agency about unpaid taxes.

Shortly before the October death at Upper Crust, another temp agency called GALACTICA registered at the WSIB to supply workers to Fiera Foods. It shares the same address as Galaktika but is registered to a Geidar Zeinalov. The signatory of an OL and Partners injury report to the WSIB about the temp who died in October is also Geidar Zeinalov. He is not listed on OL and Partners official incorporation records.

Following the death of its worker in October, OL and Partners, whose corporate director is Lana Ostrovsky, emailed an unsigned statement to the Star that called the death a “tragedy” and said they would be cooperating with “relevant authorities to understand the accident.” But when later contacted by phone, a man who said he was running the agency for his mother told the Star to contact Fiera Foods with questions.

“If you need information, why you need it from me? Like, who I am? Go to Fiera Foods,” he said.

Workers themselves are not always clear on which agency employs them. The Star spoke to one temp worker at Fiera last year who said he picked up his wages in cash from a payday lender in North York. The worker said he had worked at Fiera for years and that the agency that employed him had changed numerous times. He did not know the name of the agency he currently worked for, but the envelope with his money in it had “OL and Partners” written on the front.

Large portions of the Star’s freedom of information request related to four agencies — Magnus Services, Galaktika, OL and Partners and GTA Recruitment — were redacted due to an unspecified “ongoing law enforcement matter.”

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This can refer to law enforcement activities carried about by any public body that has enforcement proceedings, including police, government ministries, tribunals and tax agencies.

Janet Deline, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Labour, said charges had been laid against Magnus Services and its directors under the Employment Standards Act for failing to produce records at the demand of an inspections officer and for “hindering, obstructing or interfering with” a ministry inspection. A first court appearance took place June 20.

Deline said further details about the other temp agencies could not be provided because a ministry investigation is “ongoing.”

Emails previously obtained by the Star from the WSIB said the CRA was “investigating” 13 temp agencies that supplied Fiera with workers between 2011 and 2014. Most of those agencies listed office addresses that were in fact UPS mailboxes and several have since shut down. When asked about whether this investigation was ongoing, the CRA said it “cannot comment on investigations that it may or may not be undertaking.”

In a written statement, Gelbloom, of Fiera Foods, would not comment on whether the company currently uses workers from Magnus, GTA Recruitment, Galaktika or OL and Partners. “We do not discuss individual staffing contracts in the media,” he said.

Gelbloom said Fiera Foods “would be happy” to work with the government on a review of regulations for temp agencies. He would not say if any temp agencies the company has used are facing legal scrutiny. Gelbloom previously noted that while an agency has WSIB clearance to supply workers to Fiera it does not necessarily mean the agency is “actively” supplying the company with workers.

Gelbloom added that the Star’s “continued determination to misrepresent Fiera Foods and exploitation of a tragedy as part of a broader employment commentary is deeply concerning.”

The Ministry of Labour concluded its 2018 inspection blitz of temp agencies last year, but it is still investigating several agencies that supply Fiera.

In 2017, the Star went undercover as a temp worker at Fiera Foods after being hired through Magnus Services, whose office was an empty unit in a strip mall. Magnus’s owner, Aleksandr Ostrovsky, previously registered a mushroom growing company to the same strip mall.

The Star’s reporter, who did not receive any training from the temp agency, was paid in cash with no pay stub and no deductions at a payday lender called Cashmania.

Shortly after the Star’s 2017 investigation, Fiera said it was “engaging in a third party audit” of the temp agencies it uses. It did not disclose the name of the auditor nor reveal the findings of the audit, but now says it has developed a code of conduct to ensure the temp agencies it works with “meet the high standards we set.” The company would not share the contents of its code of conduct.

In his statement to the Star for this story, Gelbloom said Fiera Foods has “robust safety standards in place, but have regrettably faced tragedy despite these standards.” He wrote that the company will continue to “audit the marketplace” for best practices.

“We do not, however, intend to provide continued commentary on broader labour issues or allegations about private companies being raised by the Star.”

On June 20, at the hearing for Magnus and its directors, Aleksandr Ostrovsky appeared in an Old City Hall courtroom to face the charges laid by the Ministry of Labour. In addition to the charges against his temp agency, Ostrovsky and a co-director are also personally charged.

In a phone interview two days before his scheduled court appearance, Ostrovsky told the Star he had shut down his agency and was unaware of any upcoming court hearings.

Read more:

Ministry inspections of Fiera Foods left out a partner factory. Months later, another temp worker died

NDP pushes for more inspections at industrial bakery where workers died

Factory in undercover Star investigation faces CRA scrutiny

He did, however, attend the brief hearing. He told the court he was only representing himself, not his company. When the Justice of the Peace asked who was representing the company, he shrugged.

Outside the courtroom the Star asked Ostrovsky why he said he was not appearing on behalf of his company. He showed the Star what appeared to be the notice of the charges against him personally. “This is all I got,” he said.

Asked if he was Magnus’s owner, Ostrovsky said: “Do your homework.”

How other countries regulate temp agencies:

Canada has among the weakest labour protections for temp workers in the developed world, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development indicators of employment protection. In the OECD’s 2013 ranking of 43 industrialized countries, Canada sits second-last in terms of how it regulates temp work. Little has changed since then. Most provinces do not, for example, limit what kinds of jobs temp workers can do, nor do they regulate how long a worker can be employed as a temp before they must be made permanent, as many other countries do. Last year Ontario Premier Doug Ford also scrapped legislation that would have ensured workers received equal pay for equal work, which would have benefited temp workers.

Sources: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Republic of Slovenia’s Employment Relations Act, Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law, Belgian Federal Public Service, The Illinois General Assembly, The National Labor Relations Board