Isabelle Faure did her best to wait patiently for the $5,000 her former boss owed her. It was only after a “long series of letdowns” — and an invasive surgery that left her unable to earn money for four months — that angry desperation set in.

It’s been a year and a half since she gathered meticulous documentation of unpaid wages at downtown barber Mankind Grooming, obtained a ruling in her favour by the Ministry of Labour, and emailed dozens of increasingly desperate pleas to the authorities for help.

But 20 months since she first filed her claim to the ministry, Faure is still out of pocket — leaving her wondering whether the system meant to protect her is fit for purpose.

“When I brought my evidence into the ministry I was told repeatedly that I was one of the most organized people they’d ever seen,” she said. “If I can’t get justice, who can?”

When the Star called Mankind, a man who identified himself only as Ajay said Faure’s payment had recently been sent. Subsequent questions sent by the Star by email did not receive a response. Faure says she’s received “no notification” that payment is on its way.

The Toronto-based hairstylist began working at Mankind, known for its high-end grooming services, in 2014. Her pay was supposed to be based on commission from her total sales. According to evidence she submitted to the ministry in March 2018, her earnings were miscalculated for the duration of that period, as was the public holiday pay she was entitled to.

In the ministry decision seen by the Star, Mankind didn’t dispute that Faure was owed an “unknown amount of unpaid wages,” blaming the underpayment on a “payroll system issue.”

But because Ontario law only allows employment standards claims that go back two years or less, the ministry found Faure was only owed unpaid wages from March 2016 to March 2018.

In October last year, it ordered Mankind to pay almost $5,500. The business was also issued a “ticket” of $250 for breaking workplace laws.

Even though she wouldn’t receive all the wages she claimed for, Faure thought the decision would at least bring closure.

“At the time, I had no way of knowing that the MOL would do essentially nothing to enforce its own regulations,” she told the Star.

By the end of last November, Mankind had missed its prescribed deadline to pay. As a result, Faure was told the Ministry of Finance would take over the collections process.

By January, there had been no movement, according to a series of emails between Faure and the authorities. That same month, Faure finally received her record of employment from Mankind, and noticed the business had changed its legal name from the one named in her wage theft claim.

But when she alerted the Ministry of Finance, she was told her money could only be collected from the entity she originally listed. By this time, she was about to undergo surgery for a benign tumour on her spine and would be unable to work for several months.

“I need my wages,” she wrote to the Ministry of Labour case officer in charge of her file. “I need them very badly.”

Mankind did not respond to the Star’s questions about why a different legal name appeared on Faure’s record of employment.

When the ministry issues orders to pay, it can make the company that employed the worker responsible, as well as the company’s director. Avvy Go, director of the Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, who has worked on numerous high-profile wage theft cases, says best practice is to do both from the outset. This way, companies can’t simply shut down or change their name to avoid liability.

“Then the director is personally liable,” Go says. “It provides another avenue for workers to collect their owed wages.”

In Faure’s case, only Mankind was issued an order to pay. Once the company missed its deadline, her case manager told her the ministry would issue the same order to the company’s director. For months, Faure emailed her case officer seeking confirmation that had happened.

By August — more than a year since first filing her claim — she was told by the officer that the process had “started,” but that no evidence could be provided due to “privacy laws.”

“It’s a system that a native English speaker that knows their rights can’t navigate,” says Faure. “So how could someone new to Canada easily do this? How could they be protected? And employers know that.”

In an emailed statement to the Star, a Ministry of Labour spokesperson said that when orders to pay wages are issued, employers are “required to comply with the order.”

“The ministry pursues enforcement of outstanding orders through collection activities and possible prosecutions.”

In 2017, a review of the province’s labour standards by two independent experts found that there are “too many people in too many workplaces who do not receive their basic rights.” That same year, the Ministry of Labour recovered just one-third of the stolen entitlements owed to workers who filed claims, according to data obtained by the Star through a Freedom of Information request.

Amongst other recommendations, the advisers’ report suggested better funding for enforcement, including increasing the number of enforcement officers. The previous Liberal government committed to hiring 175 more such officers; 75 were hired before Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives were elected and instituted a hiring freeze.

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While proactive employment standards inspections are proven to be significantly more effective at recovering workers’ wages (with a near 100 per cent recovery rate), these inspections have declined by a third across the province.

In 2017-18 there were 3,500 such inspections. In 2018-19, there have been less than 2,400.

The result, Faure believes, is that law-breaking employers are “emboldened.”

“Many community organizations have been talking about the enforcement issue for years and years,” adds Go. “The complaints-driven system simply doesn’t work because it relies on individual workers to file claims. Many of them will not do it until they lose their job.”

Faure believes she was terminated as reprisal for discovering the pay discrepancies and organizing other staff members to try to recoup their money. The ministry has issued at least one other order to pay on behalf of another Mankind employee.

But the ministry’s October 2018 decision found Faure was “guilty of wilful misconduct” after making an “obscene gesture” directed at “an authorized representative” of the business’s owner. As a result, the ministry ruled she was not entitled to termination pay and was not fired out of reprisal for exercising her workplace rights.

Faure says she did, in a moment of anger, flip off Ajay Sharma, who is described in the ministry’s decision as an “authorized representative” of Mankind’s owner.

At the time of the incident, Faure says she had been raising underpayment issues on behalf of herself and her colleagues for two months — to no avail.

“I was extremely frustrated,” she says. “It was not a mature moment in my life, but an understandable one I think.”

(The 2017 labour law review found “widespread fear of reprisal” among Ontario workers if they complained about violations, and recommended that cases that alleged reprisal “should be given priority” by the ministry.)

All in all, Faure says the ordeal has taken an emotional and financial toll.

“I cried a lot. The frustration ... of just slowly realizing they were getting away with it, and the government was fine with that,” she says.

Although she was able to find a new job, “when you start anywhere you’re going to take a pay cut.”

“Only just now, about a year and a half after this all occurred, is my salary starting to match what I was making at Mankind. So it was a significant loss.”

Ironically, she says, filing a claim to the Ministry of Labour rather than going to court was supposed to be the smoother and less costly way to win back her wages.

Instead, it’s left her “defeated as a victim, and angry as a taxpayer.”

“I deserve justice,” she says. “And I deserve the wages I worked for.”