On Paul Harding's first day in the kitchen at Auberge du Pommier, the cook arrived 15 minutes early for his official start time of two o'clock. Soon Mr. Harding would realize he was actually very late for work.

"I noticed that everybody was already there. And again the second day," says Mr. Harding, who cooked there in 2006 and is now the chef and owner of TOOK in London, Ont. He initially figured his colleagues were beating him to work by five minutes. The reality was that they were all arriving an hour early every day. "I realized that being new, in order to get all your prep done, you would have to come in that early to be ready for service," he says.

The time, of course, was unpaid.

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People who don't work in kitchens are mystified at why hourly employees would work an hour or two off the clock every day. I get it because I've done it. Years ago, when I worked as a cook, I would come in two hours early every day, trying to keep up, hoping to get ahead. Finally, my chef told me that I should either get faster at my work, or find a slower kitchen. He was a good boss and said this to be supportive.

There are plenty of chefs and restaurateurs ready to accept the free labour as part of the workplace culture. That doesn't make it right.

When you talk to cooks in Toronto about unpaid labour, they most frequently point to larger operators such as Oliver & Bonacini restaurants. As an established company with a dozen restaurants and more than 1,000 employees, O&B is an industry leader. It sets standards and attitudes – and has the power to change them.

In all, I spoke with 17 O&B employees, past and present (many who would only speak off the record for fear of their future employment), who described the same custom of unpaid labour at Auberge du Pommier, Biff's Bistro, the O&B Café Grill chain, America at the Trump hotel, Luma at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and the four-star Canoe, on the 54th floor of the TD Centre in Toronto's financial district.

Not all of them are unhappy about this arrangement. While some of the O&B employees who spoke to me feel exploited, many are grateful for the learning opportunity.

"I worked a lot of hours that I didn't get paid for," says Adam Alguire, now chef at The County General on Queen Street West. He counts the extra work he put in at Canoe, where he cooked from 2010 to 2013, as essential to his education.

"That sort of system puts it on the cook," says Mr. Alguire, who would arrive two hours early every day until he eventually got fast enough that he could afford to come in only 30 minutes early. "If you want to do better, or if you want to come in later, then you need to work faster and you need to work better."

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Oliver & Bonacini's policy is that cooks are paid for time worked, says Theresa Suraci, the company's director of communications.

"It is possible that some cooks come in early, or at unscheduled times, to organize themselves or receive mentorship from their chefs when the restaurant is not in service, though this is not a practice that is required by Oliver & Bonacini," Ms. Suraci says.

"We set clear start times in our schedules, and strive to ensure all employees have the tools to effectively manage their time on their shifts. We appreciate the strong culture of dedication and work ethic that exists within our back-of-the-house staff. At the same time, we would hope that if team members felt pressured to work unscheduled hours, they would bring this to the attention of management to be addressed."

If everyone in my workplace is working off the clock every day, I can't imagine putting up my hand to object.

"Something that O&B does a very good job of is building the culture," Mr. Alguire says. And it's not the chef enforcing early start times. "You get a hell of a lot more pressure from your peers," he adds. "Like when I would see people walk in at 2 o'clock, I'd be like, 'What the hell are you doing walking in at 2 o'clock? Because I'm going to have to end up doing some of your mise en place.'"

Vytas Ruslys has cooked at top restaurants such as Buca, Aria and, in 2013, Auberge du Pommier, where he raised concerns about unpaid labour after putting in at least two hours extra a day.

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"I had multiple discussions with my chef and sous chefs about it," says Mr. Ruslys, who after 10 years has left the industry and is looking to go back to school. "I got tired of the way people are treated, especially cooks. The money, the hours – I want to have a life."

"I think you should give cooks a prep list you know they can't complete," wrote celebrated New York chef Wylie Dufresne in a 2015 essay for Lucky Peach magazine. That philosophy – that part of a chef's job is to toughen up young cooks, to push them past their own expectations – appeals in theory. The problem is the snowball effect. When coming in early is expected, it no longer counts as going above and beyond. It's the new bare minimum.

Attitudes among cooks I spoke with are split, between those who feel pressured (though never told) to work unpaid hours and those who say they volunteer to work for free because they're passionate about cooking, that the extra hours are the only way they'll learn and advance.

Everyone has to start at the bottom, and unpaid overtime is the fastest route up the ladder in countless industries. For the extra effort that doctors and lawyers put in, they eventually make a very good living. But for cooks (or for journalists, because we're guilty too), the well-paid job almost never comes. In place of money, every creative field uses "passion" as a catch-all excuse for labour transgressions. The cooks and chefs who are proponents of this practice all repeat some version of "We do this because of passion," or "No one does this to get rich." But do the math. If a cook comes in two hours early, five days a week, that equals an extra three months of work a year – unpaid.

I've lost track of how many chefs, half joking and half not, have said that their cooks are students, and for the free education they're getting, they ought to be paying the restaurant. Well, restaurants are not schools. They're businesses. It's time they started acting like it and pay their employees for all the hours they work.