Owner of Kelowna cleaning company fined, ordered to pay back wages

Ordered to pay back wages

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The owner of a Kelowna cleaning company has been ordered to pay back wages and fines totalling more than $16,000.

The owner of a Kelowna-area cleaning company has been fined and ordered to pay back wages and interest to five former employees.

BC’s Director of Employment Standards issued a judgment against Leslie Ann Robinson and Modust-Mop Cleaning Services on Feb. 10, with penalties totalling $16,197.

The amount includes $13,197 in wages, vacation pay, overtime, business costs and accrued interest and $3,000 in administrative penalties for six contraventions of the Employment Standards Act.

An investigation was launched after the five workers filed a complaint under the act. At issue was whether the women were considered employees or, as Robinson contended, independent contractors.

The Director of Employment Standards ruled that the women were employees, also rejecting Robinson’s argument that they set their own hours and set their own rate of pay.

“With respect to her assertion that the complainant chose their own work schedule, I find that the situation is more akin to the complainants informing Ms. Robinson as to their availability, but she was in control over whether they were needed to perform the work,” wrote Kuo-Hao (George) Lee, delegate of the Director of Employment Standards.

“I note that Ms. Robinson had arranged so that she was the only point of contact for the cleaning services' clients; the complainants were dependent on her for all the necessary information to perform the work, such as the clients' addresses and appointment times. In addition, Ms. Robinson and not the complainants invoiced and collected payments from the cleaning service's clients.

“I note as well that in some of Ms. Robinson's text message exchanges with some of the Complainants, she was also giving directions to them about what tasks needed to be done.”

The written decision said that Robinson provided little information on the complainants’ rate of pay, while most of the complainants, by contrast, provided detailed information about their rate of pay as well as information about their days and hours worked.

“I accordingly prefer and accept the complainants' evidence as the best evidence available with respect to their respective rate of pay and their days and hours worked,” added Lee.

Robinson was also ordered reimburse some business expenses, including cleaning supplies some of the women purchased and mileage for workers who used their own vehicles to travel between jobsites.

Robinson has five business days to pay the $16,197.