Briefly: Employment Standards Tribunal’s Nov. 6 decision upholds order for Overstory to compensate workers laid-off after 2022 sale.
Bob Mackin
B.C.’s Employment Standards Tribunal (EST) has rejected an appeal from the owner of the Georgia Straight newspaper and ordered it to pay more than $270,000 to the workers it laid-off more than two years ago.
Georgia Straight box (Mackin)
Last April, Employment Standards Branch (ESB) delegate Shannon Corregan decided Overstory Media Inc. must pay $270,819.02 to nine former employees for wages, vacation pay, length of service compensation and interest within five days. Instead, Overstory filed an appeal.
Corregan concluded that Overstory paid $400,000 to Wei Lin on Sept. 22, 2022 for the Georgia Straight’s parent company, Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp., and then fired the staff five days later. Corregan said that the Employment Standards Act makes the purchaser of a company liable for outstanding wages, even if the liability was incurred by the vendor.
Overstory’s appeal claimed Corregan erred in law and failed to observe natural justice. Additionally, it claimed new evidence came available. Overstory argued that the sale date was actually Sept. 27, 2022 and that it did not owe the affected workers any pay.
But tribunal member Kenneth William Thornicroft’s Nov. 6 order said “the law is clear that all employees on the vendor’s payroll as of the date of the disposition are deemed to have continued their employment with the purchaser.”
Thornicroft wrote that Overstory’s appeal lacked merit and there was no need to seek a submission from the complainants or the Director of Employment Standards.
“In my view, none of the reasons advanced in support of this appeal has any reasonable prospect of succeeding and, that being the case, the appellant’s appeal must be dismissed,” Thornicroft decided.
The individual wage awards, including regular wages, vacation pay, length of service compensation and interest, range from about $21,400 to $42,700, with the average being around $30,100. Thornicroft’s order said the total owing is $217,319.02 plus additional interest.
Overstory paid the full amount of the determination to the Direct of Employment Standards in April and it is being held in-trust. Overstory has a month to decide whether to appeal the tribunal’s decision.
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