Take this restaurant job and ... complain about it

KARINE DRIEDGER / RED RIVER COLLEGE Enlarge Image

Toni Bilenduke, 32, is now happily serving at Tre Visi in the Exchange District.

WINNIPEG - Restaurant employees who feel they’ve been screwed out of wages or tips may have a second battle to fight — this one with the Manitoba government.

Documents released by the province after a freedom of information request show there have been roughly 2,235 complaints made by restaurant and café employees to the Employment Standards branch in the last five years.

About 87 per cent of the complaints were settled without the help of the employment standards branch, either because employees gave up or settled the problem themselves. In these cases, it’s impossible to know whether the employee got the wages they believed they deserved.

About 50 complaints were formally investigated by the department -- and of the cases investigated, 11 people settled for less money than they were owed — and nearly a dozen others didn’t get a penny.

Service-industry workers file 60 per cent of the total claims made to the employment standards branch, and there are a lot of things the branch can’t settle for workers, said Dave Dyson, the branch’s director.

"Our view is the majority of complaints [stem from] ignorance of the legislation. Either employees or employers believe they have rights that they don’t actually have," said Dyson.

"We are recovering less than the cost of this operation, but if you didn’t have employment standards then you’d have a lot of employees who didn’t get what they were entitled to."

Server Toni Bilenduke agrees.  She has worked for 15 restaurants in Winnipeg over the last 14 years and has filed two complaints with the province’s employment standards branch.

Bilenduke is one of lucky ones — her first complaint was resolved and she was paid what she was owed plus interest after being fired without two weeks' notice.

Her second complaint is against The District Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge for roughly six weeks of work without pay. According to Bilenduke, several other employees of the restaurant have also made complaints after their paycheques bounced.

The province has ordered the restaurant to pay what it owed but, as of the end of November, the restaurant had not responded.

"They’re ignoring all communication and correspondence that’s coming to them from the Employment Standards," says Bilenduke.

A staff member at The District denied that any employees had gone unpaid, but refused to comment further or give their name when contacted at the end of November. Bilenduke is hoping to receive payment by early next year.

The Employment Standards Branch works for both employers and employees, Bilenduke says, noting that without the branch to settle disputes, employees would steal from employers in order to get compensation for lost wages.

"What would you do if they weren’t there?" asked Bilenduke. "You would have people trashing the place that they used to work at. I’d probably go in there and steal everything I possibly could."