I have a question about past experience working for an employment agency, and if it is still the case today?
So like back in 20032004. I moved from Toronto to Halifax. While in Halifax, I worked through a Temp agency as a general laborer. At one point, they had a bunch of use working at a newspaper stuffing flyers in the middle pages on an assembly line. At first, the job was good. We had all breaks we thought we were entitled to.
After a couple of months and things got very busy. We noticed we were working 81012 hours without a break… now, I'm not opposed to putting in a little extra work to get the job done. But being on your feet for extended periods of time is hard.
So we started to complain we were not getting a break… no smoke break… no bathroom break… no lunch break.
Being heavy smokers at the time, a couple of us were determined to have a smoke. We were on our way out the door when the supervisor told us if we walked out the door, we should keep going.
We went for a smoke… and yea, we were locked out of the building.
This was an overnight shift.
When I got home in the morning, I called the NS Labour Board to report those condition and what I thought was illegal.
What I was told by the agent from NS Labor Board was this:
The company you are sent to work for has no obligation to provide any type of break. You are considered 'machinery ' that can be run like a machine as long as they want. It is up to the temp agency to provide your breaks since that is your employer and not the newspaper.
Needless to say, I didn't go back… and informed a lot of other people this is the way they'd be treated …
So now my questions are:
Does anyone ever remember anything similar?
I can't see it being a NS thing, but did this type of thing happen in other provinces?
Does it still exist?