Hello comrades!
I come to you today seeking ideas and help in a quest to seek some small kernel of justice.
I’ll try to be brief with this story: Essentially, I worked as a truck driver on a film production in December of last year, wasn’t paid for half of my wages, not reimbursed for some purchases I made for the production. I called and emailed for months and was either ignored or told payments would be coming ‘soon’. During this time I also asked around and discovered that at least a dozen other workers were either not paid or only partially paid.
I filed a complaint with the employment standards branch (ESB) or unpaid wages and waited the 6 months it took to get to my file (turns out there’s a huge backlog of workers filing complaints about unethical working conditions and unpaid wages, quelle suprise).
I learned through asking around about who else wasn’t paid that this is a pattern from previous productions as well.
The ESB got to my file and has now contacted them to see what’s going on. One of the producers (who I have email correspondence with, and is listed on the IMDb listing of the film) is claiming no affiliation with the production. I did immediately receive a message from my supervisor asking me to send a breakdown of what is owed me to the director and I will “probably” get paid. I did so, and was sure to include the interest that had accrued in the 8 months of non-payment (negligible as it was) according to the employment standards act. I may have also made the subject line of the email “Stolen Wages December 2021”.
I received in response an EXTREMELY defensive email from the director asking me to stop using “you” and “yours” in my language about this and “making it personal”. I re-read my email and the only place i used “your” was when I said “I worked on your production and was not paid”. He is listed as the director on IMDb. Lol. He also asked me to make no further contact with him.
Anyway, now that the ESB is following up I feel there’s a better chance I’ll be paid, but I don’t even really care about that at this point, I just want them to have to pay all the other wage workers they stole from to make this (terrible, I’m sure) movie. I’ve tried to encourage everyone else I was in contact with who wasn’t paid to file with the ESB but now the 6 month window in which you can do that has passed so any other ideas about how I can agitate to make sure they get paid as well. We are not unionized.
Just to add the cherry on top of it all, the director’s whole brand is making ‘social justice’ themed movies, including this one. Kind of a bummer that attention and funding that is going to this guy could instead be going to someone making real, nuanced art and not stealing wages from their crew.
Any ideas of where I can go from here? Maybe I’ll be paid, maybe not, but I want to advocate for the others who were not paid and maybe didn’t file early enough, or are scared of the possibility of losing potential work in this highly competitive industry if they try to advocate for themselves.