I'm in Canada, and for the last 2.5 years I've been working for an American company that expanded into Canada roughly 8 months before I was hired on. We have 6 different Canadian sites that we operate out of, 2 of which are in Alberta (where I'm located).
The job itself has been quite good (lots of freedom/autonomy, no upper management on site, above-average pay for the work done) and I recently earned a promotion and I'm now in charge of day-to-day operations at my site, while supervising a staff of 5. On the negative side, the company itself is a bit of a shit-show: untrustworthy management that loves to make empty/broken promises, and incompetent HR/Payroll professionals that are based in the southern US and don't have a clue about what goes on in their Canadian division. Up to this point, I've been able to ignore a lot of the BS on the company side of things as I'm pretty much left alone to run my location as I see fit, and very rarely have to deal with managers/directors/HR etc. We operate in our own little bubble, we meet targets, and we are left alone for the most part.
Without giving too many details (don't want to out myself or the company), compensation for workers at the Canadian locations is production-based. Everyone has a base hourly rate (minimum hourly wage you will earn) with production target incentives built on top of that. Most employees, depending on skill/work ethic/experience level, will make 20-30%+ more than their base rate on average.
After some recent/suspicious PTO (paid time off) policy changes, I did some digging through old pay statemements as well as the Alberta Employment Standards. As it turns out, it appears that the company has been shorting its Canadian employees on both statutory holiday pay, as well as vacation pay. I suspect that they realized this, and revamped their policies in a very convoluted way to try and cover their tracks and hope that no one would notice.
Prior to the policy changes, stat holidays (during which we are closed for business, but still entitled to holiday pay) were being paid out to employees as 8 hours x base hourly rate. So basically, even if an employee normally earned $X/hour based on their productivity, they would get 20-30+% less on paid holidays due to company only paying out the base rate amount. After going through the Alberta Employment Standards, I learned that this is not legal – hourly/commissioned employees who have a day off (on a day they would normally work) due to a stat holiday are to be paid their 'average daily wage' for that day. 'Average daily wage' is to be calculated by dividing their total gross earnings in the previous 4 weeks by the number of days worked….in almost all cases, this average daily wage is going to be 20-30%+ more than the 8 hours x base hourly wage the company has been using for the last 3+ years.
Similarly, the company was conveniently using only the base hourly rate to pay out vacation time (40 hours of vacation time would be paid out as 40 x hourly base rate). This would result in employees getting a smaller than normal paycheck while on PTO/vacation. According to Alberta Employment Standards, employees with less than 5 years with the company are entitled to 4% of gross earnings (excluding overtime) in the form of vacation pay. With how the company previously structured and paid out vacation pay, they only paid 4% of the base hourly rate instead of 4% of gross earnings minus overtime – again, shorting employees by 20-30%+ depending on individual earnings.
I discovered these issues on Friday, and took the weekend to re-read the employment standards numerous times to make sure I wasn't missing anything. On Sunday evening, I sent an email to payroll and HR, and cc'd my manager as well as upper management/directors. In it, I explained that I believed our company had been incorrectly paying out both holiday and vacation pay to their Alberta employees (I havent had time to read the employment standards for the other provinces we operate in, but I'm fairly certain all Canadian employees are being shorted with how they've been calculating holiday and vacation pay). I took a very neutral and diplomatic approach as if it was an honest mistake/oversight, even though I'm not 100% certain that this is the case. I clearly added links to the relevant sections of the employment standards in question.
I want to make sure this issue gets resolved and that people (including myself) are paid what they are owed, but also want to tread lightly as I don't want to lose my job…..it's a good gig despite the company BS. It's now been 24 hours, and despite hearing from my manager about other items today, I have received no acknowledgement or reply to my email.
How should I proceed? How long do I let it go before bringing it up again/do I bring it up again? Am I at risk of being fired? How long should I give them to make this right before going to the Labour Board?Even if this was an honest mistake, it's quite a gaffe……I'd estimate that close to 100 current and past employees are entitled to back pay. I'd welcome any input from people that have been in a similar situation, or have working knowledge of Canadian labour laws.