Employee returned vehicle to same location from where he originally obtained it
An adjudicator has ordered a New Brunswick company to pay back the money it deducted from an employee’s final paycheque to cover the cost of retrieving a vehicle he left at different location than where the company wanted it.
Bruno Martin was a truck driver for Donnelly Farms, a provider of refrigerated freight services based in Lansdowne, N.B. When he was hired in November 2014, he signed a document – described by Donnelly Farms as an employment contract – that stipulated if he quit without two weeks’ notice or was fired and didn’t complete the two-week notice period, he wouldn’t receive any bonuses owing to him. He signed the contract a few days after he was hired and immediately was assigned a truck that was in Moncton, where Martin lived.
The contract also stated that if Martin didn’t want to work or Donnelly Farms anymore, he would return his truck to the company. If the truck wasn’t returned, the company would deduct $2 per mile from the location of the truck to the company’s yard in Lansdowne.
The contract also contained a provision that if the truck’s interior wasn’t clean when he returned it, the company could deduct $50 to have it cleaned.
It didn’t take long for Martin to become unhappy with the working conditions at Donnelly. In December 2014, he drove his truck to Newfoundland and returned to Moncton. He immediately picked up a load for Prince Edward Island and travelled there. When he returned to Moncton again, he had another load to deliver to Toronto that was urgent. Martin didn’t have much time to sleep and when he arrived in Toronto, the load he was supposed to bring back wasn’t ready.
Martin was frustrated when he had to wait all day for the load he was to deliver back to the Maritimes, and this was the last straw for him. On Dec. 6, he told Donnelly’s owner he quit and the owner told him if that was the case, he was to drive his truck back to Lansdowne and his transportation back to Moncton would be arranged.
Martin didn’t believe the owner regarding the transportation back home, so he drove his truck to Moncton and left it at Donnelly’s facility there — the same location where he had originally picked up the truck after he was hired.
The owner and another employee travelled from Lansdowne to Moncton to retrieve the truck and its trailer and bring it back to Lansdowne. It then deducted the cost of that trip from Martin’s final paycheque — a total of $831.20.
Martin filed a complaint with Employment Skills Development Canada for the deducted amount, and ESDC issued a payment order to Donnelly for that amount plus $5.20 in vacation pay owed to Martin under the Canada Labour Code. Donnelly appealed the order to the Minister of Labour.
The matter was referred to an adjudicator, who noted that the code prohibited deductions from employee wages unless authorized in writing by the employee, required by legislation or court order, or were overpayments by the employer.
The adjudicator found no evidence that Martin was given an orientation or an opportunity to question the contents of the employment contract before he signed it. It was also notable that most of his loads were picked up at the Moncton facility, which was frequently used by Donnelly. This would suggest there was no real financial loss suffered by the company by Martin leaving the truck at its Moncton facility, said the adjudicator.
The adjudicator also found the contract stipulated the truck was to be returned to the company, not specifically the Lansdowne location. As for the $2-per-mile charge mentioned in the contract, the adjudicator found this was an arbitrary amount and didn’t reflect the true cost of retrieving the vehicle. Instead, it was more likely “penal in effect,” which wasn’t allowed by New Brunswick legislation.
The adjudicator noted that the ESDC labour standards guidelines indicated that deductions approved by employees had to be for specific sums, not blanket amounts. To meet these requirements, written authorizations had to be obtained after the incident or transaction to which the deduction was related.
