Reprisal damages reach $130,000 after worker fired
An Ontario employer faces a $185,015 bill after incorrectly calculating an employee's overtime threshold and then terminating him for pursuing his claim.
In a decision issued Jan. 16, 2026, Ontario Labour Relations board vice-chair Brian Mulroney awarded Kevin Kinzett $55,011 in unpaid overtime wages and $130,003 in reprisal damages against his former employer, 614128 Ontario Ltd., operating as Trisan.
The case centered on a dispatcher required to work 50 hours weekly. The employer argued Kinzett was subject to a 50-hour overtime threshold, but the board found he was entitled to overtime after 44 hours. When Kinzett expanded his initial overtime claim, Trisan terminated his employment on July 27, 2023. The board found this constituted reprisal under the Employment Standards Act.
Overtime calculation goes wrong
Kinzett earned a weekly wage of $1,134.65. The employment standards officer originally calculated his regular rate by dividing his weekly wage by 50 hours, arriving at a lower rate. The board corrected this, dividing $1,134.65 by 44 hours to reach a regular rate of $25.79 per hour, making his overtime rate $38.69 per hour.
Trisan maintained no independent records of Kinzett's overtime hours, relying instead on timesheets he completed for cost-allocation purposes. The parties produced 99 timesheets for the two-year period, with nine blank due to vacation or illness and four weeks missing entirely. The timesheets showed 1,500.5 overtime hours recorded in half-hour increments.
The board found Kinzett worked an average of 59 hours weekly during the two-year period before his claim, awarding him 15 hours of weekly overtime across 90 weeks.
Payroll issues with time records
The employer argued Kinzett over-estimated his hours and should have recorded time in 0.1-hour increments like lawyers. The board rejected this argument, noting Trisan's own employees, including Kinzett's replacement, continued recording time in half-hour increments even after the liability decision.
Trisan's counsel suggested Kinzett failed to deduct breaks during remote work. The board examined call records from May 30, 2022, which showed Kinzett's first remote call at 3:02 p.m. and his last at 10:52 p.m., with the same caller resuming at 4:32 a.m. the next day. One caller made five calls within 2.5 hours.
The board stated it "does not accept counsel's submissions on this issue" and noted the employer "made no claims of inaccuracy until he commenced this application."
Reprisal damages reach six figures
The board awarded Kinzett 24 months of lost income totalling $118,003, explaining that the hearing consumed eight days over 27 months. Trisan "knew, or ought to have known, that the hearing was prolonging the period of time in which he might experience income loss."
The board added $10,000 for loss of reasonable expectation of continued employment and $2,000 for emotional distress. In explaining reprisal damages, the board quoted an earlier decision: "The very integrity of the ESA is under assault in the case of employer reprisal against an employee for seeking its enforcement; and if left unaddressed by the state, such reprisal would eventually reduce the statute to an enactment 'writ on water.'"
The decision emphasized record-keeping failures, noting the Board drew adverse inferences against employers who fail to maintain proper overtime documentation.
