You make the call
This instalment of You Make the Call features an office manager who had her final paycheque withheld after she quit.
Sanjeeta Thibault worked as an office manager for Smiles on Sparks, an Ottawa dental clinic operated by Halpin Dentistry Professional Corporation, starting in October 2013. Thibault had various duties around the clinic, including managing payroll.
In January 2014, the clinic implemented an electronic pay system in which employees logged their start and end times as well as lunch breaks on every shift by computer. As office manager, Thibault was the administrator of the system, so she sometimes had to login for others to correct errors or as herself to correct her own errors in the system. The only other person who had access to the administrative side of the system was the dentist who owned the clinic and he only accessed it occasionally. Thibault printed out reports showing the hours each employee worked and calculated their wages and deductions for their paycheques. The dentist then reviewed the documents and signed the cheques.
In December 2013, the dentist agreed to an increase in Thibault’s wages, which she added into the pay system. Thibault implemented another raise in January 2015 after her workload increased, but the dentist denied approving this raise.
Thibault went on maternity leave on Dec. 1, 2015, but sometimes came into the office. She said she did some work during this time, though the dentist believed she was mainly socializing. She returned to work in July 2016, claiming the dentist asked her to come back early. She entered another raise to her wages in the pay system, which she claimed was the clinic’s inducement to return early.
After Thibault returned from her maternity leave, the dentist grew suspicious when she claimed he owed her money but didn’t explain why. He went into the pay system and reviewed Thibault’s hours, which led to the discovery that she had increased her wage rate without his approval. He changed the password to the system and confronted Thibault.
Two weeks later, Thibault didn’t report to work. She phoned another employee at the clinic and said she wouldn’t be returning. The dentist reviewed the pay records some more and discovered what he believed were manipulations of the time clock, including:
• 66 work days where Thibault either didn’t register a lunch break or a very short one a few seconds long, though she took breaks between 30 and 90 minutes every day before the electronic system was introduced.
• More than $10,000 in cheques issued to Thibault and her husband while she was on maternity leave receiving employment insurance benefits, which the clinic identified as loans. Thibault claimed these were for work done during her leave, but the dentist believed any hours she worked didn’t earn the amount on the cheques.
• Inaccurate conversion of time worked into decimals of hours (for example, calculating 80.79 hours as 80 hours plus 79 minutes, or 81.19 hours), resulting in her being overpaid by four hours.
• Thibault didn’t “clock out” on two occasions while having dental work done in the office for a total of 5 hours and 47 minutes.
The clinic withheld Thibault’s last paycheque to make up for the overpayments she had made to herself and the failure to pay back the loans given to her and her husband during her maternity leave. Thibault filed a claim for her withheld wages.
You Make the Call
Was the dental clinic entitled to withhold the worker’s last paycheque?
OR
Was the worker entitled to her last paycheque?
IF YOU SAID the dental clinic was entitled to withhold the worker’s last paycheque to compensate for the overpayments, you’re right. The Ontario Labour Relations Board determined that Thibault was overpaid when she didn’t report taking a break, gave herself unauthorized raises, calculated decimals incorrectly on her hours, and received pay while undergoing dental treatment. These overpayments were all the direct result of Thibault’s actions — whether inadvertent or deliberate — of which the dentist was unaware until near the end of Thibault’s employment. The clinic was entitled to recover the overpayments, said the board.
However, the amount from the cheques issued to Thibault during her maternity leave were not recoverable, as it was unclear whether the money was for hours worked or loans. If the former, Thibault didn’t declare the income and if the latter, a loan cannot be a reason to withhold wages, the board said.
The overpayments for which Thibault was responsible totalled almost $2,000, which was more than the amount of her last paycheque. As a result, the dental clinic was entitled to withhold Thibault’s last paycheque to recover some of the money she owed. See Halpin Dentistry Professional Corp. v. Thibault, 2018 CarswellOnt 13453 (Ont. Lab. Rel. Bd.).
