This instalment of You Make the Call features a truck driver whose final paycheque was withheld by the employer looking for repayment of an advance it had given more than one year earlier.
Laurel Krushel was a long-haul truck driver for JPP Transport, a trucking company based in Surrey, B.C., for a few months in 2016. Her husband initially worked for JPP as a truck driver beginning in October 2014 while she was in Winnipeg to visit her dying mother and then her mother’s funeral. She flew to and from Winnipeg on her own money and her mother’s estate paid for the funeral on Oct. 4.
Krushel’s husband was hired on Oct. 6, 2014, and asked JPP for an advance on a consultancy contract he had signed with the company. The contract was for dispatch, safety officer, compliance maintenance, log book auditing, and other services, and Krushel’s husband said the money was needed to cover costs for Kushel’s travel to Winnipeg and the funeral. JPP agreed to the advance and wrote a cheque for $2,500 to Krushel’s husband’s corporation. Krushel wasn’t aware of this payment.
JPP paid Krushel’s husband for various services from five invoices over the next three months. It wasn’t clear if any deductions were made for the advance JPP had already paid Krushel’s husband.
During this time, Krushel helped her husband with auditing driver logs because she had more than 25 years’ experience as a long-haul driver and knew the rules and drivers log software. She wasn’t paid for any of this work as she wasn’t looking for a job in the wake of her mother’s death.
In January 2016, a friend of the Krushels was driving for JPP and suffered a medical emergency while on a trip to Toronto. Krushel agreed to fly to Toronto to finish his trip as a favour, and so she began temporary employment with JPP on Jan. 14. She delivered the load to Alberta and took the truck to Surrey on Jan. 29. She was paid $4,004.
The friend didn’t recover from his illness and died in March 2016. Krushel agreed to work for JPP full-time until a replacement was found. She didn’t really want to drive and after each trip asked the company if a replacement had been hired. There was no written employment contract and JPP understood that Krushel was essentially working for her husband’s corporation, to whom her cheques were made out.
In June 2016, Krushel’s husband suffered a heart attack and didn’t return to work for JPP. Krushel was on a trip at the time, and when she completed it on July 2 in Surrey, she turned her truck over to another driver, removed her personal items, and “went home to retire.”
JPP decided Krushel owed it all of her final paycheque to pay for the advance it had given her husband’s corporation back in October 2014. No one informed Krushel and the company simply withheld the paycheque. The company also felt Krushel should have given it notice of resignation.
After several unsuccessful attempts to speak to management at JPP, Krushel contacted the labour program of Employment and Social Development Canada, filing a claim of unpaid wages.
You Make the Call
Was JPP entitled to withhold Krushel’s final paycheque to cover the advance it had paid earlier?
OR
Was Krushel entitled to her final paycheque?
If you said Krushel was entitled to her final paycheque, you’re right.
A labour inspector determined that the Canada Labour Code did not entitle an employer to withhold wages for short notice of resignation — nor was there a written contract with any notice requirement — and Krushel herself had not received any advance or portion of the advance given to her husband’s corporation. As a result, JPP was ordered to pay Krushel her final paycheque.
JPP appealed to an adjudicator, but the adjudicator upheld the order to pay. JPP’s records indicated Krushel was hired on Oct. 6, 2014, with her husband and performed log book auditing, but this was incorrect. Only her husband was hired at that time and Krushel was only officially hired in January 2016, said the adjudicator.
JPP was ordered to pay Krushel $4,428.93 in unpaid wages and noted that if the company wanted to try to get back the advance it paid Krushel’s husband’s corporation, it would have to pursue the matter in court. Krushel wasn’t responsible for it.
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