Garick and Ramesh Ramsook are still waiting on more than $178,000 in stolen wages and damages owed to them by a Canadian construction company where they were hired as temporary foreign workers — more than two months after the Ontario Labour Relations Board ordered the company to pay.
Recovering unpaid wages following successful wage theft claims is a central pillar of Ontario’s employment standards system, intended to ensure workers receive the money they are legally owed. But advocates say workers are increasingly unable to collect successful claims, with migrant workers like the Ramsook brothers facing even greater barriers due to their precarious immigration status.
Canada accepts “people out of their country to go there to work, and for what?” Ramesh said.
The Ontario Labour Relations Board decision, issued May 1, is the latest development in a years-long wage theft case involving the brothers from Jamaica, who successfully filed claims through the provincial Ministry of Labour in 2024 after working for months without pay at Ottawa-based Polat Construction.
The OLRB’s latest ruling reviewed and increased compensation awarded to the brothers, finding they had been unlawfully fired for demanding their wages, violating anti-reprisal protections under provincial labour law.
