Seminar PowerPoint presented at GLRC seminar on March 19, 2014 at York University, Toronto, Canada. This study is a part of the SSHRC Partnership Grant project "Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap: Improving Protections for Workers in Precarious Jobs"
Visit to a blind student's school🧑🦯🧑🦯(community medicine)
Is There a Deterrence Gap in Employment Standards Enforcement
1. Is There a Deterrence Gap in
Employment Standards
Enforcement?
Eric Tucker, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Leah F. Vosko, York University
John Grundy, Wilfrid Laurier University
Mark Thomas, York University
Alan Hall, Memorial University
Elliot Siemiatycki, York University
Global Labour
Speakers Series
York University
19 March 2014
2. Outline
1. Conceptualizing the Deterrence Gap
2. Ontario’s Deterrence Gap in Historical Context,
1970s – 1990s
3. The Current Practice of Enforcement in Ontario
4. Preliminary Conclusions
3. Conceptualizing the
Deterrence Gap
Deterrence Compliance
Subjects of
Regulation
Rational Calculator Ignorant or
Incompetent Citizen
Nature of Harm
Caused
Serious Harms Remediable Harms
Incidental to
Beneficial Activity
Goal Alter Cost-Benefit
Analysis
Promote Better
Performance
Means Raise Risk of Being
Caught/Increase
Penalty
Provide Information
and Compliance
Assistance
Effects Specific and
General Deterrence
Promote Culture of
Going Beyond
Compliance
4. The Enforcement Pyramid
In reality, enforcement systems typically combine
compliance and deterrence strategies in some
way
Popular model of how to combine them is the
enforcement pyramid
Deterrence
Compliance
5. Problems with the Pyramid
Change in assumptions about
The character of violators and
The social harm caused by violations
Could produce a differently shaped model
8. Ontario’s Deterrence Gap,
1970s-90s
Ontario’s Employment Standards Act was enacted in 1968 to promote
“socially acceptable” conditions of employment for those without
strong bargaining power
Reflected a ‘compliance’ approach, with enforcement primarily
complaints-driven and ‘self-reliance’ promoted through educative
strategies
“…when statues such as the E.S.A. and its predecessor statutes have
been passed and wide publicity given to their provisions, it is
incumbent upon the public and organizations to comply with them
without an individual visit from the staff to advise them of public
responsibility” [Dalton Bales, Minister of Labour, 1969]
10. Proactive inspections are an effective
means to uncover violations but these
declined through the 1980s and 1990s
11. Current Enforcement
Practices in Ontario
Prosecution
NOC or Ticket
Order to Pay
Proactive Inspection
Complaint to Ministry
Self-Enforcement
Promotional Activities
14. Current Practices –
N.O.C., Tickets, and Prosecutions
Activity June 2005-
May 2006
Jan 2007-
Dec 2007
Aug 2009-
July 2010
Jul 2010-
Jun 2011
Jun 2012-
May 2013
N.O.C. 4 57 (07-08) 39 66 N.A.
P.I Tickets 267 395 239 266 332
• Total Fines $93,182.50 $148,930 $85,385 $94,745 $122,425
P.III
Prosecutions
12 26 17 6 19
• Total Fines $326,250 $343,393 $91,864 $22,375 $515,225
15. Preliminary Conclusions
Use of deterrence tools is extremely infrequent
Unclear whether the recent decline of complaints
reported to the ESB (27,637 in 2010-11 to 12,344 in
2012-13) is due to employees having workplace
problems resolved directly by their employers or
due to their reluctance to file formal complaints
MOL policy embraces a compliance model that
downplays deterrence tools
Use of deterrence tools is based on contingent
assumptions about employer motivations (is non-
compliance intentional) and seriousness of the
violation (is non-compliance intolerable)