It was the week before Christmas, when all through the doorway of a Birchmount Road building lots of workers were stirring and chanting for holiday pay.
Protesters arrived Monday on a school bus on which stockings and tinsel were hung with care in hopes that AppleOne Employment Services would soon change a policy they claim violates Ontario's employment standards law.
"There's still time in the year to get off my naughty list," Ryan White, a law student dressed as St. Nicholas declared, minutes after the bus came slashing through the snow from the Kennedy Station Passenger Drop-off.
The protesters from the Workers' Action Centre (WAC) said they were trying to reach the company's Eglinton Avenue East branch. Building security personnel told them they were blocking an emergency exit and trespassing.
After chants of, "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, You broke the law and Santa knows," however, an AppleOne representative accepted a letter from WAC co-ordinator Regi David and retreated without comment.
David said the company and many others in Scarborough routinely deny their temporary workers holiday pay. And in many cases, when workers complain about this, they lose their assignments or jobs, she added. "What we're saying to AppleOne is don't be a grinch this Christmas."
Standing outside the entrance, former AppleOne temp worker Douglas Yardley said the agency told him he would not get bonus pay for Ontario's statutory holidays because he was an "elect-to-work employee."
Yardley said he filed an employment standards claim against AppleOne and did get the money, though it took several months. "Know your rights, don't let employers make up their own laws," he said.
Lucya Pirapakaran said she applied at AppleOne last week and was told she had to work eight months before she'd get holiday pay, a position she charged is unfair.
The extra pay for eight holidays (Ontario is adding a ninth, in February) can buy enough milk to last a family a year or it can help low-waged parents afford time off with their children, Pirapakaran said.
AppleOne is one of the world's largest private employment services. No company official in Canada, however, could be contacted by press time to discuss its policies or respond to the WAC. A woman at the company's Eglinton East branch said the branch had no comment but "all information received yesterday was passed on."
David said the activist group would be meeting Scarborough Centre MP Brad Duguid, Ontario's newly appointed labour minister, in the New Year to urge the province to boost legal protection for casual and temporary workers.
Duguid was not available, but ministry spokesperson Bruce Skeaff said any worker who feels they are being treated unlawfully should file a complaint with the province's employment standards office.
The ministry has an employment standards call centre at 416-326-7160, which among other things will help people understand the complicated rules behind holiday pay, Skeaff said.
More on the issue and details on other employment standards are posted at www.labour.gov.on.ca
Enforcement of those standards must rely on complaints, since Ontario has thousands of employers, said Skeaff. "We can't possibly be on the doorstep of each and every one every day."
But Yardley and other WAC supporters say the law is out of date. The way it is written, every worker unfairly denied holiday pay has to file a separate complaint, he said.