Workers in dispute with Scarborough linen company

Workers in dispute with Scarborough linen company. Members of UFCW Canada rally outside Lincare Ltd. on Nantucket Boulevard Thursday afternoon. Staff photo/NICK PERRY

The union, which hopes to win a vote Monday to certify Lincare Limited's 100 employees, alleges six were fired on Nov. 11 and 12 because they were part of a drive this month to unionize the commercial laundry.

"They were well known as the people helping to sign the cards and encouraging people to sign the cards," UFCW national representative Kevin Shimmin said in a downtown news conference Thursday, Nov. 19, hours before a pro-union rally was held outside the Nantucket Boulevard plant.

The union this week filed complaints with Ontario Labour Relations Board seeking reinstatement for the six organizers and alleging that Lincare disregards minimum safety standards, pays less than minimum wage and refuses to pay employees "for weeks or months on end."

Kumanan Thurairajah, a driver, said his pay at Lincare varied from $14 to as little as $7.50 an hour.

"They say, 'Kumanan, that much I have right now,'" he recalled. "I'm working nine years there, I still don't know how much they pay per hour. The last two weeks they paid us in cash."

Displaying a cancelled company cheque for $2,000 he said bounced, Thurairajah he is owed almost $9,000 from his last four months at Lincare, adding he received cheques backed by insufficient funds 13 times before he was fired.

After ironing sheets and towels for five years, Parvathy Thamboo said she was owed $7,000 in 2009 wages. Instead of the legal minimum, $9.50 an hour, she said, she was being paid $8.75 and then $7.50, some of it in cash.

"That's why we decided to form a union. Now I have been fired for speaking up about my rights."

Workers' Action Centre organizer Milan Nadarajah said the advocacy group starting hearing a year ago from Lincare workers "who felt they had to leave their employment to stop the indignity of bounced cheques or no payment at all."

Lincare's owner is Anthoney Sellarajah, a leader of Greater Toronto's Tamil community known for his support of foster children in Sri Lanka and local causes such as the Illahee Lodge for seniors near Toronto.

His son Johan said Sellarajah has been ill since Oct. 7 and a third-party management company ran Lincare from then until Nov. 11. Johan Sellarajah said he and his mother noticed "problems occurred" with management during this time.

"They were not handling issues in a proper manner," he said, but wouldn't elaborate Thursday except to add he and his mother have started to manage Lincare and are taking steps "to correct these issues."

Johan Sellarajah said he could not discuss wages, safety practices at the plant or any firings.

"Allegations are allegations until they are proven factual," he added.

The UFCW said an Ontario labour ministry inspector visited Lincare but left without talking to employees.

The ministry offered no comment by press time Thursday, but did issue convictions against Lincare in April 2008 for failing to make vacation records and failing to pay overtime pay. Both convictions resulted in a $355 ticket.

Scarborough-Agincourt MP Jim Karygiannis was at one time a close friend of Sellarajah.

Karygiannis toured a Jaffna orphanage Sellarajah sponsors in 2005 and praised him in the House of Commons as "an example of good individuals, people who came to Canada, made an effort and after five or six years were successful."

The MP's website shows Karygiannis with Sellarajah in 2002 as he receives a "Scarborough-Agincourt Business Excellence Award" from Paul Martin, then federal finance minister. It is one of several awards Sellarajah was given as a businessman and community leader.

Sellarajah "donated to a lot of worthy causes. He always reached out to the underprivileged and was always there to help," the MP said Thursday.