In the first case of its kind in the province, Northland Properties has reached an out-of-court settlement to pay a total of more than $1.3 million to temporary foreign workers employed at Northland’s 37 Denny’s-branded B.C. restaurants.
Northland will also pay $80,000 to charity, Glavin Gordon Clements partner Charles Gordon told Business in Vancouver March 5.
Gordon worked with Kestral Workplace Legal Counsel LLP partner Chris Foy on a class-action lawsuit. They represented foreign workers whom they said:
- paid an agency to get work in Canada;
- paid airfare to come to Canada;
- were given fewer than the 40 hours per week that they were promised in a contract; and
- were not paid appropriately for overtime.
Paying an agency to get work in Canada is illegal. Employers who sponsor temporary foreign workers are required to pay airfare, uphold contract terms for hours and pay overtime.
The litigants appeared in court on March 1 to have Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick approve the settlement. Fitzpatrick will release written reasons for approving the settlement in the coming weeks, said Gordon.
Northland, which also owns Sandman Hotels, Moxie’s Restaurants and Northland Asset Management, ranks as B.C.’s twenty-second largest company with $657 million in revenue in 2011.
The company’s CEO, Tom Gaglardi, separately owns the Dallas Stars and is a part-owner of the Western Hockey League’s Kamloops Blazers.
He, together with Beedie Group president Ryan Beedie, famously tried and failed to buy the Vancouver Canucks. Gaglardi and Beedie then unsuccessfully sued current Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini, alleging that Aquilini unfairly bid to buy the team.
Gaglardi’s father Bob Gaglardi founded the company in 1963. His grandfather, Phil Gaglardi, was a longtime B.C. minister of highways who earned the nickname “flying Phil” for his penchant for getting speeding tickets.
Charles Gordon is also the lawyer representing B.C.'s building trades unions in the controversial HD Mining temporary foreign workers case. The unions won their bid for a judicial review of the program yesterday.
