Owner of three Vancouver Subways named worst boss
Posted April 10, 2012 12:58 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The inaugural Bad Boss Award has been handed out to the owner of three Subway restaurants in Vancouver. The Employee Action Rights Network(EARN) claims Anil Dhawan is taking advantage of his staff.
Dhawan is the owner of the Subway in Oakridge Mall and two Kerrisdale locations. He is accused of requiring his staff to sign a form that reads, “I hereby request additional work hour per week without any overtime pay.”
Stephen Von Sychowski with EARN says, along with the BC Federation of Labour, they plan to take the complaint higher.
“Our next step is to send a letter to the Minister of Labour. We’re looking for an investigation into this. We want those workers who have missed their overtime pay to be paid in full what they are owed.”
Von Sychowski says workers who filed the complaint are remaining anonymous for fear they will be fired. Unfortunately, they have to identify themselves in order to make a complaint.
“An employee has to go to their employer first and basically say, ‘You are violating my rights and you need to fix it.’ That’s very intimidating for a worker in a non-union environment.”
Dhawan tells News1130 that there are two sides to every story.
“I have pretty thick skin, but at the end of the day, I feel very grateful that the media is making an effort to contact me to get the full story,” explains Dhawan. “I don’t even know the name of the group that has implicated me in this. I think they’ve wasted my time and painted an untrue scenario.”
“There’s always two side to this story. As a franchisee, I am following all the laws and the BC labour department is more than welcome to look at any my records for the eight years that I’ve been in business,” he adds.
Dhawan has seen the letter presented by EARN. He claims they have never used it but that it was drafted by one of his managers for an employee wanting to work extra hours.
A rep from Subway, who happened to be at the Oakridge Mall location, refused to comment on this issue.
