Sunday shifts the employer denied? Worker walks away with a payout
An Ontario car dealership has been ordered to pay a former collision-centre employee more than $8,000 in unpaid wages after the Ontario Labour Relations Board found it could not back up its claims with proper records of hours worked. In a decision released April 24, 2026, Vice-Chair Derek L. Rogers dismissed Serpa Automotive (2016) Corporation's application to overturn an Employment Standards Officer's Order to Pay, citing missing witnesses, missing invoices, and an employment contract riddled with ambiguity. The worker, Valentine Ionescu, resigned without prior notice on July 5, 2024. His salary had been suspended for a period while the parties discussed a possible change in his role to managerial and a change in his hours of work.
The Board also noted that Serpa's application itself was procedurally deficient, having failed to plead the material facts required under the Board's Rules of Procedure. Rogers observed that the application "might have been dismissed without a hearing as there were no facts pled that could be read as making out a case for any order or remedy Serpa identified as its objective," but the matter proceeded after Ionescu agreed to hear the applicant's opening statement before deciding whether to continue.
A contract that left more questions than answers
The employment agreement set a starting salary of "$2000.00 Monthly Salary – (Must work 8 hours per day 5 days per week)" alongside "$30.00 per house flat rate produced invoiced paint hours." Rogers noted in a footnote that "There is nothing in the document that addressed the consequence(s) of the employee's failure to work 8 hours on a day or 5 days in a week."
A workplace policy entitled each employee to "a one hour unpaid lunch period per day which must be coordinated with the department manager." Ionescu testified he took only a 30-minute lunch and worked from 6:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily.
Serpa contended Ionescu was allowed to leave at 1:00 p.m. and sought to reduce his pay to reflect a one-hour rather than a half-hour lunch break. Ionescu's evidence was that he needed to collect his child at 3:30 p.m. from school in Bolton, Ont., travelling there from the dealership in Toronto's north-east quadrant. Rogers found that "The trip was not one that would have required his departure at 1:00 p.m.," and no manager testified to observing Ionescu's breaks or departures.
The Sunday shifts the employer said never happened
The ESO had ordered $450 in pay for 15 hours Ionescu claimed to have worked over three consecutive Sundays repairing a vehicle damaged at the dealership. Serpa's position was that the work could not have occurred because the "collision centre is not open Saturday or Sunday."
Rogers found "The issue was not whether the facility was open to the public, but whether the responding party had worked hours that were unpaid."
He cited Ontario Regulation 285/01, which deems work performed where it is "permitted or suffered to be done by the employer."
Missing records, missing witnesses
The largest piece of the order, $2,970 for 99 unpaid production hours, hinged on records Serpa did not produce. Owner Frank Serpa confirmed that, notwithstanding the "hacking" of the system used to track work and hours, the collision centre had continued to operate and to issue invoices for its work. The applicant did not produce those invoices at the hearing.
Ionescu had told the ESO that Serpa manager John Cristofaro had "manually kept track of all hours worked by him as there was no clock in and out system." Cristofaro did not testify. Rogers wrote, "I infer that Mr. Cristofaro was not called as his evidence would not have assisted the applicant."
The application was dismissed. The Director of Employment Standards was ordered to pay out $7,396.81 to Ionescu and retain $739.68 in administrative costs. The ESO had noted the employer "only provided the record of production hours and did not provide any evidence of regular hours worked to support their statement that the claimant was not meeting the contract."
