He never cashed the cheque, and years later it reopened what his employer owed
A worker whose firing was found to be illegal retaliation for raising safety concerns saw his payout reopened over an unexpected snag: a severance cheque he never cashed. A B.C. tribunal recalculated the bill, and the employer ended up owing more.
In a decision dated June 9, 2026, Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal Vice Chair Kristina Nelless varied an earlier remedy order in the worker's favour, directing the employer to re-issue $514.82 in net severance he had never deposited. The dispute traced back to a November 7, 2024, WCAT decision that found the worker's dismissal was a prohibited action under British Columbia's Workers Compensation Act for raising safety concerns.
From safety complaint to a contested payout
The worker, who delivered pizzas, told WorkSafeBC that his employer had retaliated against him for raising safety concerns. In a July 18, 2023, decision, the Board disagreed, ruling that the termination was not a prohibited action. The worker appealed, and on November 7, 2024, WCAT reversed course, finding the dismissal was retaliation barred by the Act.
That set up a second fight over money. In a June 10, 2025, decision, the Board ordered the employer to pay $1,996.65 in lost wages, less statutory deductions, representing four and a half weeks of pay, plus $369.55 in interest. The self-represented worker appealed that remedy, arguing the Board had made a calculation error.
He did not quarrel with the four and a half weeks, his daily rate, or his average hours. His objection was narrower. The Board had reduced his wage loss by a $546.96 severance cheque the employer issued on March 16, 2022, the day he was let go. He said he had never deposited it, and he wanted it re-issued with interest.
The 'make whole' yardstick
WCAT's task was to settle the right remedy for a worker who has suffered a prohibited action. The Act lists the options, and the guiding aim is to "make whole" the worker, as if the retaliation had never happened.
Board policy sets out the same objective. The goal in awarding remedies, the policy states, is "as far as practicable, to put the worker in the same position as the worker would have been if the prohibited action had not occurred." A 2011 WCAT panel had described the exercise as examining each case individually to figure out where the worker would likely have stood absent the employer's conduct.
The severance cheque factored into that calculation. The Board had calculated the worker's gross wage loss at $2,543.61, then subtracted the $546.96 severance, leaving $1,996.65. What no one had told the Board was that the cheque was still uncashed.
A stale cheque, a heavier bill, and no interest
Nelless accepted that the worker had never deposited the cheque, and that the employer had not disputed it. Drawing on federal guidance that banks generally refuse cheques more than six months old, she found the March 2022 cheque was no longer negotiable, more than four years after it was written.
Because that evidence had never reached the Board, the original calculation could not stand. Nelless ruled the quantification inaccurate and varied it, ordering the employer to re-issue the severance as a fresh cheque worth $514.82, the $546.96 gross less $32.14 in statutory deductions.
On the worker's request for interest, the panel reached a different result. Interest, she noted, is meant to address a worker being kept from wages they could have invested, but she found the worker had held the cheque himself since his last day. "Rather, the worker's determination to delay was the source of his deprivation and not the employer," she wrote, declining to award interest on the re-issued amount and confirming the rest of the Board's order.
