Paycheques in, HR boss out at city security contractor

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A private security firm accused of not paying its guards in time for the holidays — despite pulling in millions of dollars from contracts with the City of Toronto — has parted ways with its head of HR.

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However, two employees with One Community Solutions said they’ve started to see back pay come in. Those employees are two of the security guards — sometimes referred to as CSTs — that the company sends out in groups called community safety teams to patrol around city shelters, parks and other spots associated with homelessness.

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OCS did not respond to a request for comment. Mitchell Cawley, who had led HR matters, confirmed Friday that he is no longer with the company but declined further comment to the Toronto Sun, saying previous articles had dragged his name “through the mud.”

However, two OCS employees shared messages, sent by the company via a security workforce app, that suggest money is starting to hit the CSTs’ bank accounts after employees say three paydays were missed.

One message says “outstanding payroll from Dec. 19 was processed” last Monday — immediately after the Sun published an article about the payment issue, which affected OCS’s Toronto staff.

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“We understand this situation is extremely difficult, but we are also extremely thankful that despite the difficulties, you all are showing up. We are working diligently with our clients at this time to clear up outstanding payments and to prevent issues like this from happening in the future,” the message, dated Tuesday and signed “OCS management team,” says.

The message says one of the other two paycheques alleged to be late, the first pay for January, should be processed by this Monday, Jan. 12, “at the latest.”

The third paycheque that employees say is late — the first pay for December — was sent out in the form of physical cheques, and many CSTs didn’t get them until after Christmas, an OCS employee told the Sun. A message from Cawley, dated Wednesday, said CSTs would see duplicate pay stubs this week as a workaround to “avoid any type of physical cheque pickup scenarios for staff.”

HR’s money headache

It’s unclear what specifically led to the payment issue. In an earlier message about late paycheques, Cawley made a vague reference to the “struggles and growth pains” of a small company, and emphasized the “great things” OCS was doing in the community.

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The City of Toronto and Simcoe County, two OCS clients, both denied any issue with payments related to the company when previously asked by the Sun. The company has won more than $40 million in contracts from Toronto City Hall since it was registered in 2020.

It’s unclear how many other clients there could be, but the Sun has reported that it appears third-party organizations that operate shelters on behalf of the City of Toronto have contracted OCS to patrol their properties — and those deals are technically with the third parties themselves, not city hall.

OCS has also done work at TTC properties and sites not affiliated with the municipal government, such as the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, the scene of a bystander’s shooting death in July 2023. The company was briefly brought in to work at the Leslieville centre, starting that same month.

Even if the CSTs are getting paid, other HR concerns remain, according to employees. Three guards told the Sun recently that they aren’t paid for overtime no matter how many hours they work in a week, and aren’t allowed sick days.

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The Sun asked the provincial Labour Ministry for comment on the allegations made against OCS, but did not get a response in time for publication.

Ryan O’Connor is a partner at Taylor Mergui Law Group, which has a focus on employment matters. Speaking generally, he said practices such as late payment of wages and denial of overtime pay would be illegal – and if an employer retaliated against an employee for speaking up about these matters, that would be illegal as well.

He also suggested if those allegations prove true, it’s possible the City of Toronto could find itself in trouble too.

“Theoretically, a company could be liable in certain circumstances for a contractor’s HR practices,” O’Connor wrote in an email to the Sun, “particularly if it knew that the contractor’s practices were illegal, though responsibility for compliance with employment standards almost always rests with the actual employer.”

jholmes@postmedia.com

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