The Nova Scotia Labour Board has dismissed a complaint from a laboratory technician at Dalhousie University who said she was required to work unpaid overtime.
The ruling centred on whether the complainant, V.R., had demonstrated that Dalhousie University’s Senescence, Aging, Infection & Immunity Laboratory (SAIL) required her to work beyond her scheduled hours. V.R., who began work as a salaried technician in August 2021, alleged she was owed overtime, along with other entitlements such as proper breaks, holiday pay and accessible pay stubs.
After three and a half days of testimony and written submissions, the board rejected her claims, stating that V.R. “failed to advance any credible evidence” supporting her allegations.
Although the complaint initially raised four key issues — overtime, pay stubs, breaks and holiday pay — the board noted that V.R.’s appeal focused largely on overtime and the use of access card records as proof of her extra hours worked.
One-year contract
According to the decision, V.R. relocated from British Columbia to Nova Scotia in August 2021 for the one-year contract position, which stipulated 37.5 hours of work per week. Delayed by a one-week quarantine, she began work in mid-August at SAIL, a research unit under principal investigator L.B.
At the time, SAIL was preparing for an anticipated increase in COVID-19 research and had hired V.R. and another technician. V.R. argued that equipment failures, lack of training, and the nature of the laboratory’s time-sensitive work forced her to work beyond her scheduled hours, culminating in unpaid overtime.
Criteria for overtime pay
The board’s ruling hinged on the interpretation of the Labour Standards Code, specifically section 40(4), which sets out the criteria for overtime pay. As stated in the decision: “Where an employee is required to work more than forty-eight hours in a week, that employee shall be paid one and a half times the employee’s regular hourly wage for each additional hour worked in excess of forty-eight hours.” The board emphasized that overtime must be “required” by the employer. Without explicit approval or a request, there can be no presumption that an employee is owed overtime pay.
Both V.R.’s employment contract and Dalhousie’s internal policy, the Employment Guide to Regular Grant-Paid Employees, were central to the analysis. Both documents aligned with the Code’s stance: employees must receive employer approval before overtime is payable. According to the ruling, “Both the Code and the Policy recognize that overtime must be required by the employer before it is paid.”
L.B. testified that overtime was uncommon in a research lab environment due to funding constraints. However, the board noted that on September 22, 2021, L.B. told staff that while pre-approval was normally required for overtime, in the case of imminent increased workloads, staff needed only to notify her or D.O. either before or after working the extra hours. L.B. stated that during the relevant period, other staff requested time in lieu of overtime and were approved. V.R., however, never submitted any overtime requests.
“Although the parties agree that the Respondent never ‘required’ the Complainant to work overtime nor did she make any requests for overtime during her employment,” wrote the board, “the Complainant says that the nature of work at SAIL and alleged circumstances made overtime necessary.”
Why the extra hours?
V.R. cited factors such as limited training, unreliable computer systems, problematic equipment, and access card issues as underlying causes of extra hours. She argued that the urgency of tasks like processing blood samples, which must be completed within set timeframes, forced her to work outside regular hours. The board acknowledged that working with live human tissue can require timely completion of tasks, but it found no evidence that V.R. was ever compelled to work beyond her agreed hours.
The board considered detailed logs of V.R.’s tasks, including blood processing. The evidence showed that most of these tasks began well within normal working hours, between noon and 8 p.m. Although there were a few instances where blood processing might have occurred after the end of V.R.’s regular shift, the board concluded these scenarios did not definitively support her claim. It found that her attempts to reconstruct her hours were unreliable because the records she produced were, by her own admission, reconstructed from memory, not from original source documents.
“Without the Complainant’s personal journal, which was not produced, the Board finds that this record is not reliable,” the ruling stated. The board noted that even if there were “2-3 instances” where V.R. may have worked longer than a regular workday, it did not meet the threshold of proof needed to establish a pattern of required overtime as defined by the Code.
Flexible work
As for break times, holiday pay and pay stubs, the board saw no basis for these claims either. The workplace allowed staff flexible hours. In that environment, the board said, “staff are given the discretion to choose their own hours, they are also given the discretion to take breaks.”
Since the employer did not restrict breaks, the claim could not stand. V.R. also acknowledged that she had never been asked to work on designated holidays. As for pay stubs, the respondent showed that V.R. had the necessary permissions to access them online, fulfilling the employer’s obligations under sections 9 and 15(1A) of the Code.
The board considered the workplace structure at SAIL, describing it as a peer-to-peer environment rather than a strict top-down management system. This structure, it said, was intended to provide staff with flexibility rather than impose rigid scheduling that might create mandatory overtime. According to the ruling, “The Respondent does not produce widgets. The Complainant was not tasked with a quota. The Respondent operates on a flexible work schedule and a peer-to-peer support model.”
The board also addressed V.R.’s personal circumstances, recognizing the difficulty of moving across the country during the pandemic and working under a peer-to-peer training model. V.R. “may have experienced heightened isolation,” the board wrote, and this could have contributed to her dissatisfaction. However, the decision noted that V.R. never reached out to L.B. or D.O. to request overtime or seek assistance for challenges she encountered.
In the end, the board concluded that neither side met the other’s expectations, leading to “a breakdown in the relationship.” Still, as the board emphasized, that disappointment did not amount to a breach of labour standards. Without evidence showing the respondent required overtime or violated pay and scheduling rules, the complaint could not be upheld.
“The claims brought forward by the Complainant were not proven based on the evidence presented,” the board wrote, “and therefore must be dismissed by the Board.”
For more information see Radeka v Dalhousie University Senescence, Aging, Infection & Immunity Laboratory (SAIL), 2024 NSLB 141 (CanLII).
