For months, Farah Yeo worked full time at a Toronto nail salon, performing manicures and pedicures, handling human resources, working the front desk and cleaning.
But her paycheques repeatedly fell short of her agreed wage of $1,500 bi-weekly, plus tips and gratuities, and 139 hours of unpaid overtime.
She is still waiting on more than $13,000 in unpaid wages, including withheld tips, more than seven months after the Ontario Ministry of Labour ordered the company to pay.
“It was very traumatizing,” said Yeo, 30, who came from Bangladesh in 2023 as an international student. She worked at Nail Fix in the 6ix, a salon chain operating in Leslieville and Scarborough, from 2024 to 2025.
Whenever Yeo asked about the wages, she said the owners promised a resolution but continued to delay, telling her they were waiting for money from investors, as she struggled to understand her rights in a new country.
“I felt worthless,” she said. “I worked really hard and I was so mad at myself for believing them.”
Yeo is one of nine workers with outstanding orders to pay issued by the ministry against Nail Fix in the 6ix, according to documents seen by the Star. Together, the orders total more than $50,000 in unpaid wages, withheld tips and other amounts owed to workers, an amount that includes penalties and collection fees.
None of the workers have been paid, and the business remains operational.
The employer, Monique Joustra, “confirmed that she reviewed the allegations set out by the claimant and indicated that the information provided by appears to be accurate,” according to the employment standards officer’s report seen by the Star. “The employer advised that she is not disputing the claim.”
Recovering unpaid wages following successful wage-theft claims is a pillar of Ontario’s employment standards system. But Labour Ministry data has shown that workers are increasingly unable to collect successful claims.
Every year, workers in Ontario file thousands of successful claims against employers who owe millions in wages and entitlements. Even when the ministry orders employers to pay, the overwhelming majority do not comply.
In the past decade, nearly $200 million in unpaid wages have been formally assessed as owed to workers, according to government data. When employers fail to comply with a Ministry of Labour order to pay within 30 days, the case is referred to Ontario’s Ministry of Finance, which recovered less than a quarter of the $102.4 million sent for collections from 2013-23, leaving workers still owed $79.9 million in stolen wages.
Enforcement gaps and defunct businesses often leave awards unfulfilled, according to legal experts and advocates, who say things aren’t getting better.
At the same time, immigration consultants have noted that wage theft cases particularly among vulnerable workers with precarious immigration status are rising amid market turmoil. These violations frequently go unpunished.
The wage theft cases arising from Nail Fix in the 6ix are “such an awful example of how the Ministry of Labour’s system of enforcement is broken,” said Deena Ladd, who heads the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre. “All workers should be incredibly concerned.
“How many repeated wage theft cases does the government need to get from one employer to take this seriously?” Ladd said. “Is nine not enough?”
What the employer says
“We’re very sorry that we did this to all of our team members,” Joustra, who co-owns the salon with her husband, Richard Brady, said in a phone interview. “It keeps us up at night.”
Joustra said the business ran into difficulties after a delayed opening of its Leslieville location in 2024. The problems snowballed “into an avalanche,” she said, as “we couldn’t meet our obligations, financing costs, and rent became overwhelming.”
They borrowed from family to cover arrears and pay staff. “We took on more staff than we could afford because we felt obligated to them,” Brady said.
The financial difficulties continued as staff took vacations or quit due to unpaid wages, Joustra said.
The couple are in “active discussions with the Ministry of Finance” on a payment plan but gave no timeline for repaying workers in full. She said the couple had set aside money for an initial payment.
Asked how they can pay current staff while the outstanding orders remain unpaid, Joustra said “we are running a very lean business.”
“It is our absolute intention to pay these workers what is owed.”
When asked why they continued hiring despite knowing the business was struggling, Joustra said “our intention was to get new people on board and recover so that we can make the money and pay back those other people.”
“We admit we didn’t give (employees) their full payments but we were telling them we’re trying to get over this hump.”
The Ministry of Finance said in an email statement it was “ramping up enforcement through tougher penalties and enhanced oversight,” including doubling the maximum fine for individuals convicted of Employment Standards Act violations to $100,000 and increased penalties for repeat offenders to $5,000 per employee.
It didn’t directly respond to inquiries on why outstanding orders against Nail Fix in the 6ix haven’t been collected.
The Labour Ministry did not respond to inquiries from the Star on what is being done to hold employers accountable and prevent increasing incidents of wage theft.
Deteriorating enforcement in Ontario
Ladd of the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre said a lack of enforcement allows wage theft to bE normalized, sending a message “that it’s OK to do this because you won’t get caught and you won’t be held accountable.”
At the same time workers, who face potential retaliation from employers, including the loss of jobs or immigration status, are discouraged from speaking out with no effective way to complain and declining workplace inspections.
When Premier Doug Ford took office in 2018, the Labour Ministry instructed staff not to initiate new proactive inspections aimed at preventing wage theft and other employment standards violations.
Employment standards inspections deal with basic workplace issues such as unpaid wages and overtime. Proactive inspections, initiated at the behest of the ministry, are far more effective at recovering unpaid wages, including public holiday pay and overtime, than when individual workers file complaints, according to the ministry’s own data.
