Some 70 per cent of long-haul truck drivers in Canada have experienced wage theft on the job, a new report on the trucking sector says.

In a survey of more than 400 drivers across Canada, truckers reported significant concerns with “deteriorating wages and working conditions,” including illegal deductions, unpaid hours of work, employee misclassification, and safety lapses.

The findings were compiled by Toronto legal clinic Parkdale Community Legal Services and the Brampton, Ont.-based non-profit Labour Community Services of Peel, along with two driver advocacy groups.

The issue has been the subject of federal transport committee hearings, which were convened in October to address employment standards, safety, labour shortages, and other challenges in the trucking industry, including wage theft.

The survey included long-haul truckers who drive across Canada or North America and are federally regulated, as well as provincially regulated drivers who stay within their home province.

Provincially regulated truck drivers were slightly less likely than long-haul truckers to report wage theft, at around 62 per cent.

Interprovincial trucking is among a handful of sectors governed by federal, rather than provincial, labour laws. Long-haul trucking makes up 17 per cent of federally-regulated employment, but 85 per cent of federal labour code violations between 2017 and 2022 were committed by trucking employers, according to data obtained by the legal clinic through a freedom-of-information request.

The report to be published Monday found the average amount of unpaid earnings in wage theft cases among surveyed truckers was $10,000.

Wage theft involves employers failing to pay minimum wage, vacation pay, or other monetary entitlements. When long-haul drivers file wage-theft complaints with the federal government, it can sometimes take more than a year for a labour officer to be assigned to their file, said Navi Aujla of Labour Community Services of Peel.

The delays mean that by the time drivers’ claims are assessed, their employers have often shut down – making it difficult to recovered wages owed, said Ms. Aujla.

Over 65 per cent of drivers surveyed also reported that they were currently misclassified as independent contractors, or had been in a past job.

In trucking, this practice sees companies lighten their tax burden by treating drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, even when drivers do not own their own trucks and have little control over their working conditions.

This results in drivers losing out on entitlements like vacation pay and severance, and means government coffers lose tax remittances. In 2021, Ottawa strengthened its labour laws to prohibit employers from misclassifying employees.

Ms. Aujla said that practices such as wage theft and misclassification have become normalized because employers are rarely penalized.

Since 2022, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) has fined three employers, all of them in the trucking industry, for misclassifying workers, government data show. The fines ranged between $3,000 and $7,000.

In testimony before the federal transport committee in October, the Canadian Trucking Alliance said that misclassifying truckers allows employers to illegally save up to $30,000 per driver on payroll costs.

Vijaydeep Singh Sahasi, president of the West Coast Trucking Association, a volunteer driver advocacy organization that participated in the study, said drivers experience other forms of wage theft such as illegal deductions from paycheques. Non-statutory deductions from wages are generally illegal, unless authorized in writing by the employee for things like savings contribution plans.

In trucking, illegal deductions can take the form of “damage deposits,” or repair costs for mechanical issues that the drivers did not cause, the report says. Some 40 per cent of drivers surveyed said they have experienced pay deductions they did not agree to.

Almost three-quarters of long-haul truck drivers surveyed also reported not being paid for all hours of work, since they typically only receive payment for distance or hours driven.

GTA-based truck driver Navdeep Dhillon, who is a member of the advocacy group Justice For Truck Drivers, which also participated in the study, said significant delays caused by border crossings, waiting for loads, or maintenance is usually unpaid or eligible only for small flat rate sums.

“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “Why are we not getting paid for pickup, delivery, and waiting?”

Mr. Sahasi said this pay structure incentivizes drivers to maximize driving time and limit time spent on maintenance.

“People are cutting corners because they are not being paid,” he said.

Some 29 per cent of truckers surveyed said their employer frequently pressures them to take risks on the road and 60 per cent reported sometimes or often driving trucks that are improperly maintained.

The survey was distributed in English, Punjabi, and Somali to truck drivers through in-person events, social media, and phone outreach.

In an e-mailed statement, ESDC spokesperson Natalie Huneault said the department’s labour program has a dedicated national misclassification team that has carried out over 890 proactive workplace inspections.

“The Government of Canada is protecting Canadian workers by cracking down on misclassification in the federally regulated road transportation sector and has taken concrete steps,” the statement said.

Ottawa recently pledged $77-million over four years for the Canada Revenue Agency to ramp up enforcement against trucking companies that falsely classify their drivers as self-employed.

The new study said tackling poor working conditions requires federally regulated pay rates for trucking and stronger enforcement.

“The deterioration in wages and working conditions reported by drivers is, in part, due to the confidence employers have that they can practice wage theft and get away with it without penalty,” the report says.

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Sara Mojtehedzadeh is a reporter on The Globe and Mail’s investigative team, focusing on immigration issues. She spent a decade as the Toronto Star's labour reporter, including several years on the newspaper's investigations team, where her work explored precarious work, income inequality, and workplace safety.

Sara was recognized by the National Newspaper Awards and Canadian Association of Journalists for a 2023 series investigating Canada's pipeline of low-wage labour. Other award-winning pieces include an undercover investigation of temp agency deaths at a Toronto industrial bakery, an investigation into the toxic legacy of a General Electric factory, and numerous probes into abuses in the temporary foreign worker program. Her investigation into injury and illness rates at Canadian Amazon warehouses amid the COVID-19 pandemic won her an Amnesty International Canada media award in 2021.

Sara previously worked for the BBC, producing radio coverage on African current affairs.

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