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Disabled woman fired at $1.25 per hour seeks more compensation

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ST. CATHARINES, ONT.

Terri-Lynn Garrie loved to work, even if she was being paid less than the price of a cup of coffee an hour.

Work gave her a sense of purpose, a schedule to keep and a group of people to talk with every day.

She didn’t know $1.25 an hour was less than the going rate - less than what the other workers at a St. Catharines, Ont., wine bottling company allegedly made, those who didn’t have developmental disabilities.

But $1 to $1.25 an hour is what Garrie, a 43-year-old St. Catharines woman, claimed in a Human Rights Tribunal case she was paid for a decade of full-time work before being fired Oct. 26, 2009.

And that’s what she earned in compensation when local wine-bottling company Janus Joan Inc. was ordered to pay $2,678.50 for lost wages based on her $1.25 a hour.

In May, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario also awarded her $15,000 after it found she was discriminated against on the basis of disability when she was terminated.

But that’s only half the battle for the Garrie family, who insists Terri-Lynn should also be compensated for all those years working well under the minimum wage.

Had she been compensated with minimum wage, her wage award would have been $23,012.

Her family now has lawyers to file a case on Garrie’s behalf, after being told in the original ruling the pay allegation was out of the jurisdiction of the tribunal because of the amount of time that had passed from her first paycheque. Her claim, it said, was about 10 years out of time.

“We think it’s an important case because it has the potential to have an impact on a great number of other people,” said Jennifer Ramsay, communications and external relations co-ordinator with the Human Rights

Legal Support Centre in Toronto, which filed a “reconsideration request” with the tribunal on behalf of the family on Monday.

“It’s kicking you when you’re down,” Garrie’s stepfather Brian Tibbs said this week. “You have a disability and they’re kicking you when you’re down.”

Neither Janus Joan Inc. nor its owner Stacey Szuch defended themselves in the proceedings.

Reached this week by QMI Agency, Szuch said there is no one with authority to speak about the company because it ceased operating before the claim was made.

She would not comment further on the case.

Garrie’s mother Marjorie Tibbs told QMI Agency her daughter was offered a job at the company to do work like heavy lifting, repackaging of wines, building skids and unloading trucks. The employment was not arranged through any group or third party agency, she said.

She said she knew her daughter was making a $200 “training honorarium” every month for working 40 hours a week at the company, but didn’t complain at the time because Garrie was happy.

She said her daughter and other workers with developmental disabilities had a reason to get up in the morning. “They had a place to go, a purpose in life. All their friends were there.”

And Garrie herself had no concept of money.

“(She) had no idea it wasn’t enough money,” Marjorie Tibbs said. “So money was not an issue when it started.”

The tribunal heard from the family that the company fired the other general labourers with developmental disabilities around the same time as Garrie was fired. They complained the company built itself up using people with developmental disabilities as cheap labour and fired them when they were no longer useful.

“It’s outrageous that people with intellectual disabilities should be treated in this way,” Ramsay said of Garrie’s experience. “Anywhere and any time but particularly in the modern day when we all know how offensive that is and how deeply upsetting it is to people who live with intellectual disabilities and their families.”

It is the potential impact of the ruling on other developmentally disabled people in general that convinced Garrie’s family to move forward with the case.

Whatever the final dollar figure for lost wages, Garrie isn’t expected to profit from the decision.

She collected Ontario Disability Support Payments at the time she worked for Janus Joan Inc., so any money awarded for lost wages will likely go back to the government.

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