Workers at a boot store are owed almost $360,000 because some wages were paid in gift cards

• The store had to pay more than 350,000 dollars in damages.

• Some employees were paid half their salaries with gift cards.

• Hutchingame said it was to pay for employee equipment.

After paying half of their salaries in gift cards, a store must give workers more than 350,000 dollars.

After an investigation into its pay practices, the Employment Standards Tribunal of Canada ordered Dayton Boots to pay its 71 employees a total of C$484,995, with director Eric Hutchingame responsible for most of that amount.

The company was deducting half their wages and replacing them with store gift cards according to two Dayton employees who filed complaints in October 2020.

An investigation of wage records showed that some employees began seeing deductions in their gross wages in June 2020.

Hutchingame was able to find a way to pay for the boots by incorporating them into the company's pay structure.

He said that his staff had agreed to accept a weekly remuneration package worth C$600 in cash and a "merchantise credit" for another $600, which was never meant to be a substitute for wages.

The tribunal ordered Dayton to pay over six hundred thousand dollars due to the requirement that employees be paid in Canadian dollars. Out-of-province workers were excluded from the sum.

According to Hutchingame, 36 of the 71 employees are not subject to the same labor laws as other employees. Dayton submitted records for all of its employees as part of its initial investigation.

Dayton didn't reply to a request from Insider.

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