The Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission has asked the former employer of Filipina caregiver Gelyn Dasoc to pay $41,600 for damages in violation to her civil rights.
Dasoc worked as a nanny in the household of Natalie Azoulay during July and September in 2012.
During that time, she says she worked six days a week taking care of four children aged 2 to 11 and a grandmother, all for minimum wage.
Dasoc says she worked long 65 hour weeks and would only get paid for 40 hours.
Dasoc was recruited to Canada through the West Island placement agency Super Nanny.
She says that in 2005 she paid the agency $4,400 to obtain her paperwork to be employed in Canada.
Get daily National news
In 2012, the year she worked for the Azoulay family, she was asked to pay for her own plane ticket, which Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) executive director Fo Niemi says is contrary to federal labour rules.
Dasoc claims when she asked for two weeks worth of her due salary, she was threatened with deportation by her employer.
“She told me that ‘I am going to call immigration and they will come pick you up and send you back to the Philipines,'” Dasoc said.
The record-setting amount of damages claimed is one of the highest ever set upon a case of this nature.
The total sum takes into account $11,600 for loss of wages and airfare, which Dasoc had to pay herself upon arriving in Canada, as well as $25,000 in moral damages and $5,000 in punitive damages.
Dasoc is now a permanent Canadian resident and is working with PINAY, a Filipino women’s organization, and CRARR to put on pressure for a concrete court date with the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal.
The ruling by the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission was inked in November 2017.
$2,000 has been offered to Dasoc as compensation from Azoulay, but the “humiliating” amount was declined. according to Niemi.
Meanwhile, Niemi says cases like these bring up more reason for public consultations on systematic racism and discrimination in Montreal.
Comments