A recent decision released by the British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal could almost seem like a low-budget spy film after Sandhar Trucking Ltd. used its GPS tracking system to try to prove that a former employee had falsified his timesheets.
Sandhar Trucking Ltd. filed a lawsuit against Gurmeet Sandhu after discovering discrepancies in his timesheets for entering and exiting the yard where the company parks its trucks. After some calculations, the company claimed the former employee documented 153.5 hours more than he actually worked. So they sued for time theft.
According to the court, time theft is a difficult problem to quantify. It is generally understood that this also includes the case where employees report to work but do not start work until later or leave early. In extreme cases, it could even involve talking about non-work related topics during working hours. Yikes.
Sandhar used the earlier definition. According to court documents, in October 2022, a company dispatcher noticed irregularities in Sandhu's start and end times. They informed him that he would not be paid for the additional hours and that further incidents would result in “immediate termination.” Instead, Sandhu resigned on November 3.
But Sandhu's resignation did not mean the end of the battle over time theft.
Using his prevailing hourly wage, Sandhar sued Sandhu for $4,205.43 for the company-billed hours he had paid in but not actually worked. The company then took extreme measures to prove its claim, resorting to the GPS tracking systems in its trucks.
Using documents from Samsara, Sandhar told the court that the company uses a GPS tracking system in its trucks that documents when each truck is turned on and off at each location. It said it used the samsara start and end times of Sandhu's truck and compared them with the start and end times on his timesheets to calculate the time theft.
Unfortunately for the company, the court recognized that this method was extremely flawed.
Sandhu denied the allegations of time theft and shared that “Samsara reports do not record his start and end times as his job duties include not only driving trucks but also loading flatbeds, assisting other drivers and counting and inspecting containers in the yard.”
Additionally, the company's time theft calculations had issues with rounding differences in reported times. The documents revealed that Sandhar had rounded down Sandhu's timesheets when it should have rounded up, along with several other unexplained calculation errors.
Suspicious.
The court ultimately decided that the errors and discrepancies in the trucking company's calculation of alleged time theft could actually “facilitate the employer's wage theft” and decided to challenge his claim.
Nice try, shipping company.
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