Employer let worker buy shop materials using banked overtime hours instead of cash
An employer let a worker buy shop materials using banked overtime hours instead of cash, and then tried to bill him for those materials after settling a separate pay dispute.
But a tribunal says the entire arrangement was illegal from the outset.
In a decision dated Aug. 19, 2026, tribunal member David Jiang of British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal dismissed a claim by Cranbrook Interior Woodwork, seeking $1,054 from a former employee over shop materials the worker had purchased using banked overtime hours.
The worker began at Cranbrook in February 2022. According to a statement signed by five employees in May 2025, the company had verbally agreed that staff could bank extra hours worked and use them, at a straight one-to one-ratio, to either buy materials from its inventory or take a paid day off.
Cranbrook normally paid overtime at time and a half, a ratio of one to 1.5.
Starting in August 2022, he used hours banked at the straight time rate to notionally purchase $1,054 in materials, which he used to build a piece of furniture. Cranbrook invoiced him for that amount and marked it paid through 30 hours of his labour across August and September of that year.
The worker stopped working for Cranbrook in August 2023. The following month, he filed a complaint with British Columbia's Employment Standards Branch seeking unpaid overtime wages and vacation...
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