Dealing with ‘vulnerable workers’ in precarious employment: Front-line constraints and strategies in employment standards enforcement

ESO recognition of vulnerable workers

When asked to identify the claims that they found difficult to investigate and the barriers that claimants and employers have in the claims process, most ESOs were consistent with the official Ministry discourse in articulating a conception of ‘vulnerability’ linked to the individual characteristics of the claimant. The most commonly cited challenges related to language barriers, access to technology and employees, and lack of knowledge of their rights or the claims process. As one ESO outlined:

Employees who don’t speak English as a first language, temporary foreign workers. All those types of vulnerable workgroups. Also, younger workers who again might also not be aware of what their rights are under the Act or even that there is something called the Employment Standards Act. Or the MOL exactly. I think a general lack of awareness and understanding about the employment standards programme and about employment law in Ontario I think that’s one huge issue. (ESO2 xxv)

There are a variety of consequences that ESOs see as flowing from these personal characteristics and circumstances, including failure to recognize and report when rights have been violated, incorrect or unrealistic expectations, errors in claims, uncertainty, and problems with records. However, while conceptions of vulnerability are largely focused on the worker and not the workplace/work relations, analysis of interviews revealed spaces of tension, or slippage, which complicate the RNG approach to vulnerability as expressed by ESOs. These spaces of tension, which we discuss in turn, are recognition of some variations among ESOs in how they understand vulnerable, or precarious employment situations; the ‘vulnerability’ ascribed to employers; and the significance of the broader power relations of poverty and inequality.

To speak to the first point, consistent with Ministry policy which targets certain industries and workplaces in its inspection programme, ESOs recognize that violations are more frequent in certain kinds of employment situations and industries. For example, one officer identified agricultural work as an industry where workers are particularly vulnerable (ESO2 xxxiv), while others pointed to temporary agencies, restaurants and gas stations. Many ESOs associated firm size and certain industries with poor organization and limited records (see also Snider, 2009). The lack of records was often seen as a major challenge, frequently linked with a lack of knowledge or understanding on both the employer and the worker side in the sense that ESOs feel that neither understand the importance of record keeping with reference to the law. ESOs tended to acknowledge that the problem begins with the employers in that they are the ones not providing workers with written pay stubs or employment contracts. For example, one ESO said:

[I]f they’re a small business with just a few people they don’t have a human resources department so their records are shambles. They also have no idea that Section 15 [of the ESA] says they have to keep records of hours worked. This is all honest mistakes. Mostly. ‘Like I didn’t realize I had to give them statements. Of course you do.’ I don’t think it’s malicious on their part for a lot of times. (ESO2 xv)

However, as the above quote also suggests, the recognition of particular employment situations as creating or exacerbating worker ‘vulnerability’ is complicated by articulation of sympathy for ‘vulnerable employers’, especially small employers and employers who are new immigrants with English often a second language (ESL). Vulnerability, in this case, becomes a shared employee/employer characteristic which obscures the powers that these employers often use to coerce and exploit workers. While there is a broad acknowledgement among ESOs that there are some repeat employer violators, referred to euphemistically as ‘frequent fliers’, who intentionally exploit ‘vulnerable workers’, these violators are generally individualized as ‘rotten apples’, rather than as industry wide ‘rotten orchards’ (Gottschalk, 2012). In this framing, as illustrated in the quote above, many if not most of the violators are cast as ‘vulnerable employers’ who lack information and education on the law, business knowledge or skills, or have weak language skills. As might be expected, this sympathy extends to a reluctance to penalize these employers with fines or prosecutions. As one officer said,

Same problems really as employees but some employers really are overwhelmed. That’s something I have come to realize in this job. Small Employers who are barely able to keep up getting kids to school, opening their place of business, working like dogs. A lot of people working franchises, people who have not been in Canada long, don’t know the rules. Well even those of who work with the Act, don’t know all the rules. This is again why I don’t like to slap tickets on them. (ESO2 xviii)

ESOs identified several other worker ‘vulnerability characteristics’ as making investigation and resolution challenging, including unstable living conditions, multiple job holdings, lack of phones and computers, and no employment related records. As one ESO said,

[T]hey don’t answer their phones, their addresses change, the phone numbers change, they are living at home, or one woman was living in a shelter where they can’t get a hold of them. You can’t get their side of the story because you need to get a hold of them . . . I had to make all kinds of attempts to get in contact with them and sometimes they don’t have any information or any documents and all they can say is I am owed $2000. They had nothing to support it which is difficult. That is really it. (ESO2 vii)

ESOs often articulate poverty and monetary pressures as important aspects of these workers’ lives, with all kinds of consequences for the resolution of claims, including communication and transportation problems, settlement influences, and, ultimately, failed claims. The Ministry requirement to file claims on-line also figures prominently in some ESO concerns that vulnerable workers are less able to access and understand computers. As one put it, ‘Anybody with English as a second language, new immigrants, they’ll have a problem . . . they don’t have the money for a computer and Internet’ (ESO2 xv).

As well, workers’ poverty and monetary pressures were articulated by some ESOs as making claims more difficult because they raise the stakes: that is, the heightened material and emotional consequences of the claim resolution is interpreted by some ESOs as adding to their own responsibility as front-line officers. As one ESO said,

The hardest claims for me are the emotional ones . . . where the people are, because of whatever reason they are counting on this money and then I get that sense of oh my God they are now counting on me to get this. (ESO1 ix)

In this way, claims characterized with worker ‘vulnerability’ were often seen as both more difficult (due to the barriers mentioned above) and more important. Significantly, linking conceptions of ‘vulnerability’ with the difficulty of emotional, personal, or high-stakes claims was most commonly expressed in discussions of reprisals related to maternity leave. This gendered situation speaks to the importance of looking to the ways in which conceptions of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘difficulty’ are grafted upon workers’ gendered and racialized social locations (Vosko et al., 2019).

While most ESOs were focused on the personal limitations of the workers, some did acknowledge the power leverage that employers exercised over workers as one aspect of worker vulnerability, albeit in different forms and to different degrees. However, terms like ‘precarious employment’ or variations thereof such as low wage employment or insecure employment are rarely mentioned explicitly when talking about the workers’ vulnerability. The absence of this language among officers is significant as it suggests that employment and wage insecurity are not integral aspects of the ESO narratives on ‘vulnerability’. On the other hand, while the language of precarious employment is not generally articulated, some ESOs observe that ‘vulnerable workers’ are often afraid of reprisals from their employers, and the fear is often understood as reflecting a substantial threat and influence over worker capacity to file claims. As one ESO stated,

I think that there’s a lot of fear amongst employees particularly those at the bottom end of the wage scale for lack of a better word, they tend to be less educated and they’re doing, with all due respect, they are doing menial work. So, I think there is definitely an intimidation factor that is at play. (ESO2 xxxii)

A few ESOs also articulated an understanding that some employers target ‘vulnerable workers’ for employment precisely because they know those workers will not report ES violations because of their material need for employment (e.g. ESO2 ix).

Again, however, because of a tendency to emphasize the challenges that many small employers face – their low profit margins, their lack of management resources and experience, and their lack of knowledge and communication skills (Snider, 2009) – many ESOs see employer violations as not just a question of knowledge, but also as reflecting structural and situational constraints limiting the employers’ capacity to pay or abide by the law. As we show in the next section, these varying conceptions of worker and employer vulnerability shape the tactics and strategies deployed by ESOs in addressing challenges associated with vulnerable workers.

In sum, the overarching trend towards individualizing assessments of worker vulnerability was complicated by the recognition of some problematic industries and employers and some concern for low wages and poverty as key social sources of vulnerability; however, unlike the general trend towards individualizing vulnerability, these more structural concerns came out unevenly across ESO respondents. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that, in the final analysis, many ESOs viewed the reluctance of workers to stand up to employers as principally questions of knowledge and self-confidence rather than unbalanced power relations and substantive fears of reprisals.

I think those vulnerable individuals that we’re really keeping an eye on, the minimum wage worker, does not have that confidence and does not have the skill set, doesn’t have the education. So that is a big one. We need to educate the employees and we need to make sure that we develop, what is the word I’m looking for, sort of a sense of confidence in standing up for oneself and to push back against an employer. (ESO2 xxxii)

This is reflective of the official Ministry discourse which casts worker reluctance to file complaints as questions of confidence and understanding of their rights, ignoring or understating the very real risks of employer reprisal including job loss and blacklisting (Mirchandani et al., 2019; Weil, 2012; Weil and Pyles, 2005–2006). This tendency to overlook or ignore worker fear and the substantive basis of that fear is also sometimes evident in the willingness of ESOs to trust that workers are able to give truthful accounts as witnesses for their employers without fear of the consequences. As one ESO said:

If there is no other evidence and I go and interview a third-party and there’s another employee in the workplace and [if] they are verifying what the employer [is] saying, that is credible, credible evidence to me. (ESO2 xxxi)

In this way, the inattention to workplace intimidation or fear leaves the onus for evidence on workers who may not be in a position to speak freely (Mirchandani et al., 2019).

Dealing with vulnerable workers: Perceived constraints and enablers

While most ESOs identify a constellation of factors that pose challenges for ‘vulnerable workers’ seeking to assert their rights under the ESA, ESOs tended to describe themselves as being very limited in their abilities to address these challenges. At the same time, the strategies and accommodations that they do employ are usually described by ESOs as individualistic and discretionary rather than Ministry policy (Tucker et al., 2016). That is, in their accounts of their own investigation strategies, ESOs consistently cast their efforts to attend to barriers facing ‘vulnerable workers’ as ‘over and above’ their core responsibilities or as ‘exceptional’ relative to standard practices. As one ESO stated, their efforts were coming ‘from a moral obligation and not necessarily from a policy obligation’ (ESO iv). In the absence of clear policy directions and supports for ESOs to take steps to mitigate the structural barriers ‘vulnerable workers’ encounter in the claims process, it falls to the individual ESOs to apply their own discretion to both identify the presence of barriers and then make extra efforts to overcome these barriers. Still, given the Ministry’s policy emphasis on eliminating or reducing backlogs in claims resolution, many ESOs report that their discretionary efforts are primarily focused on how they can better ensure voluntary employer compliance, or alternatively, broker a settlement between the employer and employee and thereby resolve the claim, rather than how they can attend to vulnerable workers’ needs and constraints. As one ESO described the process: ‘If there are entitlements to be paid you have to try to get those paid voluntarily. If the evidence is not clear then I can try and mediate the settlements. And if all else fails I issue an order . . . The main focus is for us to close a 140 files per year and obtain our [performance] points’ (ESO2 i).

While time is not the only constraint, the allocation of time within policy frameworks and resource allocations is a constant factor in shaping how ESOs use their discretion. Although, as noted, the Employment Standards Act (2000) gives ESOs what appear to be extensive powers to investigate (enter workplaces and seize records without warrants, interview witnesses) and prohibit employers from obstructing their investigations (Section 91; see also Tucker et al., 2016), ESOs point to the lack of power to seize funds and compel payment. Further they complain about the bureaucratic procedural requirements of serving employers who are refusing to cooperate, which many saw as more likely in situations involving vulnerable workers. As noted above, the AMES manual makes it clear that when employers fail to cooperate, communicate or show up to scheduled meetings, the investigation proceeds without them. While the focus is perhaps correctly placed on making a determination in a timely manner, the policy is also clearly directing ESOs away from using their legislated power to compel and punish employers who do not cooperate. As one ESO put it:

. . . sometimes one of the barriers is just the simple principle of the matter. You have an employer who just outright refuses to speak with you. You send them a letter and when they see Ministry of Labour on it and they refuse it. I can’t make them take it. So, there’s certain expectations that I have to make contact and do certain things in my job in order to resolve a claim. But if I send you this piece of paper today and it says Ministry of Labour you’re going to look at it and say no and send it right back. You’re stuck following timelines and you have to do your due diligence. (ESO2 i)

One of the most common complaints that ESOs note is the difficulty of quickly retrieving money from employers. One accordingly argued for a triage approach which would prioritize larger amounts as a matter of policy given the perceived financial need of these workers.

Although ESOs often spoke about their discretion in pursuing some cases in more intensive ways, all tended to point to the importance of individual line managers as enabling or contesting their discretion and capacity to better address vulnerable workers. Those ESOs claiming more substantial efforts to help vulnerable workers tended to report more supportive managers and certainly our management interviews suggested differences in management practices inasmuch as some talked much more substantially about their efforts to create space for ESOs to accommodate workers and complete more detailed investigations when evidence was sketchy. Other ESOs stressed that management differences and inconsistent and ever-changing Ministry policy were undermining policy implementation:

I guess it also depends on the manager if you have a manager who encourages and enforces this kind of work. Then that helps. . . . Probably older officers, and I don’t mean older in age; that more experienced officers, people [who] have been doing this for 15, 20, 25, 30 years, they have been through a political pendulum swing from you know, leave business alone don’t you dare, you know, make a bad name for the Ministry of Labour, to [now], listen we have got to jump on these guys with both feet. I can see where their training and their willingness to go back and forth has been dampened. (ESO2 xxi)

ESOs often argue as well that their capacity to accommodate workers is significantly constrained by their legal duty of neutrality as administrative law regulators. Many ESOs stressed that they are impartial, are ‘not worker advocates’ (ESO2 xxviii), and ‘represent the legislation’ not the workers (ESO2 xi), while others emphasized ‘fairness’ and ‘natural justice’ (ESO2 iii). As one stated, ‘our ultimate goal is always natural justice. Always making sure that the decision that is made is in the best interest of both [our emphasis] parties’ (ESO1 ix). The importance of natural justice principles is clearly emphasized in their Administration Manual, noting that employers and employees must have ‘confidence in the fairness of the process’ (OMOL AMES, 2017: Ch. 6, p. 10), warning, as well, that any labour relations board or judicial appeals of decisions will often hinge on officer adherence to these principles.

Coupled with their conception of natural justice, ESOs often insist that the claims process itself is neutral and unaffected by power relations. For example, although acknowledging that most ‘vulnerable workers’ tend not to file claims while still employed with the offending employer because of the power imbalance, the following ESO insisted this imbalance was not relevant to the claim process or outcome:

We neutralize the power imbalance absolutely [once a claim is made]. Where it affects people is they don’t make a claim in the first place they don’t feel empowered to make a claim in the first place, they are afraid of making a claim in the first place. (ESO2 vii)

In other words, while many recognize that the employers’ power affects employee capacity to file claims, many ESOs don’t recognize or acknowledge that employer/employee differences in power also affect claim outcomes.

At the same time, both ESOs and their regional managers stressed that there were also political considerations behind the need to remain neutral, expressing fears about employer complaints that ESOs have treated them unfairly. Similar to Laureen Snider’s (2009) findings on Security and Exchange (SEC) enforcement officers, ESOs were often concerned about building a relationship of trust with employers, arguing that this was crucial to gaining and sustaining their cooperation and compliance. At the same time, most ESOs were sincerely committed to being ‘neutral’ in practice and in appearance as a core professional and legal obligation, which translated into what they defined as a balanced ‘natural justice’ approach. In practice, however, this orientation sometimes mitigated against extraordinary efforts to protect workers, in general, and ‘vulnerable workers’’ interests, in particular.

Notwithstanding their feelings of constraint, when asked ‘what they do to overcome the challenges workers face’, ESOs put forward several examples of their own efforts, ranging from a focus on individualized worker characteristics to a more expansive approach to precarious employment and worker/employer power relations. Unsurprisingly, however, most of the commonly cited efforts fit into an individualized approach to vulnerability, revolving around overcoming language and literacy barriers such as finding interpreters or asking workers to identify a friend/family member that can translate or assist. These responses accord with the earlier observation that the vulnerability experienced by workers is disproportionately cast in official Ministry discourse as the consequence of personal attributes, not structural power relations. It may also be that overcoming language barriers is experienced by ESOs as a relatively tangible and concrete example of addressing worker challenges, whereas dealing with, for example, a lack of records or the fear of reprisal requires more nuanced and less self-evident measures. These discrete interventions into language and literacy barriers also eschew more complex inquiry into how the racialized stratification of the labour force may be producing particular challenges and exclusions for racialized and migrant workers.

In line with the Ministry focus on education, ESOs also frequently highlight their efforts to correct what they perceive as the workers’ lack of knowledge or understanding, which they frame as giving workers the capacity to defend themselves in the future. As one ESO offered: ‘I make sure to educate an employer especially and an employee because a lot of times they don’t know what their rights are, how to proceed on a go-forward basis’ (ESO2 ix). Similarly, other ESOs direct workers to available Ministry resources, such as plain language guides and website information, so as to superficially ‘empower’ workers with resources and knowledge such that in the future they are better able to assert their rights. As we’ve argued elsewhere, these kinds of problem representations reflect a Ministry emphasis on dominant low-cost, compliance-based strategies that emphasize information provision and self-regulation as the principal solutions to regulatory failure (Hall et al., 2015). Given limited Ministry resources and time pressures on ESOs, and a lack of policy directives speaking to these situations, ESOs have limited spaces within which to address worker vulnerabilities. As such, it is perhaps less than surprising that most ESOs tend to define vulnerability in limited individualistic terms, largely excluding from consideration the more significant structural constraints impacting these workers, including the social location of racialized and gendered populations within those forms of employment.

Yet, we emphasize that some ESOs articulate a more complex understanding of the challenges faced by ‘vulnerable workers’ and recognize that these challenges can impede workers’ ability to participate fully in the claims process or produce evidence to counter employer documentation. Accordingly, while still operating at the level of servicing the individual, these ESOs describe themselves as using their discretion and making extra efforts to make the process more accessible, to expedite particular claims, and to expand the boundaries of credible evidence. For example, in an effort to be accessible to workers who face procedural challenges with the claims system, some ESOs strive to reduce bureaucratic and economic barriers by travelling to workers to collect documents and taking calls in the evening or on the weekends when claimants and support people are more available. As expressed by one ESO: ‘I will actually go to them because I don’t want to see them expending money on public transportation to come to me or to mail documents or photocopies or faxes. . . . But not all officers do that. Some officers will not leave the office. I am the oddball’ (ESO2 iv).

Similarly, some ESOs exercise their discretionary power to voluntarily expand the scope of inquiry if they recognize that there are potentially more employment standard violations than have been identified by the worker: ‘I do take the time, if somebody’s just claiming unpaid wages, I take the time to ask about everything else. When was the last time you got vacation? Is your vacation paid?’ (ESO2 xxi). Interestingly, in our interviews with regional and programme managers who support and work directly with the ESOs, research participants also reported that Ministry policy has shifted to encourage this effort to broaden the investigation beyond the initial claim, a policy which they actively encourage.

While most ESOs still insist that they are reluctant to expand claims and their investigations in line even with management encouragement, largely because of continuing time constraints, heavy caseloads, and concerns about neutrality and employer pushback, some ESOs also describe themselves as making conscious allowances to expand how evidence is collected and what is accepted as evidence. For example, one ESO said,

I’m fairly flexible in the way I received documents. . . . We’re supposed to use the provincial claim centre for all of our documentation and that becomes a hurdle, mailing documents to them and finding somebody, I give them my personal email, I allow my direct email. A lot of times they have text messages and stuff but they’re not really sure how to, how to submit and a lot of times I allow pictures to be taken on them. I tried to accommodate the claimants as best as I can. (ESO2 iv)

Another ESO spoke of prioritizing complaints that involve workers in particularly precarious circumstances:

Sometimes you can tell by the claims submission that the claimant may be falling on hard times. I attempt to expedite their claim perhaps more so than I would another claim if it is written in the claims submission that they did not receive their two weeks and now they don’t have money for rent and now they are at the food bank. I will expedite that. (ESO2 iv)

However, again, these measures to accommodate ‘vulnerable workers’ are portrayed by ESOs as ‘discretionary’, which suggests that they are also practised inconsistently, and indeed, most ESOs did not report following these kinds of practices.

As the above quote suggests, however, ESO efforts for vulnerable workers are sometimes motivated by what they see as precarious financial circumstances. This desire to expedite the process can also affect whether ESOs use the settlement process, wherein the employer and worker negotiate a monetary settlement for less than the original claim, an option which is available to them under the legislation (ESA 1990, Section 101.1 (1)). That is, the immediate financial situation of the claimants is one of the considerations that some ESOs cite as their reason for seeking a quick settlement:

I think my training has been that we are not supposed to approach settlements where it is a black-and-white issue and there is a violation of the Act. I would say that is how I was trained but I feel there are nuances. I have used them, for example, that case where, that claimant was a good call. The company went under and they probably would have been, there was no wage protection plan and no income replacement. They would’ve lost. For them and for their circumstances they were moving out West and they needed money. (ESO xxix)

As a key site of discretion, ESOs will adjust their approaches to settlement on other grounds depending on the workers and the employers, trying to gauge whether a worker is up to meeting face-to-face with their employer or ex-employer; and, if they read a greater need for the worker to get money as soon as possible, or read the employer as likely to draw the process out through appeal to reduce the claim cost, some ESOs will make more efforts to effect a settlement. ESOs also indicate that they will attempt or suggest settlements when there is a lack of records, which they acknowledge is more likely in cases involving ‘vulnerable workers’. While the decision to seek an early resolution of claims in these circumstances is ostensibly in the interest of the worker, the move to settlement may mean that the worker does not receive their full entitlement: if this is more likely to occur in the cases of workers characterized as ‘vulnerable’, as this early research suggests, this process may lead systematically to underpayment for workers who need the money the most (Vosko et al., 2020).

While, as noted, ESOs don’t generally characterize employers as exploitative, some ESOs explicitly acknowledge that they aggressively investigate and pursue employers who they perceive as exploiting or intimidating workers, and in particular ‘vulnerable workers’, the logic being that ‘vulnerable workers’ are helped principally by more use of deterrence measures against their employers. For example, one ESO said:

Really you just got to keep at it, keep working, keep digging. You have to trust your gut. And you know there’s something up, just keep digging the further. You may look at something initially and your Spidey senser, if you want to call it, tingles and you realize there’s something wrong with this situation. You dig a little deeper and find that really what is at hand. Really what shenanigans are going on. (ESO2 xviii)

Many ESOS expressed strong support for proactive and punitive measures in the cases of these kinds of employers, but again there were often complaints that, in practice, the majority of their fellow officers are not taking the same approach:

A lot of officers, there is no enforcement in terms of notices of contravention or part ones. They just don’t do it. They get voluntary compliance and close it. It is a matter of time and management’s expectations on numbers. A lot of claims officers do not issue any notices of contravention and do not issue part one prosecutions. (ESO2 xxvi)

As even enforcement-oriented officers and managers also acknowledge, their capacity to do more complex investigations and increase deterrence measures is also limited by time allowances and workload. As one ESO put it:

Because it is so time consuming and we are already so backlogged in and we are already working so much on the claims as we have now that you are trying not to create more work for yourself. I think that is a huge barrier. Employers in Ontario, they know that. . . .They are buying themselves time. I think for us that is a huge, is finding the time to even prosecute . . . (ESO2 xii)

Some of the more deterrence-oriented ESOs also complained that the Ministry’s call for more fines and prosecutions against repeat offenders was unevenly supported across the Ministry hierarchy (see Vosko et al., 2020: Ch. 6). In particular, some felt that the legal branch of the Ministry was not supportive of ESOs trying to take more enforcement action. As one ESO stated, ‘there is a lot of pushback from legal on prosecuting under the Employment Standards Act . . . I am new and I am pretty adamant on things that I want to do . . . but I don’t think that legal has taken that route’ (ESO2 vii). Being relatively new to the position, and coming from another legal institution with a stronger deterrence orientation, this ESO was both surprised and disappointed that the Ministry’s apparent call for stronger enforcement was not fully supported at all levels of the Ministry, in part because s/he had been told by local management that s/he and others had been hired specifically for their enforcement skills and orientation. While managers confirmed that new ESOs were being hired with enforcement in mind, they and many longer-term ESOs emphasized the importance of acting to maintain good relations with the employer community, in part so that persuasion and education could continue to be the primary tools for gaining employer compliance and resolutions to workers’ claims. As one manager put it:

They [Ministry] wanted more enforcement because they realized that, you know what, we need more of those, but then you got some [ESOs] that were just too much. It was like, you still have to ease off because there’s still those smaller employers and . . . but it’s like, ‘procedures say I have to issue a ticket and I have to do this’, and it’s like okay, but, you know, you still have to have that – the educational component. (MGER xvi)

Thus, respondents demonstrated a range of responses to the challenges associated with resolving the claims of ‘vulnerable workers’. While those variations indicate a greater effort by some ESOs than others to assist and protect ‘vulnerable workers’, the evidence suggests that the activities of most ESOs are still grounded in what Snider (2009) calls a ‘regulator habitus’ – that is, internalized assumptions and beliefs about the interests and power relations within which they operate as regulators (p. 191). In the context of the Ministry and government discourse on ‘vulnerable workers’, ESOs and their managers have been given short-term ‘cultural permission’ (Snider, 2009) to protect ‘vulnerable workers’ through more use of enforcement measures. At the same time, however, institutional constraints, such as workload, the emphasis on natural justice and the Ministry’s discourse on the continuing primary importance of education signal to most ESOs and line managers a persistent institutional and political commitment to an historically dominant compliance model, albeit one that is framed in RNG terms (Tucker et al., 2019; Vosko et al., 2020: Ch. 6). Central to this newly framed RNG approach, and consistent with the Ministry’s long-standing compliance orientation, are the assumptions that employers must be given the benefit of the doubt in claims processes and enforcement-related decisions, and that the primary goal in claims investigation and proactive inspections is to teach employers and employees their legal rights and responsibilities without disrupting legitimate business activities and their contributions to the economy. While the Ministry administration and their front-line regulators construct and isolate target groups for special ESO attention, notably ‘repeat offenders’ and ‘vulnerable workers’, both the administration and ESOs avoid the contradictions of their mandate by focusing on the individual characteristics or circumstances of these actors, while ignoring the wider spread of employer violations, precarious employment and worker vulnerability across the labour market and their structural origins (Mirchandani et al., 2019; Vosko et al., 2019). Somewhat ironically, to the extent that these constructions include an emerging sympathy among ESOs for ‘vulnerable employers’, ESOs are encouraged to double down on their efforts to be ‘fair’ to these employers, often the same ones who are ‘repeat offenders’, further undermining their capacity to protect workers in precarious forms of employment.