Last summer reports of tree planters enduring abuse from their employer made for ugly headlines about exploitation deep in the woods of Beautiful B.C. A year later, the situation is not much prettier, apparently.

Not only have those workers not been given their back pay, but John Betts, executive director of the Western Silviculture Contractors' Association says he still hears reports of people hired to do similar jobs stiffed on their pay by other contractors.

"The problem hasn't been solved," Betts told The Tyee. "Already this season I have heard complaints involving a small but significant number of government contractors who are not properly paying their workers." Betts said that there are approximately 200 contractors doing silviculture work in B.C. this season, employing over 3,000 workers.

The scandal that broke last summer involved 57 forest workers, most of them recent immigrants from Africa, employed by Surrey-based Khaira Enterprises. Those workers claimed they'd been denied food and clean condition as well as pay.

They have yet to receive the back pay ordered for them by an Employment Standards Branch hearing -- an order confirmed in June of this year by an Employment Standards Tribunal ruling. Those workers also are not getting the Employment Insurance payments advocates say are due them.

Roger Harris, the BC Forest Safety Ombudsman, issued a report in July that terms the Khaira situation "intolerable" and calls for procedural reforms to protect workers doing contract tree planting and brush clearing for the government from similar mistreatment in the future. Betts said that Western Silviculture Contractors' Association had raised concerns with the provincial government about Khaira several times since 2009, to no avail. He said his organization was troubled by Khaira winning contracts with bids significantly lower than those put forward by other contractors, bids so low they suggested that the work would be done without observing necessary safety and work standards requirements. He said his concerns were dismissed.

"Part of the problem is the low-bid system being used, a system that opens the door to operators who shirk their obligations and are lax on safety," he said.

Raided, shut down, banned from bidding

The Tyee has seen copies of internal government emails that record concerns about safety and working conditions at Khaira camps some months before the ministry finally shut down the company's operation outside Golden.

On July 21, 2010, a forest ministry raid shut down a Khaira work camp 40 kilometres outside Golden. Ministry officials who visited the camp were told by the workers they were being starved as punishment after they stopped work to pressure Khaira to meet their demands for back wages. The workers also said they had been subject to racist abuse by camp management, fifteen-hour work days, inadequate sleeping and sanitary arrangements and lack of clean water.

The B.C. government took the Khaira situation seriously enough that it has banned the company from bidding on government work until 2012. In January of this year, an Employment Standards Branch hearing found that Khaira owed its workers nearly a quarter of a million dollars in unpaid wages. Worker advocates told The Tyee then that former Khaira workers were living in dire poverty.

Meanwhile, according to a report in the July 22 Asian Journal, Hardilpreet Singh Sidhu, one of Khaira's owners, had reportedly transferred ownership of his $605,000 home to his wife, triggering an Employment Standards Branch lawsuit against him alleging that the property transfer was an attempt to shelter the property from claims stemming from the dispute.

"Some of the workers are owed $12,000, according to Employment Standards. For someone living in poverty, that amount could be their only income for the entire year," Ros Salvador, a lawyer at the B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre, which has acted on behalf of the Khaira workers, told The Tyee.

Soft 'message to rogue operators': BC Fed's Sinclair

In February, Salvador told The Tyee that the workers had already been waiting seven months for wages and employment insurance payments "they are fully entitled to receive. The Ministry of Labour has the authority to release the money held by the provincial government, and the only just course of action is for the money to be paid out immediately to alleviate the poverty of the workers."

Just last week, Salvador told The Tyee that none of the workers had received the wages due them. She also said the Khaira management had mis-stated workers' hours on reports to Employment Insurance, with the result that workers had been unable to receive EI payments to which they were entitled.

Jim Sinclair, president of the BC Federation of Labour, has repeatedly called on the government itself to pay out the back wages due Khaira workers and not allow appeals and bureaucratic delays to extend their already long wait.

He has also criticized the $3,500 fine imposed on Khaira Enterprises by the Employment Standards Branch as inadequate.

In January, Sinclair told The Tyee: "Given how much these workers lost, the fine looks more like a reward to the employer than a real punishment," he said. "The message to rogue operators is you can rip off your workers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if you get caught you will be fined a few thousand dollars."

Some reforms underway: ministry

The Tyee recently contacted the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MFLNRO) and WorksafeBC to ask whether the reformed procedures proposed by the Harris Report had been implemented yet.

Cheekwan Ho, a media spokesperson for the MFLNRO told The Tyee by email, "We have already taken a number of actions that address some of these recommendations brought forward by the Forest Safety Ombudsman."

Ho added "After the Khaira situation came to light, ministry staff looked at actions they could take and started implementing those immediately. Those just happened to align with some of Mr. Harris' recommendations."

She told The Tyee that the ministry had upgraded requirements for contractors to notify government when they establish and re-locate work camps, as suggested by the Harris Report, and that ministry staff now act as "eyes and ears on the ground" for other relevant ministries and government bodies when visiting work camps as a partial response to Harris's recommendations for improving enforcement of relevant laws and regulations.

"Inspection results are reported to provide them with information they need to determine if and when to follow up with their own in-field inspections," she wrote.

In one of its most crucial recommendations, the Harris Report calls on the government to reform its bidding process for contracts to move away from always accepting the lowest bid, and move toward a "proposal driven model" that would put more focus on the contractor's expertise and specific plans for meeting the challenges posed by terrain and other conditions. Ho told The Tyee that "Contracts are awarded to the lowest qualified and compliant bidder -- not just the bidder with the lowest price."

She reiterated this point in responding to the passage in the Harris Report that urged that prospective bidders for government work be investigated and pre-qualified to participate in the bidding process. As well, she said that "A system of eligibility requirements is already in place that needs to be met by prospective contractors."

Did Khaira change its stripes?

The Tyee asked Ho about persistent rumors in the silviculture industry that the two owners of Khaira had incorporated a new company, Tiger Reforestation, and that the new firm was bidding on government contracts.

Ho told The Tyee: "While there may be suspicions that Tiger is simply Khaira under a different name, there is no legal proof, that Tiger principals are 'related' or 'affiliated' to Khaira as defined under the Income Tax Act."

However, she went on to say that because Tiger was not certified as a safe company by the BC Forest Safety Council and had no past corporate track record with the government, it would not be eligible to bid for government work this season.

Donna Freeman, who speaks for WorksafeBC, told The Tyee by email:

"I can tell you that WorkSafeBC representatives have read the ombud's report on Khaira and our senior executive committee is reviewing the two recommendations directed at WorkSafeBC (WSBC). At this time I can advise that WSBC looks forward to working with the provincial government and other agencies to ensure silviculture workers are better protected in future."

And so, while the Khaira workers remain unpaid for their work last season, and reports suggesting other workers are being cheated of their wages in the B.C. bush are circulating in the industry, the glacial process of bureaucratic reform continues in the various government bodies that share responsibility for worker safety and fair treatment in the woods.

In the words of forest safety ombudsman Roger Harris:

"The Khaira situation, which is clearly intolerable on many levels, raises questions about the safety of workers in the silviculture industry in B.C. and leads one to ask the following question: How, despite all of the evidence that appears to have existed and been documented by the various regulatory bodies against Khaira leading up to the incident in Golden, could a workplace contracted by the MFLNRO deteriorate to the point where workers needed to be rescued? Clearly the system had failed not only the Khaira workers but also all British Columbians who rely on government to maintain a certain level of safety in the workplace."