The Aquilini Group has fired back at accusations that it skipped contractual payments to migrant workers.
Last week, the billionaire owners of the Vancouver Canucks were ordered to pay over $130,000 in wages owed to temporary foreign workers on the family's blueberry farm in the Lower Mainland.
On Tuesday, Francesco Aquilini tweeted out a two-page letter claiming "every worker, including those that made the complaint, were paid in full for the hours that they worked and in line with the wages that were set out in their signed contract."
This letter went out to Aquilini employees, giving them the background to recent news stories about our Golden Eagle Farm. pic.twitter.com/3BoXhF1vWq
— Francesco Aquilini (@fr_aquilini) May 21, 2019
The letter continues, claiming that the Guatemalan workers brought to the farm in 2018 were “more ‘city’ people as opposed to the ‘farmers’ who worked for [them] the year before.”
According to Aquilini, a large group of the Guatemalan workers left the farm without notice and upon returning they were told they had to go home.
It was after that a group of 15 workers lodged a complaint claiming mistreatment.
B.C.'s Employment Standards Office said the Aquilini's hired the foreign workers under a contract stipulating a forty-hour work week for a period of six months.
However, the workers were only given about one month of full-time work, before their work assignment was reduced.
In the letter, the Aquilini's state that the contract stipulated an "average" of 40 hours a week, not a "minimum", and that workers were always paid in full for hours worked.
The Worker's Compensation Board also fined the Aquilinis’ $53,000 for using an unsafe vehicle to transport farm workers on the same farm.
In 2008, the Aquilini Investment Group, headed by Francesco Aquilini, purchased a 100% of the Canucks franchise and what is now known as Rogers Arena.
The Aquilini family paid the players of the Vancouver Canucks nearly $73-million in total salary last season.
