Unpaid hours: how to keep an hours log that holds up

What is an “hour worked” in the eyes of the law?

Most hours are lost without any spectacular theft. They are lost in small pieces: coming in before opening to set up, staying after closing to clean, a mandatory team meeting, a trip between two locations in the same day. The Act respecting labour standards (ALS) settles the question at section 57: an employee is deemed to be at work in four situations.

• when they are at the employer’s disposal at the workplace and are required to wait to be given work;
• during breaks granted by the employer;
• during travel required by the employer;
• during any trial period or training required by the employer.

The CNESST is explicit about the most common case: if the employer asks you to arrive 10 or 15 minutes before the scheduled shift, or to stay after, that time must be paid. It is not a favour, it is work.

The breaks are not mandatory, but if the employer grants them, it must pay them and include them in the calculation of hours worked. The meal break, for its part, follows a different rule: after 5 consecutive hours of work, a 30-minute unpaid meal period must be granted, but if the person has to stay at their post (alone in a shop, available in case a customer comes in), that period must be paid. The law also provides for a weekly rest period of at least 32 consecutive hours.

One last case, very common in restaurants and retail: the3-hour reporting indemnity. A person who reports to work as usually scheduled and whose shift is cut short by the employer is entitled to an indemnity equal to 3 hours of wages, and that indemnity must include the estimated tips they would have earned during that period. Being sent home after 45 minutes because it is quiet does not mean being paid for 45 minutes.

Overtime: from what point, and at what rate?

The standard workweek is 40 hours for most workers. Beyond 40 hours in the same week, a person is working overtime · even if the standard week is shorter at their workplace. The calculation is done by week, not by day: twelve hours on a Tuesday are not automatically overtime if the week totals less than 40 hours.

Overtime is paid at time and a half, meaning the usual hourly rate multiplied by 1.5. The CNESST’s example: a person paid $20 an hour who works 45 hours receives $800 in regular wages ($20 × 40 h) plus $150 (5 h × $30), for a total of $950. At the general minimum wage of $16.60 an hour, an overtime hour is worth $24.90.

Watch out for two details that change the amounts. Premiums added to the hourly rate, such as evening or night premiums, are not counted in the overtime calculation. And overtime can be replaced by paid time off equal to the hours worked plus 50%, but only at the employee’s request, or in the cases provided by a collective agreement or a decree. That time off must be taken within 12 months, otherwise the hours must be paid.

Some categories do not get the premium rate or have special rules: notably farm workers, managers, people who care for others, and certain jobs in the forestry and fishing sectors. If you are in one of those situations, check your specific case with the CNESST before calculating anything.

Finally, working overtime is not always mandatory. According to the CNESST, a person may refuse to work, on a given day, if asked to work more than 2 hours beyond their usual hours or more than 14 hours in a 24-hour period; more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period if their daily hours are variable or not continuous; or if their employer did not give them their schedule 5 days in advance (with exceptions).

Paid in cash, paid in tips: your rights do not change

Being paid in cash is not illegal in itself: the law allows payment in cash or by cheque. What matters is the rest. Wages must be paid at regular intervals not exceeding 16 days (an employer may pay a manager once a month), and a pay statement must be given with every pay. That is often where the problem starts: cash with no stub leaves no trace of how many hours were recognized.

Since 1^st May 2026, the general minimum wage in Québec is $16.60 an hour and the rate for employees who receive tips is $13.30 an hour. Tips belong to the person who provided the service: the employer must pay the minimum wage without taking tips into account, and cannot impose a tip-sharing agreement.

The method of payment takes away no rights. An employee remains covered by the ALS, and the CNESST can claim the unpaid amounts from the employer: wages, overtime, vacation pay, statutory holiday pay and the termination indemnity.

One useful clarification, because the question always comes up: tax matters are a separate file. The CNESST is not authorized to claim a T4 or a Relevé 1 on a worker’s behalf; those questions fall to Revenu Québec and the Canada Revenue Agency. If your situation involves undeclared income, that is a point to raise with a lawyer before starting anything.

What your employer must write down, and keep

You are not the only source of records. The employer has written obligations too, and they work in your favour. With every pay, it must provide a pay statement that lets you check how the wages and the deductions were calculated. According to the CNESST, it must include, among other things:

• the employer’s name and the worker’s name;
• the job title;
• the work period covered by the payment, and the date of payment;
• the number of hours paid at the regular rate;
• the number of overtime hours paid or replaced by time off, with the rate that applies;
• the nature and amount of any premiums, indemnities, allowances or commissions paid;
• the wage rate and the amount of gross wages;
• the nature and amount of the deductions taken, and the amount of net wages;
• the amount of tips declared by the worker or attributed by the employer.

The employer must also keep a registration system or a register (section 29 of the ALS and its implementing regulation). This register shows, for each employee, their last name, first name, address and social insurance number, the job identification and the date they started, then, for each pay period, notably the number of hours worked per day and the amount of gross wages. This register must be kept for three years.

That changes a great deal. During an investigation, the person mandated by the CNESST can visit the workplace at a reasonable hour and inspect it, require information and documents, and speak with anyone who can provide or confirm information. An employer who refuses to provide information or a document the Commission has the right to obtain, or who breaks the law, is liable to a fine of $600 to $1,200, and of $1,200 to $6,000 for a repeat offence.

Until then, the practical rule is simple: keep every pay statement, even crumpled, even barely legible, and photograph the posted schedule every week. Those two habits, on their own, transform a case.

The real countdown: the deadlines

This is what loses the most cases, and nobody says it early enough. To file a wage-related complaint with the CNESST, a worker has one year from the moment the amounts became due. And that time limit runs for each due date, so pay by pay: every week that goes by makes the oldest week of your claim disappear. Waiting until the job ends to react costs months of wages.

There is another regime. A person who sues on their own before the civil courts, on the basis of their employment contract, relies on the general limitation period of three years set out in article 2925 of the Code civil du Québec for a personal action. The courts have already held that having filed a complaint under the ALS does not prevent a person from asserting their rights under the general law (Nicolescu c. TSI System Group inc., 2012 QCCQ 3217). Which limitation period applies to which amount can be debated, however: that is exactly the kind of question to put to a lawyer.

Two much shorter deadlines exist, and they catch people off guard. In construction covered by the R-20 Act, the wage complaint must be received by the Commission de la construction du Québec, with the required documents, no later than 60 days after the wages were due in order to keep the right to compensation from the compensation fund. And if you are dismissed or penalized because you exercised a right, the complaint for a prohibited practice must be filed within 45 days of the dismissal or the penalty (90 days in the case of forced retirement).

One last deadline, once the process has started: if the CNESST considers that it cannot act on your complaint, you have 30 days to ask for a review of the decision, and the CNESST has 30 days to respond.

What to gather as evidence

The CNESST itself publishes the list of documents that support a wage-related complaint. For unpaid wages and overtime, it asks for:

• the pay statements and/or the bank statements covering the period claimed;
• the details of the days and hours worked;
• the employment contract;
• the exchanges with the employer relating to the facts (emails, texts, social media);
• for tips: the sharing agreement, the details of tips earned and not paid, any tip register or declaration;
• if the employer goes bankrupt: the record of employment, the T4 or Relevé 1 slips, the hours log and the details of the amounts claimed, the proof of claim filed with the trustee.

To that official list, add the records almost everyone forgets, and which are often the most convincing because they do not come from you:

• a photo of the posted schedule, taken every week;
• the screenshots from the punch-clock app, the scheduling app or the group chat;
• the texts and group messages along the lines of “can you come in at 6 tomorrow” or “stay 30 minutes longer”;
• the parking, gas or transit receipts for the dates concerned;
• your phone’s location history, if it is turned on;
• the names and contact information of the coworkers who worked the same shifts;
• the envelopes, notes or bank deposits matching the amounts received in cash.

You probably will not have everything. A case is rarely complete, and that is not what is expected. What matters is the consistency of the whole : that the hours you wrote down, the bank deposits, the messages and the schedules all tell the same story.

Keeping an hours log that holds up

It is the person claiming an amount who has to convince the CNESST or the court. And a notebook filled in all at once, six months later, in the same ink and with round numbers, does not convince the same way as a notebook filled in day after day. Four qualities make a log solid: it is contemporaneous (written the same day), precise, complete and unaltered.

In practice, here is what should appear for each day worked:

• the date and the day of the week;
• the actual arrival time · not the scheduled one, and what you were doing when you got there;
• the actual departure time;
• the breaks taken, and the ones that were not taken, with the reason;
• the place (establishment, branch, worksite) and any travel required during the day;
• the main tasks, in one line;
• who was there: a coworker, a manager · a witness is much easier to find again if their name was written down the same day;
• what you were paid for that period, and the gap you found;
• a photo of the posted schedule, if there is one.

The method matters as much as the content. Write it down before you leave the premises, or within the hour. Keep the same format every day. Never rewrite the past in silence: if you correct a mistake, add the correction and its date instead of erasing, and keep the original even after copying it out neatly. A document that has obviously been altered loses its value all at once.

Also write down the days you did not work, and the ones where everything was paid correctly. A log that contains only problems looks like a document built for the claim; a complete log looks like a log. And keep it outside the employer’s tools: your notebook, your phone, your account. A file left on the store’s computer or in a work email address can become inaccessible overnight.

If you are starting today for months already gone by, do not pretend you wrote things down as you went. Reconstruct week by week, and attach to each reconstructed week the record that supports it: a text, a bank deposit, a photo of a schedule, a receipt. Clearly indicate what is a reconstruction and what was written down at the time. Mixing the two without saying so is what weakens a case the most, and saying so takes nothing away from you.

Calculating what you might be owed

The calculation is done week by week, because overtime is calculated over the week. One big total — “he owes me about $4,000” — cannot be verified and cannot be defended.

• reconstruct, for each week, the total hours actually worked;
• note the total hours paid according to the pay statement (regular rate and overtime);
• take the difference: that is the week’s gap;
• split that gap: the hours up to 40 are paid at the regular rate, those beyond 40 at time and a half;
• then add up the weeks, pay period by pay period, keeping the dates · that is what lets you check, for each due date, where the one-year limit stands.

An example at the general minimum wage of $16.60 an hour: a week of 46 hours actually worked, 40 of them paid. Six hours are missing, all beyond 40, so at $24.90 each · $149.40 for that one week. Over thirty weeks, the amount stops being symbolic.

Unpaid hours also affect other amounts calculated from the wages earned. On top of wages and overtime, the CNESST can claim vacation pay, statutory holiday pay and the termination indemnity. It also provides a tool, monCalcul, that helps work out some of these amounts.

One warning, and it is an important one: do not inflate anything. An exaggerated total that collapses on a single verifiable point · a day you were not there, a shift the cameras or the schedule contradict · damages the credibility of everything else in the log, including the hours that were entirely real.

The recourses that exist

Several routes exist. They do not have the same deadlines, the same conditions or the same consequences. Here is what they are; the choice is yours.

1. The wage-related complaint to the CNESST. It is filed online or by phone at 1-844-838-0808, within the one-year limit. The path is mapped out: the CNESST first checks that the complaint is admissible, tries to settle the dispute with the employer, then investigates. If the investigation shows the complaint is founded and no agreement is possible, the CNESST sends a claim to the employer, who has 10 days to pay. Failing that, the file goes to legal affairs: a CNESST lawyer sends a demand letter, the employer has 20 days, and then a lawsuit can be brought on your behalf before the Court of Québec or the Superior Court, depending on the amounts. You have no fees to pay when you are represented by a CNESST lawyer.

2. Small claims. You sue on your own, for a claim of no more than 15 000 $. Being represented by a lawyer is generally not allowed at the hearing (a lawyer can help you prepare the case, but cannot argue it for you). According to Éducaloi, filing fees range from about $100 to $300 depending on the amount claimed, the wait between filing and the hearing is 6 to 15 months depending on the district, mediation is offered, and the usual limitation period is three years. Remember, too, that getting a judgment is not the same as being paid: it still has to be enforced.

3. Construction. If your work is covered by the R-20 Act, the wage complaint is filed with the Commission de la construction du Québec, within the 60-day limit mentioned above for the compensation fund.

4. If you are unionized or covered by a decree. The recourse usually goes through the grievance procedure. In fact, before handling a complaint, the CNESST checks that the person has no other recourse provided by a collective agreement or another statute.

5. If the employer goes bankrupt. The Wage Earner Protection Program, a federal program, compensates unpaid wages, vacation pay, severance pay and termination pay when the employer goes bankrupt or is placed in receivership. The single payment can reach the equivalent of 7 times the maximum weekly insurable earnings under Employment Insurance, that is $9,275 in 2026, for the 6-month eligibility period preceding the bankruptcy.

These routes do not always exclude one another, but they do not lead to the same place. No one here can tell you which one suits your situation: that depends on facts this guide does not know. That is precisely the question to put to a lawyer, or to a legal aid resource, before you commit.

If you are afraid of reprisals

This is the number one reason people do not file a complaint: the fear of losing the job, the hours, the atmosphere at work. The law does provide something on this. A prohibited practiceis when a worker is dismissed, suspended, transferred, or given another penalty because they exercised a right provided by law, and the CNESST explicitly names claiming wages among those rights.

The mechanism is important to understand: if a person is dismissed or penalized for a reason prohibited by the ALS, it will be up to the employer to prove that it did not act for that reason. The complaint must nevertheless be filed within 45 days of the dismissal or the penalty (90 days for forced retirement). That time limit is short, and it cannot be made up.

On confidentiality: the CNESST must not disclose the name of an employee involved in a monetary complaint unless that person consents (section 103 of the ALS). That does not make a small workplace anonymous · be clear-eyed about that.

What the law does not do is make the atmosphere pleasant. If you fear reprisals, the only thing that concretely protects you is to document what happens afterward too : the dates, the shifts taken away, the remarks, the written warnings, the schedule changes. A dated timeline is what lets you show, later, a link between your steps and what followed.

Common mistakes

They are almost always the same, and they are costly:

• Waiting until the job ends. The one-year limit runs for each due date: every month of waiting erases a month of the claim.
• Rounding up or inflating. An exaggerated log turns against whoever wrote it the moment a single point is contradicted.
• Throwing out pay statements, or changing phones without backing up the texts and the screenshots.
• Writing down only the overtime and not the regular hours: the week’s total can no longer be checked, so nothing can be calculated any more.
• Copying your notebook out neatly and destroying the original. You have just replaced contemporaneous evidence with a rewritten document.
• Accepting a verbal arrangement (“we’ll make it up to you next week”) without keeping any written trace, even just a confirmation text.
• Believing that being paid in cash takes away your rights. The ALS applies anyway.
• Confusing what is true with what is provable. Both matter, but only the second can be argued.
• Forgetting the hours that do not look like work : required training, meetings, required travel, waiting at the employer’s disposal.
• Letting the 45 days go by for the prohibited-practice complaint after a dismissal or a penalty.

Where to get real advice, and what this guide is not

This text isgeneral legal information. It is not legal advice, and it never will be. No one here can tell you whether your case is worth pushing, or what a court would do with it: that depends on facts we do not know and on the evidence you actually have in hand. Advice is given by a person who has read your file.

• The CNESST, at 1-844-838-0808, for any question about labour standards and about filing a complaint.
• A lawyer who practises employment law · the Barreau du Québec offers a referral service.
• Legal aid, if your income makes you eligible.
• The community justice centres, which give free legal information, with no appointment and no membership.
• Au bas de l’échelle (514-270-7878), a non-profit organization that defends non-unionized employees.
• The Commission de la construction du Québec, if your work is covered by the R-20 Act.
• Your union, if you are covered by a collective agreement.

The rates, amounts and deadlines cited here were verified with the official sources on the date shown at the top of the page. The minimum wage is revised every May 1^st and the thresholds change: always check the current figure on the CNESST website before doing a calculation that matters.

One last thing. If you are reading this in the evening, after a ten-hour shift, wondering whether it is worth the trouble: the one action that is never wasted is writing down what happened today, while you still remember it. The decision to do something about it can wait until tomorrow.

This guide is general legal information about Quebec law, not advice on your situation. Rules and amounts change: always check the official source. For a specific question, a lawyer, legal aid or a community justice centre remain the references.