Paving and concrete payroll: seasonal crews, road-building overtime and WSIB done right

The plants set your payroll calendar

Hot-mix and ready-mix availability defines the paving and concrete season in Ontario, and payroll has to follow it. Spring brings a burst of new hires and rehires: TD1 forms, direct deposit details, rate confirmations and, for returning operators, a check on whether last year's rate or a new union schedule applies. Late fall brings layoffs for most of the crew, a skeleton shop staff through winter, and a Record of Employment for every person laid off.

ROEs are where seasonal contractors get caught. An electronic ROE is due within five calendar days after the end of the pay period in which the interruption of earnings occurs, and a late or wrong one delays an employee's EI claim in the weeks they most need it. We issue them in a batch the week of shutdown, coded for shortage of work with an expected recall date where one exists, and we walk owners through when a Record of Employment is required the first time they lay off a crew.

Road-building overtime and the construction-employee exemptions

Ontario's Employment Standards Act treats road building differently from most work. The general overtime threshold is 44 hours a week, but for employees engaged in road building on streets, highways and parking lots, overtime begins after 55 hours in a week, and for structures such as bridges the threshold is 50 hours. A long stretch of night paving in July can be compliant under one rule and a large unpaid liability under another, so the payroll system has to know which work each crew is doing. When crews split their time between road work and other construction, the standard threshold governs the rest, and we set up the earnings codes accordingly.

Construction employees are also exempt from ESA termination and severance pay, which is why seasonal layoffs work the way they do, and from the public holiday rules where they receive vacation pay of at least 7.7 percent of wages (9.7 percent after five years of employment). Many contractors pay vacation pay on every cheque for exactly this reason. We configure Wagepoint, QuickBooks Online Payroll or Payworks so those percentages and thresholds apply automatically, and we pull hours from the field app — ClockShark, busybusy or QuickBooks Time — coded by job, so the same timesheet drives both pay and job costing.

WSIB is one of your largest cost lines

Coverage is mandatory in Ontario construction, including for independent operators and most executive officers, and the premium rate depends on how the WSIB classifies your work. Road, parking-lot and driveway paving, poured-concrete structures and site preparation can fall under different construction classes with materially different rates, so getting the classification right is worth real money every year. One executive officer or partner who does no construction work can apply for the exemption; everyone else on the crew is insurable earnings.

Premiums are reported and paid on the WSIB's schedule based on insurable earnings and reconciled annually, and every subcontractor you pay needs a clearance certificate on file before payment or you can inherit their premium liability. We run all of it from the payroll register, so the earnings WSIB sees match the T4s CRA sees. If you are unsure whether your company must register with the WSIB, in this trade the answer is almost always yes.

Operators, labourers, owners and the hiring hall

If your company is signatory to a LiUNA local or IUOE Local 793 agreement, hourly remittances for pension, health and welfare and training funds are due each month and are calculated on hours by member, not on dollars paid. We build the remittance report from the same hours file as payroll so a union audit matches the books. Non-union contractors face a different question: which people on site are employees and which are contractors. Labourers, rakers, screed operators and finishers working your schedule with your equipment are employees. A trucking broker with his own tri-axle, or a pumping company with its own pump and operator, is a subcontractor paid on invoice and reported on a T5018.

Owner pay gets its own plan. Salary from the corporation creates RRSP room and CPP entitlement; dividends do not, and the right mix depends on what the company needs to keep for equipment. Paying a spouse or adult child who dispatches, files tickets or flags is deductible when the work is real and the pay is reasonable for it. Where the company has bought a machine from a US seller or is weighing US work, our cross-border page for paving contractors covers what changes, and our payroll services page sets out how every pay run is handled.

Source: Ontario — Your guide to the Employment Standards Act.