These Toronto lawyers want South Asian newcomers to know their employment rights

Two Toronto lawyers have launched a campaign to help make sure South Asia newcomers and immigrants know their employment rights. 

The Tareekh Pe Tareekh: Know Your Employment Rights campaign breaks down the ins and outs of workers' rights through informational videos in South Asian languages. The campaign offiically launched last fall but has been gathering steam in recent months, with some videos racking up several thousands of views. 

Richa Sandill, one of the co-leads for the campaign, works as a staff lawyer with the employment law team at Don Valley Community Legal Services. She says she came up with the idea after joining the legal aid sector and working with a South Asian clientele.

"So many people who speak Urdu, Punjabi, who speak Bangla, Tamil, especially out in Scarborough…were just being taken advantage of by their employers because of the language barrier," she said.

Sandill partnered up with the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario to help create the videos. That's when Anchal Bhatia, a staff lawyer at the clinic, got involved. 

The videos are posted on social media sites including Instagram and TikTok in Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, and Punjabi.

The campaign's name is inspired by an old Bollywood movie, where a character played by actor Sunny Deol, repeatedly says "tareekh pe tareekh" during a courtroom scene. Tareekh means date in Urdu and Sandill says in the scene, the character is speaking out about the delays in the justice system. 

"We chose that kind of a title [because] it's tongue in cheek, but it also has some name recognition and it also has a little bit of semblance to some of the things Anchal and I see in our practice as employment lawyers," said Sandill. "Litigation can be delayed, it can be messy."

Bhatia says the videos cover basic information that's part of the Employment Standards Act — information that's readily available on the Ministry of Labour's website. 

"They do a pretty good job of explaining it in plain language… but it's in English," said Bhatia. She says she hopes the videos help workers identify if they've been wronged or exploited.

Some videos have amassed over 20,000 views in the last few months. Sandill says she hopes the videos are being shared among international students. 

"In both of our clinics, we see a lot of abuse of international students in the workplace, a lot of unpaid wages violations," she said. "So we're really hoping that the videos reach them."

Bhatia says the impact of the videos has been noticeable.

"This new year we've gotten almost double the calls and also we've been approached by various organizations," she said.