VANCOUVER — For many students, the foodservice industry is the first stop as classrooms empty every summer and the number of candidates looking for shift work swells. Not surprisingly, the demand for work creates a new shift in power, and some student workers are starting to push back against what many, including the courts, see as unfair employment practices.

One such student, featured recently in an article by Tiffany Crawford of the Vancouver Sun, has taken issue with unpaid trial shifts, a practice whereby a potential employee is tested in a real service environment and ostensibly does the job of a paid worker without being remunerated. The paper reported that the restaurant owner in question, while declining to be identified, acknowledged the illegality of unpaid training shifts, while noting the practice is widespread in the industry.

VANCOUVER — The Top Table Group has announced that executive chef Frank Pabst, of Blue Water Cafe + Raw Bar, and restaurant director Brian Hopkins, of West, will be inducted into the British Columbia Restaurant Hall of Fame on Sept. 27.

Founded six years ago by the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association, the award honours those, “who have demonstrated exceptional professionalism working in the restaurant industry by making their restaurant a special experience.”

RICHMOND, B.C. — It’s back for another year. The third-annual Wild B.C. Seafood Fest will take place Saturday, Aug. 28 at the Steveston Harbour Authority Fisherman’s Park in the fishing community of Steveston, in Richmond, B.C.

The free outdoor public celebration of wild B.C. salmon, sablefish and sardines will be attended by members of B.C.’s commercial fishing industry and several of the province’s most acclaimed chefs and seafood experts.

OTTAWA — The tide could be turning in Ottawa where farmed B.C. salmon may soon be given the organic seal of approval, despite outcry from environmentalists.

The draft proposal, presented by the Canadian General Standards Board and organic aquaculture working group at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, would create new organic aquaculture standards that would apply to fish raised in open-net pens in the ocean.