Rolling back equal pay, options for consolidating bargaining units, fairer rules for joining unions, and other basic rights represent a major step backwards in efforts to address precarious work across the province… Workers on university campuses and in communities across the province are counting on these modest but important labour law improvements to support themselves and their families
Faculty, students, and staff across Ontario know first-hand how important existing labour laws are for the well-being of our families and communities. Ontario workers deserve fair wages and good jobs, including at our universities and colleges. If this government is truly for the people, it should do the right thing and withdraw Bill 47 immediately.
Windmill, formerly known as Immigrant Access Fund Canada, received a $1 million grant from TD Bank as one of 10 winners of a challenge for fresh ideas to increase income stability and give people the skills for the future economy… Since its inception, the charity has helped more than 4,000 immigrants and refugees restart their careers in Canada, and many have seen their earnings double or triple as a result. More than half of recipients are in health care, including doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and medical technicians. The loan repayment rate is 97.5 per cent.
Already, 53 governments worldwide have put a price on GHG emissions. They include six Canadian provinces and all three territories; the European Union, world’s largest economy; Japan, third-largest economy; several of China’s largest manufacturing centres; and powerhouse economy California. That carbon pricing is an affordable remedy is evident in the mid-income countries that have adopted it, including Mexico, Slovenia, Latvia and Kazakhstan.
… research shows that visible minorities – the term Statscan uses – earn almost 20 per cent less, on average, than Canadians who are not visible minorities. That gap widens further for women of colour, who earned, on average, 70 per cent of what a man who is not a visible minority earned… research considered factors such as education, experience and hours worked. “After controlling for all characteristics that may drive earning gaps, we still see some gaps that then we can say that’s discrimination”…
After two years of public consultations, special advisors leading “the largest review of Ontario’s labour laws conducted in decades” concluded in the 400-page Changing Workplaces Review report “that there are too many people in too many workplaces who do not receive their basic rights.” … for business lobbies to now say there has been no input and that Bill 148 is “too much too soon” is disingenuous… In fact, some of the changes… were modified by the business community.”
… the perverse thinking behind the economic philosophy that has dominated North American politics in recent decades: that workers must offer themselves up at the lowest possible wage with the fewest possible benefits in order to create an attractive investment climate for businesses that might otherwise move elsewhere… most low-wage countries remain that way, while the high-wage nations of Europe and Scandinavia continue to excel in global competitiveness.
The government says the new law will “create good-paying jobs with benefits.” In reality, it will do just the opposite by clawing back planned wage increases, rights and protections contained in the former Liberal government’s Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, passed late last year. That certainly isn’t good for employees, and as many economists have argued it isn’t good for the economy as a whole either.
Now that Premier Doug Ford’s government is scrapping nearly every change the Liberals made to the employment laws and freezing the minimum wage until October 2020, it’s time to assess whether the claims that it’s killing jobs and devastating the economy are true. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce predicted (in what it called an independent economic analysis) that the reforms would put 185,000 jobs at risk. The fact is Ontario’s unemployment rate over the past year is as good as it has been this century.
Employment standards inspections deal with basic workplace issues such as unpaid wages and overtime. Proactive inspections, which are initiated at the behest of the ministry, are far more effective at recovering unpaid wages, including public holiday pay and overtime, than when individual workers file complaints, according to the ministry’s own data… the move is motivated by a significant backlog of employment standards claims filed by workers — exacerbated by a “discretionary spending freeze and subsequent suspension of recruitment” at the ministry.
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