With new labour laws on the chopping block, what’s at stake for Ontario’s workers?

Thestar.com
October 9, 2018
Sara Mojtehedzadeh

There was a time in Ontario when workers could be fired for being sick, could be terminated for not taking a last-minute shift and routinely lost thousands of dollars to wage theft.

The year was 2017.

Etobicoke resident and Doug Ford supporter Abdullahi Barre worries about the impact of the premier’s commitment to freezing the minimum wage and reversing labour law changes. “Our community elected Doug Ford,” Barre said. “But we did not support freezing the minimum wage and repealing Bill 148.”

It’s a set of circumstances that north Etobicoke resident Abdullahi Barre calls “unacceptable.”

“Our community elected Doug Ford,” he said. “But we did not support freezing the minimum wage and repealing Bill 148.”

Premier Ford calls the recent labour reforms a “job killer” and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has called on the Progressive Conservative government to eliminate them -- warning of a “$23-billion cost challenge” to businesses.

The bill was enacted by the previous Liberal government after a two-year labour law review concluded Ontario had “too many people in too many workplaces who do not receive their basic rights.”

Research conducted for the review found a province where 1.6 million workers did not have a single unpaid, job-protected sick day. Where workers lost $47 million to wage theft over six years, of which just $19 million was ever recovered by the government. Where workers had almost no protection against erratic scheduling. And where employers were prosecuted in less than 0.2 per cent of cases where they were found guilty of monetary violations.

“What Bill 148 did was start to make our basic rights a little bit stronger,” said Deena Ladd, of the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre.

At a mosque on Rexdale Blvd. backing onto an industrial zone buzzing with transport trucks, not all Ford supporters agree with plans to scrap it.

Imam Abdirahman Hassan said he voted for Ford, whose man-of-action reputation needs little burnishing in this neighbourhood.

“The appeal was when he said ‘I’m standing for the people,’ ” said Hassan. “With the difficult situation that the community is facing, I said to myself, maybe he is the right guy.”

But Hassan believes the ills he sees amongst his congregants have a root cause.

“People, they work at (temporary help) agencies. It’s not a stable job. For that reason a lot of people end up separating and divorcing,” he said. “Kids up end up on the street and find their own ways. A lot of the crisis in the Somali community, it is because of that problem, of not finding a proper job.”

Turfing the new legislation will “make it easier to invest, start, and grow a business in the province as well as build an economy that connects workers to jobs,” Chamber of Commerce president Rocco Rossi said in August.

As a prominent leader in Etobicoke’s Somali community, Hassan sees a different price tag.

“(People feel) there is no future in this country. That’s what I believe is the cost.”

In addition to increasing the minimum wage to $14 in 2018 and $15 in 2019, Bill 148 provided two paid, job-protected sick days and 10 emergency leave days for all workers. Previously, employers with fewer than 50 employees did not have to provide any unpaid emergency days.

“Before Bill 148 came into effect, it was a real challenge to do things like attend a medical appointment,” said Danyaal Raza, a family doctor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

“The two paid sick days have actually helped but are frankly not enough for people who have significant medical concerns and are struggling to make ends meet.”

“When Doug Ford says this is bad for business, when you look at the research, that’s simply not the case,” he added.

The bill also mandated equal pay for temporary, casual, and part-time workers doing the same job as permanent employees.

Hassan said he’d rather the markups charged by temp agencies on workers’ hourly wages go to workers themselves.

“If the business groups are paying the agencies more than $15 (an hour), why don’t they give to the hardworking people who are supporting their families to make ends meet?” he said.

Santha Sivanantham, a mother of three, lives in Markham -- another Conservative stronghold. She has worked at the same company for two years through a temp agency; while her permanent colleagues have received salary increases, she has never received a raise except through minimum wage increases.

Because she juggles two temp agency jobs, she says new scheduling protections in Bill 148 that give employees the right to refuse a last-minute shift without retaliation are crucial. She says the wage bump from $11.60 to $14 has also allowed her to pay her electricity bills and buy snacks for her kids.

“As temp agency workers, that’s the only time we see a raise,” she said. “If there’s no increase in the minimum wage, the temp agency is not going to increase.”

The legislation also promised to double the number of Ministry of Labour inspectors in an effort to inspect one in 10 Ontario workplaces. Between 2011 and 2014, the ministry found violations in around 75 per cent of all proactive inspections.

“I think the previous government did a good analyzing of the current situation,” said Hassan. “The best thing the Ford government can do is to continue.”

Ladd says even with Bill 148, there is still more work to be done.

As it stands, two million workers are still excluded from at least one basic protection -- from overtime pay to minimum wage -- because of gaps and exemptions in existing legislation.

For example, those working in road maintenance are not entitled to severance pay, rest periods or termination notice.

Home-care workers are not entitled to eating periods or overtime.

Residential building superintendents are not entitled to minimum wage.

“Only 24 per cent of workers are fully covered by the Employment Standards Act,” she said. “Those are not numbers that are made up. That is from the Ministry of Labour’s own records.”

“When a worker goes to work they should have a full expectation that they will get paid and they can return home to their family at the end of the day and not be injured,” she added.

Barre, who has four children at home, says he is worried about their future.

“It is very difficult to find a job. Especially when you are Black, when you are Muslim, and when you live in some neighbourhoods that are dangerous. They are discriminated against to get good jobs.”

Bill 148, according to Hassan, started to change that.

“Since the minimum wage changed to $14, a lot of people are relieved. They start contributing to the community and for those in need. And if it’s changed to $15 it will make it even better,” he said.

“You say, ‘I am going to stand for the people,’ ” he said of Ford. “And here we are. This is what we are expecting from you.”