Ford’s gutting of labour law hurts the same people he promised to help

It’s expected that a new premier wants to make a big splash in his or her first months in office, to show they’re delivering on campaign promises. But in his vow to get rid of the previous Liberal government’s labour reforms, known as Bill 148, Doug Ford is not just making a splash.

He is (stretching that metaphor) throwing the baby, the bathtub and the plumbing out with the bathwater.

He’s also showing his true colours: While the premier professes this is about jobs, his mean-spirited actions show his concern is not for the “little guy,” but for the employers/business owners he likes to pal around with.

Look, we’re not opposed to profit, and we recognize a lot of small-business owners barely make a comfortable living. Ford’s campaign promise to cancel the planned $1-an-hour minimum-wage increase to $15 on Jan 1. was a pity, but if he had been willing to see the increase phased in over the next few years, the idea would at least have been defensible.

Despite Ford’s bombast, the increase to $14 at the start of this year has not resulted in net job losses; in fact, year-over-year employment across the province is up 1.1 per cent — about 80,000 jobs.

Where, Mr. Ford, are all the lost jobs?

But far more appalling than the lost $1 an hour is the loss of other labour reforms that would have improved job scheduling and sick days.

When you earn minimum wage, often for fewer than 24 hours a week, knowing when you have to work is essential for scheduling child care (or the other job you need to make ends meet).

When they have no paid sick days — as an estimated 1.6 million Ontario workers do not — people risk their and their colleagues’ health by dragging themselves into work when they’re ill.

The legislation that Ford is tossing along with the minimum-wage increase would have given workers improved scheduling notice and two — that’s right, just two — paid sick days a year.

There were other job protections in Bill 148, but they all came after two years of study and public consultations.

They deserve better than to be simply spiked in a partisan, political gesture.

Ford keeps insisting that he’s governing for “the little guy,” but the littlest workers in Ontario are the full one-third of the workforce who are vulnerable (i.e. young, new, aging, and migrant/immigrant workers) or in precarious employment (i.e. work that is poorly paid, insecure and cannot support a household). They’re the ones who deserve better labour law.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol and its main character Ebenezer Scrooge to expose the abysmal labour conditions in Victorian England. When Scrooge says “Are there no workhouses?” it’s not sarcasm. It’s a literal comment on employer attitudes of the time. Does Premier Ford similarly believe it is his mandate to drag Ontario back to a time when workers are expected to feel gratitude for a less-than-subsistence living?

The changing nature of employment demands more than an archaic and callous understanding of employer-employee relations and the labour legislation that governs them.

But far more appalling than the lost $1 an hour is the loss of other labour reforms that would have improved job scheduling and sick days.