Lobbyist grilled on ‘perma-temps’ plight
Trapped workers’ troubles put in the spotlight at jobs law hearing
In a spirited and sometimes squirm-worthy exchange, the two men who will shape the future of workers’ rights in Ontario subjected a temp agency lobby group to a 40-minute-long public grilling about workplace abuses.
The Hon. John C. Murray, a former Ontario Superior Court Judge, and prominent labour lawyer C. Michael Mitchell asked the Mississauga-based lobbyist to explain why a provincial employment law review launched earlier this year has repeatedly heard testi- mony from workers trapped in “temporary” jobs at the same company for years on end.
“That has perhaps been the most common complaint we’ve heard in this process,” Mitchell informed Mary McIninch of the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services.
“If you’d been sitting where we’re sitting for the last number of months you would have heard directly about the effects — and also the power, frankly, in some communities that temporary help agencies have in controlling access to employment,” Mitchell added.
The Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services (AC- SESS) was presenting at a public hearing of the so-called Changing Workplaces Review in Toronto on Friday, the last of13 consultations held across Ontario this summer on whether the province’s current laws adequately protect vulnerable workers.
The Star has previously profiled the rise of temporary work in Ontario, as well as the plight of workers such as Angel Reyes, who spent years working at minimum wage with no benefits in the same tempagency job.
Ontario’s Employment Standards Act currently places no time limits on how long a company can hire an employee through a temp agency.
Temporary employees are not entitled to receive equal pay for equal work.
Temp agencies are also considered the “employer of record” for temp workers, though many temps have little day-to-day interaction with their agencies.
But McIninch, whose organization represents around 1,000 staffing and temporary agencies that are mostly located in Ontario, said the group officially opposes recommendations made by numerous workers’ rights groups to amend those laws.
“I would say flexibility is so important in today’s modern economy,” McIninch said, adding that temp employees were free to turn down contracts when wages weren’t competitive.
The argument didn’t appear to wash with the government-appointed advisers presiding over Friday’s hearings.
“That’s presuming a lot of choice that some people don’t have, frankly,” Murray said.
McIninch said ACSESS supported stricter enforcement measures to punish “fly-by-night” temp agencies, but she added that “no further changes are required to the act to enhance the protections afforded to temporary employees.”
But the special advisers pressed McIninch to respond to reports showing temporary workers are more likely to be injured on the job, and to explain why the temp agency industry has ballooned across Canada over the past decade.
Ontario’s employment services sector earned $5.7 billion in revenue in 2012, a near 72-per-cent jump from 2002.
Temporary agencies account for an estimated 60 per cent of that industry’s total revenue.
McIninch said the figures pointed to the “tremendous work and services that our members provide to both their employees and to their clients across this country.”
But concern about continued abuse of temp agency workers has emerged as a key issue as the provincial government reconsiders its employment legislation, which it has already updated twice since 2009 to afford such employees stronger protections.