A first step to labour reform
Changing Workplaces Review makes 173 recommendations to help Ontario employees
All Ontario workers should receive equal pay for equal work, regardless of their full-time, part-time or temporary status, according to a landmark report that’s the blueprint for upcoming labour reforms.
The 419-page Changing Workplaces Review released Tuesday makes 173 recommendations to improve the lot of Ontario employees.
Significantly, it says nannies, farm workers and dental, medical, legal and architectural professionals should be allowed to unionize; job protections and vacation and familyleave entitlements should be expanded, and employers who cheat workers should face stiff fines.
Premier Kathleen Wynne said the government would be acting “very soon” on the recommendations.
“Stay tuned. It will be moving forward very quickly,” Wynne told reporters in Sudbury.
Labour Minister Kevin Flynn is poring over the findings of special advisers C. Michael Mitchell and John C. Murray and will announce “the important changes necessary” within days.
“Action is needed in order to ensure the benefits of our strong economy are shared by every Ontario family,” Flynn said in a statement. The review recommends the Employment Standards Act, the Labour Relations Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act be streamlined into a beefed-up Workplace Rights Act.
It urges more Ministry of Labour inspections of workplaces, a confidential tip line to report scofflaws, whistleblower protection and the gradual elimination of both the $10.70 “student minimum wage” for teens and the $9.90 liquor servers’ minimum wage. Each is lower than the $11.40 general minimum wage.
Progressive Conservative MPP John Yakabuski (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke) said he “was disappointed not to see a cost-benefit analysis of these measures included in the report.”
“We can’t be changing the labour laws in this province without knowing the impact on jobs and job creators. The best protections for workers are pointless if the workers don’t have a job to wake up to in the morning,” Yakabuski said. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce echoed those concerns.
Notably, the report did not call for mandatory two-week scheduling notice, but said “scheduling regulation in some sectors, such as fast food and retail, should be a priority.”
It also said workers currently excluded from bargaining rights — “domestics, hunters and trappers, mem- bers of the architectural, dental, land surveying, legal or medical profession employed in a professional capacity, and agricultural and horticultural employees” — should be allowed to organize.
Key demands from workers’ rights advocates included making it easier for workers to join unions, eliminating exemptions in current employment laws that mean some workers are not eligible for some basic rights, and ensuring temp agency, part-time and casual employees get equal pay for equal work.
Employees lose $45 million in potential earnings each week because legal loopholes exclude them from rights such as overtime pay, holiday pay, vacation pay and even minimum wage, a government-commissioned study for the review shows.
Right now, fewer than 40 per cent of Ontario workers are fully covered by the Employment Standards Act.
Advocates had also called for mandatory paid sick days, a measure the report stopped short of calling for.
But it did suggest the repeal of an exemption that means small businesses don’t have to pay a single, job-protected unpaid sick day to employees.
They also urged the government to to make work schedules more predictable, and to make more workers eligible for protection under existing employment laws by expanding the definition of “employee.”
As previously highlighted by the Star, critics say many workers are misclassified by their bosses as independent contractors, a category that has no protection under the act.
In response, the report recommended including expanding workplace protections to dependent contractors, who operate independently, but rely exclusively on work from one company for their income.
Labour advocates have also called on the government to step up enforcement. Victims of wage theft across Ontario have lost out on $28 million over the past six years because the ministry failed to collect money owed by law-breaking bosses.
Prior to its release, the Chamber of Commerce warned reforms should not unduly limit businesses’ flexibility and economic growth.
“With respect to claims that there has been an unprecedented spike in the number of people holding multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet, the evidence is nonsupportive,” it said, citing Statistics Canada data.
While the report acknowledged the increased pressure placed on businesses by globalization and technological change, it did not agree that the rise of precarious work across the province has been overstated.
Worker advocates argue the decline in work quality has been well documented in recent years, including in research by McMaster University, which suggests that 52 per cent of jobs in the GTA are now insecure.