TORONTO, Oct. 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The $15 & Fairness campaign will host a community vigil on Monday at 5:30 pm at the intersection of Keele Street and York Boulevard, close to the Upper Crust bakery, where a temp agency worker was killed on Thursday night. This is the 4th temp agency worker to die while working at a Fiera Foods-related company since 1999.
“It is with incredible sadness that we are learning about the tragedy of yet another worker death,” said Deena Ladd, coordinator of the Workers’ Action Centre. “We send our deepest condolences to the family, friends and co-workers of the deceased.”
Last year, in response to public pressure, the government took modest but crucial steps to protect the most vulnerable in our workforce, especially those who are in precarious employment and are employed through temporary staffing agencies, by enacting Bill 148.
“The changes made through Bill 148 are not frivolous,” argued Ladd. “They are urgent necessities that must not only be protected, but expanded. Failure to do so will impose real life consequences on millions of Ontario workers.”
The tragic news of the worker’s death came after Doug Ford government tabled Bill 47 on Tuesday, seeking to repeal almost all of the new workplace protections that were adopted last year, which aimed to ensure safety and well being on the job.
If passed, Ford’s Bill 47 would:
- reduce penalties assigned to employers for violating workplace laws
- make it easier to deny workers any employment standards protections -- including EI, CPP and WSIB -- by misclassifying them as self-employed contractors, instead of employees
- make it easier for employers to fire workers who decline last-minute shifts
- eliminate paid sick days and reduce access to personal emergency leave
- impose a real dollar wage cut for Ontario’s lowest paid workers
- allow employers to pay part-time and temporary agency workers less than their full-time or directly-hired counterparts
“Bill 47 is not only harmful to workers, it gives a green light to Ontario’s most unscrupulous employers who have a track record of violating the most basic workplace laws” said Ladd.
“The Changing Workplace Review, which was a three-year province-wide public consultation undertaken by independent advisors and informed by academic research, concluded that Ontario must improve labour laws and step up enforcement to protect workers in this province,” said Pam Frache, provincial coordinator of the $15 and Fairness campaign. “Instead, the Ford government froze the hiring of new employment standards enforcement officers, halted proactive workplace inspections and tabled legislation to rollback our new laws.”
“If we allow employers to act with impunity, we can predict with certainty that there will be more of these kinds of tragedies. That is why we are calling on the Premier to withdraw Bill 47 and for every MPP to vote against it,” said Frache.
For more information:
Nil Sendil
Communications Coordinator, Fight for $15 and Fairness
info@15andfairness.org l 647-710-5795