Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak’s campaign pledge to demolish 100,000 public sector jobs makes his mentor – former Premier Mike Harris – look like a lightweight.
Between 1995 and 2002, Harris cut about 7,000 public sector jobs, thrusting the province into a period of labour turmoil and eroding public services.
At the federal level, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also had a bull’s eye on the back of public sector workers, but even his attempts to cut jobs pales in comparison to Hudak’s pledge.
Employment and labour
Watch the video below and click here to visit CCPA-Ontario's Working For A Living website—a storytelling project to convey the value of a decent minimum wage and a living wage.
While the labour landscape has changed dramatically in Canada in the last 58 years, the legal framework has not. The labour relations framework that we use today in Canada was implemented in 1944 with PC-1003, and the Rand Formula in 1946. The models were based on the Wagner Act of 1935 that was implemented in the United States which gave important legal rights to organized workers. PC-1003 gives legal rights to unions to collectively bargain, represent, and organize workers and the Rand Formula gives the provisions for automatic dues check-offs.
The recent controversy over Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) highlights that companies can be profitable with very different approaches to wages and worker turnover. On one side of the spectrum are companies such as Lee Valley Tools, which treats its employees well in terms of wages, benefits, and training, and has famously low turnover rates. On the other are firms that pay relatively low wages on jobs with little to recommend them in terms of benefits, the environment in the workplace, or chances for advancement.
We all want Metro Vancouver to be a livable and sustainable place, for ourselves, our families and our children. However, for many families who work for low wages, municipalities across Metro Vancouver are inhospitable.
We often hear about the affordability problem in our region but we rarely hear about the flip side to this problem: the low-wage problem. High living expenses and low wages mean that tens of thousands of working families are living in poverty across Metro Vancouver and around B.C.
(Vancouver) A report released today finds that the wage needed to cover the costs of raising a family in Metro Vancouver is $20.10 per hour. This is the 2014 Metro Vancouver living wage rate, the hourly wage that two working parents with two young children must earn to meet their basic expenses (including rent, child care, food and transportation), once government taxes, credits, deductions and subsidies have been taken into account.
The Day of Mourning, more than any other day in the labour movement’s calendar, brings home why we must remain vigilant in the area of workers’ rights. As reported by the Canadian Labour Congress, more than 1,000 workers are killed on the job or die as a result of workplace conditions. As we commemorate another National Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job, we are reminded of some of the issues that played a role in workers’ health and safety in 2013 -14.
Please note: The updated 2019 Living Wage report is now available.
Inside this issue:
BC Jobs Plan reality check: The first two years by Iglika Ivanova
Legal safeguards for tenants are meaningless without enforcement by Kendra Milne
Anti-poverty movement, meet the culture of medicine by Dr. Vanessa Brcic
You always learn something when accountants feud by Keith Reynolds
BC’s “big favour”: Will LNG exports reduce global greenhouse gas emissions? by Marc Lee