Another one of those articles highlighting how employers are exploiting workers, & the government is dragging its feet in actually doing anything to stop this open exploitation. Employers are not stopping at merely forcing workers to work more hours or work while they are injured or sick but they are also stealing workers' wages by either not paying them outright or delaying their wages.
As I always mention that keep in mind that this is happening in Canada & not in a developing country (where it would be most expected). People all over the world are same; after all, we all have red blood. Corruption & taking from others what's not rightfully ours (out in the open) is considered bad everywhere but it happens everywhere the same.
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Scarborough resident Sylvia Buchanan was owed thousands by her former employer, who fired her the day after she asked to be officially put on the books as an employee.
Instead, what she got was a nine-month runaround from the Ministry of Labour, the department supposedly meant to protect her against workplace violations.
9 months of waiting for money she was legally owed. 9 months of stress & anguish as the bills piled up. All to get the wages she was entitled to by law.
Buchanan’s assessment of trying to navigate the system?
“It was horrible.
“If I had not pressured the ministers, if I had not constantly called my MPPs, I honestly don’t think this would be resolved,” she says. “I think it would still be in the system somewhere.”
When it comes to enforcing Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, critics say it is workers — not the government — doing the heavy lifting.
Complicating matters is the fact that, by law, workers are supposed to confront their employer about possible mistreatment before filing a complaint with the Ministry of Labour.
When a complaint is lodged, employers are immediately notified & are given the employee’s name, often leading to immediate dismissal.
The employment act offers no protection against unjust dismissal.
“The strongest condemnation of the model is the fact that virtually no employees file complaints, only former employees do,” says David Doorey, an employment law expert & professor at York University.
“People have to make a choice about paying the rent or making a complaint. So people will choose to pay the rent,” adds Deena Ladd of Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.
“I think that’s a real indication that the system is not working at all.”
Sylvia Buchanan, who has 3 degrees & more than a decade of teaching experience, began working with private college Oxford Education Group in April 2013, hired to create an English curriculum for the school.
But for more than a year, her boss refused to recognize her as an employee, she says, treating her instead as an independent contractor. Independent contractors have no rights under the Employment Standards Act.
Buchanan says she had no idea that she was hired as a contractor until she was first paid, receiving a mysterious cheque that bore little information instead of the official pay stub she was expecting.
She also says she was treated like any other employee: she worked predominantly from the college’s premises, used its equipment, had her hours set by her boss, & represented the college at conferences.
She says she was fired the day after she told her employer she was considering filing a formal complaint.
But because she was classified as a contractor, she did not receive termination or holiday pay.
In June 2014, Buchanan lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, asking for those wages & claiming that she was the victim of reprisal for standing up for her workplace rights.
The process, she says, was riddled with frustrations.
By August 2014, Canada Revenue Agency had already ruled that Buchanan had rightfully been an employee of the college.
It took until October 23 for the Ministry of Labour to agree that she was owed holiday & termination pay.
It wasn’t until March 2015 that Buchanan finally received the $2,500 she was entitled to.
Mohammed Azharuddin, vice-president of Oxford College of Arts, Business & Technology, says his organization began Oxford Education Group as a “startup” & says he told Buchanan upfront that she would be hired as an independent contractor.
He told the Star that Buchanan’s termination had nothing to do with her complaint to the ministry, & that she was let go because “there was no progress happening” with her work.
He also says his organization paid the money owed to Buchanan on time, via the Ministry of Labour, & that the ministry was responsible for the delay.
“We definitely paid within the 30 days (required by law). There was a discrepancy at the Ministry of Labour end of it.”
The ministry refused to say whether Buchanan’s employer paid on time. In an email to the Star, it confirmed that it did receive the college’s cheque, but said the “the regional program office was not aware of this.”
That “clerical error,” as the ministry called it, added 4 months to Buchanan’s already agonizing wait time.
At 54, she is still living with her aunt & uncle in Scarborough because she can’t afford rent.
“I don’t feel like I have any protections,” says Buchanan. “They make it so difficult to get through these claims that I suspect that a lot of people just give up.”
The system designed to enforce the Employment Standards Act is increasingly under fire for being inaccessible, inefficient & — for workers such as Buchanan — infuriating.
Under the current model, employers have almost no incentive to obey the law in the first place.
The Ministry of Labour has a team of just 180 enforcement officers to look into employment standards violations across the entire province — less than half the number devoted to Occupational Health & Safety inspections.
Figures requested by the Star show that the 15,485 complaints made last year prompted 2,768 proactive workplace inspections. Only 8 resulted in prosecutions with serious financial penalties.
A further 321 tickets of less than $360 were issued for violations from failure to give regular pay, to denying overtime pay & not paying minimum wage.
York University’s Doorey says those penalties do little to deter lawbreakers, who are unlikely to be caught unless workers risk their job to speak out.
“The model depends on vulnerable employees learning the law, & then starting a legal fight with their employer, & that model will never be effective,” he says. “Violations of the ESA are treated as minor monetary infractions not deserving of a heavy hand of justice.”
“If you just slap (employers) on the hand & give them a fine of $200 or something, how is that going to stop them from exploiting people again?” asks Buchanan, whose former employer faced no penalties for firing her without pay.
In 2009, the government did commit $10 million to employment standards enforcement, allowing the Ministry of Labour to significantly reduce its backlog of more than 17,000 claims.
The ministry also operates an employment standards call centre in 24 languages, which last year received more than 265,000 calls about possible violations. But the hotline doesn’t offer any assistance in filing complaints, which must be done online. ...
The action centre’s Ladd says the process can be challenging for vulnerable workers who may struggle to understand the Act’s confusing exemptions, and may not have ready access to a computer or speak English as a first language.
And while employers can afford lawyers, the majority of workers cannot.
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The province’s Open for Business Act, passed in 2010, includes a provision that can force complainants to first approach their employer about possible employment standards violations.
While the legislation says exceptions can be made in the case of vulnerable workers, experts say the measure still discourages employees from speaking out.
“I would say 99.9% would not file a claim until they decided to leave employment or they have been fired or laid off,” says Avvy Go, director of the Metro Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. “The employer will know who filed the claim & that person will lose their job.”
Figures requested by the Star show that in the year before that Act was passed, workers submitted 20,365 formal complaints. But since the Act’s implementation, the number of claims has fallen to an average of 15,500 a year.
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Recognizing that relying on vulnerable workers to enforce their own rights makes little sense, many jurisdictions have moved to a more proactive model of enforcement.
In California, the state can slap embargoes on goods made by companies who violate labour laws. In Wisconsin, the government can place a temporary hold on employers’ property until they pay workers what they’re owed. And under New York State’s wage theft law, guilty employers can be forced to pay up to triple the amount of wages owed.
In a move welcomed by campaigners, the Ministry of Labour has started conducting so-called proactive inspection blitzes aimed at high-risk sectors, where inspections are done even if no complaint has been made. Its current blitz focuses on vulnerable & precarious workers.
But of Ontario’s 442,000 workplaces, just 2,694 were inspected in such investigations last year. There are only 35 enforcement officers dedicated to this proactive enforcement, & employers are given notice that their workplace will be inspected.
“It kind of defeats the whole purpose of the audit,” argues Go.
“I understand you will never have enough resources to investigate every single complaint,” she adds. “That’s why you need to look at how to change the system to ensure there is enough incentive for the employers to obey the law.”
In the meantime, Buchanan says, it is workers who are suffering.
“You’re putting people’s lives on the line. If I didn’t have family support, I’d be living on the streets.”
“I think it takes a very strong-willed person to go through this process,” she adds. “I expected the government to work on my behalf.”
Proposed solutions
A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to improve enforcement of the Employment Standards Act. The proposed reforms include:
• Develop an expanded, proactive system of enforcement to improve compliance
• Increase enforcement team staffing
• Enact a “hot cargo” provision that would enable inspectors to impose embargos on goods manufactured in violation of the Act
• Revoke the requirement that forces workers to approach employers before filing an ESA claim
• Authorize the Ministry of Labour to place holds on employers’ property when a complaint is filed for unpaid wages
• Increase fines to double or triple the amount of wages owed
• Establish set fines for all offences, even when employers voluntarily agree to pay worker wages owed
Another one of those stories shining a bright light on millions of Ontarians precariously employed & how they are exploited by employers in Ontario. This story is not telling about people working in some far off developing country in Africa or Asia but right here in Canada.
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Show up to work one day & get fired for no reason?
Sorry about your luck.
In Ontario, not a single worker is protected from wrongful dismissal under the Employment Standards Act.
Hit with the flu & can’t make it into the office?
Consider sucking it up, because chances are you won’t get paid. You’ll be lucky to keep your job, in fact.
Have to put in extra hours one week to get the job done?
Whatever you do, don’t expect overtime pay. Or even to get paid at all.
Ontario’s outdated employment laws, currently under review, were designed to create basic protections for the majority of the province’s non-unionized workers.
Instead, millions are falling through the gaps created by a dizzying array of loopholes, from the dangerous to the downright bizarre.
Construction workers have no right to take breaks on the job.
Care workers aren’t entitled to time off between shifts.
Vets aren’t entitled to vacation pay.
Janitors have no right to minimum wage.
Cab drivers aren’t entitled to overtime pay.
And dozens of occupations, some that you’ve never even heard of, are exempt from basic rights entirely.
“Keepers of fur-bearing mammals” have no right to minimum wage.
Sod layers have no limits on their daily hours of work.
Shrub growers don’t get a lunch break.
The system is so complicated that the Ministry of Labour has developed a special online tool to help decipher who’s entitled to what.
But as the province reviews its antiquated Employment Standards Act, critics argue that its confusing web of exemptions makes it harder for the so-called precariously employed to defend their rights — & easier for bosses to ignore them.
“When you distil it down to what these exemptions are seeking to achieve, really they are to give employers more control over work & more control over wages,” says Mary Gellatly of Parkdale Community Legal Services.
“It sends the message to employers that they can get away without complying.”
The Act was first introduced in Ontario in 1968 to set basic work standards, especially for non-unionized employees who don’t have a collective agreement to provide extra protections.
But there are at least 45 occupations in Ontario that are exempt from a variety of its fundamental entitlements, many of them low-wage jobs in industries where precarious work is rife.
The Ministry of Labour says many of the exemptions are “long standing” & related to “the nature of the work performed.”
But York University professor Leah Vosko, who is leading research into employment standards protections for the precariously employed, says exemptions have come at least in part from industry pressure, leaving the Act a “complex patchwork that is difficult for workers & even officials to comprehend.”
Even when there are clear violations, speaking out can come at a cost.
Reprisal is illegal under the Act, meaning bosses can’t penalize employees for exercising their workplace rights. But the Act gives workers no protection against wrongful dismissal. Employers do not have to give cause for firing someone.
Unionized employees are generally protected by their collective agreements, & workers can sue employers if they think they have been unfairly terminated.
But most precarious, low-income employees are not unionized, & most do not have the money to take legal action against an employer, says Parkdale’s Gellatly.
“It’s the big reason why many people can’t do anything if they’re in a workplace with substandard conditions, because they can get fired without cause.”
Linda Wang, who worked at a Toronto cosmetics manufacturer for 4 years, was fired less than 2 weeks after she asked her employer for the extra pay she was owed for working a public holiday. She says no reason was given for her termination.
Wang, a mother of two, claims her employer repeatedly bullied her & her colleagues, & that she believes she was dismissed for asking for the wages.
She has filed a reprisal complaint with the Ministry of Labour, but Wang cannot afford to take her employer to court.
“I feel the system is against workers,” she says. “It’s in favour of employers.”
“Whatever job you have you put so much of yourself into it,” adds Gellatly. “The fact that employers can just fire you without a reason is incredibly devastating for folks.”
The Act also contains significant gaps when it comes to sick leave & overtime.
The legislation provides most workers with 10 unpaid days of job-protected emergency leave, which means they can’t be fired for taking a day off due to illness or family crisis.
Critics call this measure subpar by most standards, since it still causes many workers to lose a day’s income for being ill. An estimated 145 countries give employees some form of paid sick leave.
“Unfortunately, we stand out for our inadequacy,” says Brock University professor Kendra Coulter.
But the 10-day protected leave doesn’t apply to almost one in three of the province’s most vulnerable workers. An exemption that excludes employees in workplaces of less than 50 people from that right means 1.6 million workers in Ontario are not even entitled to a single, unpaid, job-protected sick day.
Fast-growing, low-wage sectors such as retail, food services & health care are most likely to be exempt according to a recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre.
While many small businesses voluntarily give their employees paid sick days, the loophole leaves many workers — especially the precariously employed — exposed.
Toronto resident Gordon Butler asked his employer, a small construction company in Markham, for one day off work after he sliced his thumb open on the job. He says his boss told him not to come back.
“I didn’t believe him,” says Butler, 44, who has an 8-month-old child. “I tried to plead with him, & he said ‘No, too bad.’ ”
“The way it’s stacked up right now is there are very few options for people who are in low-wage & precarious work to actually take sick leave when they’re sick,” says Steve Barnes, director of policy at Toronto’s Wellesley Institute, a health-policy think tank.
“They not only have to worry about lost income, but the potential for losing their jobs,” adds Brock’s Coulter. “It’s unkind & unnecessary.”
The stress caused by the province’s meagre sick leave provisions are compounded by exemptions surrounding overtime pay, to which around 1.5 million don’t have full access.
As a rule, employees should get paid time & a half after 44 hours a week on the job, according to the Employment Standards Act.
But in 2014, more than one million people in the province worked overtime, & 59% of them did not get any pay whatsoever for it, Statistics Canada data shows.
This, experts say, is partly because enforcement is poor. But in Ontario, a variety of occupations don’t even have the right to overtime pay, including farmworkers, flower growers, IT workers, fishers & accountants. Managers are also not entitled to overtime.
Vladimir Sanchez Rivera, a 45-year-old seasonal farmworker in the Niagara region, says he has worked 96-hour weeks doing back-breaking labour picking cucumbers & other produce.
“We don’t have access to protections when we are working in agriculture,” he says. “And our employers tell us that.”
Low-wage workers are even more likely to be excluded from full overtime pay coverage, according to the Workers’ Action Centre’s research. Less than one third of low-income employees are fully covered by the Act’s overtime provisions, compared to around 70% of higher earners, because they are more likely to work in jobs that aren’t eligible.
Workplaces can also sign so-called “averaging provisions” with their employees, which allow bosses to average a worker’s overtime over a period of up to 4 weeks.
That means an employee could work 60 hours one week & 50 the next, but not receive any overtime as long as they don’t work more than a total of 176 hours a month.
Critics say the measure means more work for less pay, & paves the way to erratic, unpredictable schedules.
“That’s a huge impact on workers & their families in terms of lost income & having to work extra hours,” says Parkdale’s Gellatly.
“It’s certainly not good for workers, for their families, & it’s not good for creating decent jobs in terms of rebooting our economy,” she adds.
For many of the precariously employed, falling through the gaps ruins lives.
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Proposed solutions
A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to rebuild the basic floor of rights for workers. The proposed reforms include:
• Amending the ESA to include protection from wrongful dismissal
• Eliminating all occupational exemptions to ESA rights
• Repealing overtime exemptions & special rules
• Repealing overtime averaging provisions
• Repealing the emergency leave exemption for workplaces with less than 50 people
• Requiring employers to provide up to 7 days of paid sick leave
Since, I've posted & blogged these kinds of news stories quite a few times (Aug, Sept), I don't have much to say here.
When people tell me that take a temporary / contract job & it will turn into a permanent job later (I don't know how they know that), my answer is that there's a high chance that the job won't turn into a permanent one. After all, what incentive the company has to hire a worker, on a permanent basis, & pay for his/her health insurance & pension expenses, when the same worker can be kept on a temporary basis, indefinitely, & still get the job done, without any pension & benefits expenses for the company.
Another question I have for people who advocate "networking" is why are there 340,000 temp workers & there is a 33% increase in temporary workers, in the past decade (2004 - 2014), when all these people could've done "networking" to get a permanent job. Are all these people stupid, too timid, or unsocial to not know how to network? Networking is useless if you don't have influential family members or close friends in your circle, who are willing to bat for you.
I do see that there is an explosion in the Employment agencies in Ontario, & all over Canada, & the amount of money in this industry is obscene. With the commissions these employment agencies pay out to their workers, 6-figure salaries are common. People who are earning these 6-figure salaries have neither worked for years in the industry or have multiple relevant degrees & designations. That's why, I also see CAs & MBAs working in employment agencies now, because there's far more money in this industry than they will ever earn anywhere else.
But all this money is being earned by trampling on the workers' & human rights of thousands of other individuals. Many people choose the path of employment agencies only when they don't have any other option of getting a job. They all hope to get a permanent job one day. But, the way the contracts are structured, companies are also discouraged to hire temp & contract workers on a permanent basis. For instance, the one-time fees a company has to pay to hire a worker from a temp agency on a permanent basis are hefty.
All in all, everyone is making money & earning huge benefits at the expense of the small guy who has no rights. I thought that only happened in developing countries where rich control everything & the poor, small guy is pushed around.
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For more than 5 years, 61-year-old Angel Reyes has woken up 5 days a week at 3 a.m. & braced himself for 8 hours of hauling garbage at a Toronto recycling plant.
The university-educated refugee is the longest-serving worker on the floor, hired through a temp agency more than half a decade ago.
Half a decade &, technically, still a temp.
Half a decade earning minimum wage, never having seen a raise.
Half a decade, & still paid less per hour than his permanent colleagues for doing the same job.
Half a decade, & still no benefits.
Half a decade, & still no obligation for his employer to hire him permanently.
“If hell exists, that is hell,” says Reyes, a father of 3 who came to Canada in 1993 after he was kidnapped & imprisoned in El Salvador for — ironically — lobbying for workers’ rights.
Under Ontario’s antiquated Employment Standards Act, which is currently under review, there is no limit on how long a company can employ a worker as temporary before giving him or her a permanent job.
There is nothing to stop employers from paying temp workers less than their permanent counterparts, nothing to prevent them from hiring their entire workforce on a “temporary” basis if they so choose.
“If the employer knows that they can hire you & they don’t have to give you benefits, they don’t have to give you a pension, they can hire you for a lot less, there’s no incentive for them to hire permanently. Why would they?” says Deena Ladd, who heads the Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.
“The biggest issue is the lack of respect & dignity in (temporary) work. Nobody is seeing them for who they are & the work that they’re doing. They are completely invisible.”
In Toronto, their ranks are growing, with temporary workers outpacing permanent ones at twice the rate, their wages significantly lower.
Over the past decade, there has been a 33% increase in the number of temporary workers in Toronto, to more than 340,000 in 2014 from 256,000 in 2004, according to Statistics Canada. Industries such as food manufacturing, transportation & health care saw some of the biggest jumps.
By contrast, the number of permanent employees increased by just 12% over the same period.
Not all temporary workers are hired through agencies; many are hired directly on fixed-term contracts. Statistics Canada figures don’t differentiate between temp agency workers & direct hires.
Still, Ontario’s temp agency industry is flourishing. The province’s employment services sector earned $5.7 billion in revenue in 2012, a near 72% jump from 2002. Temporary agencies account for an estimated 60% of that industry’s total revenue.
Temp agencies are responsible for paying a worker their wages, which they bill the company for, & also take care of statutory entitlements such as Canada Pension Plan, injury pay & vacation pay. The agencies charge their client companies a fee for each assignment to cover all of these costs.
The hourly rate paid to the temp agency for an assignment can be as much as double the worker’s wage. Temp agencies are not required under the Employment Standards Act to tell workers how much they are charging the company per hour to employ them.
Toronto resident Antoinette Schokman-De Zilva, 66, a retired former executive assistant who worked numerous placements through temp agencies, says she was shocked to discover on one assignment that the company was paying the temp agency almost double her hourly wage.
“If I’m paid $20 an hour, they’re charging $45 from the company,” she says.
For some employers, temp agencies help match them with high-level, specialized workers.
But for many others, using temp agencies is part of what the action centre’s Ladd calls a “cheap wage strategy” to keep costs low & responsibilities, such as health benefits & pensions, to a minimum.
Figures provided to the Star by Statistics Canada show that the median wage of a temporary worker in Toronto is just $15 an hour, while permanent employees make $22.40 — a pay gap of 33%.
The gap is even wider for male temps in non-unionized workplaces, who make a median hourly wage of just $13.50. Their permanent counterparts make 40% more, at $22.50 an hour.
Ontario has made some recent strides toward reform, such as giving workers the right to receive public holiday pay & one weeks’ termination notice. But other countries have done more to protect temporary workers from unequal pay & long-term temp work.
In the U.K., temp workers are entitled to receive the same pay as permanent workers in equivalent positions after 3 months on the job.
In Italy, temporary positions automatically become permanent after 36 months in the same assignment.
And in Australia, employers who hire temps must pay them a 15% to 25% premium on their hourly wage in recognition that such workers rarely receive benefits.
But while Ontario’s Employment Standards Act mandates pay equity between men & women, there are no provisions to protect workers from pay discrimination based on their temporary employment status.
Reyes, for example, says permanent employees at his plant make more than him when they start, plus receive benefits, while he still earns minimum wage after more than 5 years on the job as a temp. The only time his salary increased was when the government raised the minimum wage to $11 an hour.
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The repercussions of endless temp agency work for some of the province’s most vulnerable workers are more than financial.
A 2013 study by the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health, which conducted interviews with more than 60 low-wage temp agency workers, industry experts & employers in Ontario, concluded that poor oversight & intense competition between agencies put temporary workers at greater risk of work injury than their permanent counterparts.
Ellen MacEachen, the report’s lead author, says workers told her they felt powerless to complain about poor work conditions because they knew they were replaceable & feared losing even poorly-paid jobs.
“Workers who have job insecurity will take care to protect their jobs, & that can often mean trying not to complain about anything,” she says.
Since the Workplace Safety & Insurance Act recognizes temp agencies as the sole employer of their workers, companies can also keep a clean WSIB record if temp agency workers are injured on the job.
“No one is looking out for them,” says the action centre’s Ladd. “You have a perfect environment for a complete deterioration of health & safety, wages, & working conditions.”
Mary McIninch, director of government relations at the Association of Canadian Search, Employment & Staffing Services, which represents more than 1,000 employment agencies including temps, says her members actively maintain a voluntary code of ethics. She describes them as “the most reputable, credible firms in the industry.”
The association has supported some government measures to give temp workers rights, McIninch says, but adds it would oppose reforms like pay parity.
She says “a strong majority” of her members place workers in highly paid positions, & that workers are compensated according to skill & experience.
“We have so many positive testimonials from new Canadians & students,” she told the Star, calling the example of Angel Reyes “not representative of the majority of workers in the industry.”
“I think if that were representative of even a strong minority, I doubt very much that as many individuals that we see — over 300,000 across the country — would continue to use our members’ services,” she adds.
But former temp worker Schokman-De Zilva, who immigrated to Toronto from Sri Lanka in 1989, says she only turned to agency jobs when permanent ones were not available, hoping they would lead to stable employment.
They never did.
“They just threw the contract in my face when I protested,” she says. “And that was it.”
Despite the recent government reforms, people like Reyes are still falling through the cracks.
For him, life at a drafty, dust-filled recycling plant may not be glamorous, but a job is a job.
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Proposed solutions
A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to tackle the widening disparity between permanent employees & temporary agency workers. These include:
• Requiring companies to pay temps the same wages & benefits as permanent staff in equivalent positions.
• Requiring temporary agencies to tell workers how much they are charging a company per hour for an assignment.
• Instituting a six-month limit on temporary assignments, after which temps must be directly hired by the company.
• Scrapping a provision that allows temp agencies to charge companies a fee if they give temps permanent jobs in the first 6 months of work.
• Limiting how many workers in a single company can be temporary agency employees (no more than 20%).
News stories like these are not so obvious to a majority of people in Canada & pretty much none abroad. The public thinks that since I am doing great in a permanent, full time position, everyone else must be in the same boat. We don't realize how the proverbial graph of labour conditions in US & Canada has consistently being going down for the past decade.
Employment is rising fast in retail industry in Canada. Search jobs in any one of the hundreds of job search websites & apps & you will definitely come across some retail sector jobs, regardless of what position you are searching for. However, most retailers are operating in a cut-throat market, & hence, try to be efficient by cutting down on their labour costs.
That happens despite some of the owners of the retail sectors becoming filthy rich & continuously becoming rich, for example, Walton family of Wal-Mart, Sobey family of Sobeys, Weston family of Loblaws etc.
These retailers try to find any loophole which can benefit them. For example, the article mentions that retailers hire new part-time staff, when the sales in store increases, instead of offering those extra hours to their existing staff. It doesn't provide any reason, but the reason retailers do that is because if existing part-timers are offered those extra hours & their hours get past the minimum threshold at which retailers are obliged to give those part-timers medical & dental benefits, then it will cost those retailers even more. So, retailers hire new staff, & this way keeping the hours of all part-timers below the minimum threshold of benefits.
People, who don't know what retailers do, very easily say that take a job at a store. They don't realize how hard life would become once you get in that cycle. As the article mentions, you won't even have the time to take a second job to cover your expenses, since erratic scheduling will demand your full schedule to be opened. You might be required to work at the store at any time.
But then, can we blame the retailers for this?
After all, as I said above, they are operating in a cut-throat environment & they need to cut costs wherever they can. Labour costs are a big chunk of total operating expenses. A majority of consumers demand lowest prices possible. They can easily do comparison shopping through websites, flyers, apps etc. & look for the cheapest price possible for the same product. There is no such thing as customer loyalty.
Most consumers, of course, are looking for lowest prices because they themselves are living on meagre wages. They don't have extra cash lying around to splurge on even organic & healthy food (which is generally more expensive than regular, non-organic food), forget then that they will spend extra on general products.
To keep prices so low, for example, like Wal-Mart, stores need to cut costs as much as they can. Of course, that means using technology as much as they can, for example, use of self-checking kiosks. Technology, though, take away jobs even from those part-timers. So technology makes more people unemployed.
Root of the problem lies at the mentality of owners that accumulation of wealth at the top is good. Owners think it is their entitled birth-right to accumulate as much wealth as they can. Rich elites, in general, are looking forward to keep hoarding money in their bank accounts. They cut costs brutally in their businesses; whatever industry they are in. Their workers are paid meagre wages. Those workers then spend their salaries very carefully. The rich owners also try to avoid, as much as they legally can, to pay for benefits; vacations, health, pensions etc. Workers then are required to buy those benefits & save for their pensions themselves ... from their already meagre wages.
Government, on the other hand, keep cutting social services & health benefits. I remember a decade ago that eye tests in Ontario were free for all every 2 years. Now, they are free only for diabetics, children & seniors. Adults have to pay for their eyes to be checked. Governments are cutting social services & health benefits because they don't have enough money in their public coffers (at least that's what the government says). They don't have enough money because rich business & political elites find ingenious ways to dodge taxes.
So, the rich business elites try to save big in their business operations through cutting wages, hiring more part-timers, cutting benefits etc. & then also save money by not paying their fair share of the taxes, which will, at least, help provide social services for those same poor workers whose wages & benefits they are cutting. So, the rich business elites have both their hands & the head in the money pot.
And we thought that this would be done by some unscrupulous, corrupt, unethical businessmen in the developing world !!!
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In Ontario, employers don’t have to provide workers with their schedule in advance.
There are no penalties for cancelling an employee’s shift even an hour before it’s due to start.
There is no obligation to guarantee part-time workers a certain number of hours.
There is no law preventing more part-time workers from being hired before offering existing employees more hours.
There is nothing that saves part-time workers from being paid less than full-time workers — even when they do the same job.
Many low-wage workers desperately need to take on second jobs but can’t, because employers expect full-time availability from their part-time employees.
Experts call erratic work scheduling the “Wild West” of employment standards, a practice that causes havoc in the lives of millions of Ontario workers but is almost completely ignored by provincial law.
The result in many industries is a “brutal combination” of unpredictable schedules, insufficient hours & poor wages, says Deena Ladd, who heads the Workers’ Action Centre, a Toronto-based labour rights advocacy group.
Now, Ontario’s so-called “precariously employed” are demanding change on these issues, as Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government embarks on a review of employment & labour laws that is expected to conclude in August 2016.
“It’s just incomprehensible that we’re asking people in our province today to try to manage their lives under these kinds of conditions,” says Kendra Coulter, a professor of labour studies at Brock University.
So-called flexible schedules are often welcomed by employees who want greater control over their work-life balance. But for the growing number of people in low-wage part-time positions, “flexibility” provides little in the way of control or balance.
41% of work in Ontario is now done outside a full-time, permanent relationship with a single employer.
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Expecting full-time availability from part-time employees, the action centre’s Ladd says, makes it difficult for many low-wage workers to take on much-needed second jobs.
...
Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, last reviewed in 2000, is almost completely silent on the subject of scheduling, containing just one provision to protect workers.
The “three hour rule” forces bosses to give their employees 3 hours of pay if they arrive at work only to have their shifts abruptly shortened or cancelled. The rule does not apply to workers who are regularly scheduled to work less than 3 hours, which labour activists say is increasingly common.
Beyond that, employers have no responsibility to provide workers with a predictable schedule.
...
Erratic scheduling is most common in booming sectors such as retail, where jobs tend to be low-wage & non-unionized.
In Toronto alone, the number of people employed in retail has grown by 34% over the past 15 years, to more than 300,000 in 2014 from just under 227,000 in 1999.
Angelo DiCaro, Unifor’s lead researcher on the retail sector ..., says negotiating scheduling rights for union members is tough since there are no province-wide standards.
Flexible scheduling is popular with employers because it allows companies to spend less on payroll when sales slow down. Managers are often evaluated based on their success.
“It’s a pure efficiency argument from the retailers’ viewpoint,” explains Joseph Milner, a professor at Rotman School of Management. “The more flexible you can get your resources — your human resources, in this case — the more you would expect to get efficiencies.”
In addition to keeping wages low, hiring a large pool of part-time employees who work limited hours minimizes employers’ obligation to pay benefits such as medical & dental. Even in unionized settings, workers must often work a certain number of hours to be eligible for such entitlements.
Mary Gellatly of Parkdale Community Legal Services argues this “shifts what’s traditionally been the cost of doing business onto workers, especially low-wage precarious workers who can least afford it.”
“The reality is that at this point (scheduling) is a ‘Wild West’ when it comes to employment standards,” adds Brock University’s Coulter, who calls the reforms proposed by the Workers’ Action Centre “thoughtful, comprehensive & achievable.”
She also points out that not all employers take advantage of loose rules.
Costco Canada, for example, guarantees its full-time staff 40 hours a week, & its part-timers 25 hours. Schedules are posted at least 1 week in advance, & both full-time & part-time employees are entitled to health benefits.
The upshot, says Ross Hunt, the company’s vice-president of human resources, is one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry — 12%, compared with the retail average of about 21%.
“It gives (workers) a better quality of life. And if they’re stable & they stay with us, it’s great for us, too,” he told the Star in an interview.
But the political push for province-wide standards has so far lagged. In the US, the proposed federal Schedules that Work Act sets out much stronger protections, including mandatory two-week scheduling notice for many low-wage sectors.
The Act will face tough passage through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, but that hasn’t stopped San Francisco from enacting game-changing municipal legislation with similar provisions, including providing retail workers with two weeks’ notice of their schedules.
“I think we’re way behind many jurisdictions in the US where they’re trying to put a halt to the unfettered growth of just-in-time scheduling,” says Parkdale’s Gellatly.
But campaigners say the Ontario government’s current review of the Employment Standards Act is a golden opportunity to fix what the action centre’s Ladd calls a “massive, gaping hole” in the province’s laws.
Proposed solutions
A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre on precarious work in Ontario recommends reforming the Employment Standards Act to:
• Require two weeks’ advance posting of work schedules
• Give employees the right to one hour’s pay if their schedule is changed with less than a week’s notice, & 4 hours’ pay if less than 24 hours’ notice
• Mandate minimum three-hour shifts for all workers
• Require employers to give existing part-time & casual employees preference for available hours before hiring additional workers
• Give workers protection from reprisal when requesting schedule changes
• Mandate equal pay for equal work, regardless of part-time or full-time status
BY THE NUMBERS
40%: Pay difference per hour between part-time & full-time workers in Ontario
$11: Median wage for a Toronto grocery store worker in 2014
60%: Grocery store workers in Toronto who are not unionized
88%: Retail workers in Toronto who are not unionized
87%: Retail workers in Ontario who are not unionized
Well, the author, Emma Teitel, does make some good points that kids, regardless of how much their parents try to protect them or teach them the dangers of sex at home, they will get their sex-ed through their peers (& of course, internet), which will be far more dangerous, wrong, & unhelpful. Teaching it in class in a sterile environment can make it unattractive.
And enrolling kids in a Catholic or Islamic school won't help either, since those kids will still live among & socialize with kids who are watching porn, mainstream movies (even movies are quite sexually explicit now), sharing sexual pics, & using chatting apps to chat up with other gender & maybe even child predators etc.
There's no sex-ed in seemingly religiously conservative countries like Pakistan or UAE (Dubai & Abu Dhabi), but teens there know a lot about sex related stuff. Heck, making a boyfriend & girlfriend is not allowed, but does it stop anyone from enjoying the pleasures of forbidden love? After all, all those abandoned infants in garbage dumps & hospitals, & abortions (both legal & illegal), are not all legitimate kids but the consequences of a culture which is out of sync with the realities of the world around it.
Sweeping the problem under the carpet will only exacerbates the problem since it becomes more pleasurable because humans, & especially teens, have a tendency to do what they are not supposed to do. Something hidden & forbidden is much more pleasurable than the same thing out in the open.
Disclaimer: I am not entirely supportive of the new sex-ed curriculum because of only 1 point ... teaching my future kid that homosexuality is alright. Islam strictly forbids homosexuality & that's the only sticking point for me. Hence, it's Islamic school for my future kid. I, myself, don't care what people do in their bedrooms.
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... the province’s revamped sex-ed curriculum ... includes other topics equally significant to the modern age: sexting, cyberbullying and LGBT issues ... .
The new curriculum, revised in 2010 but shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty after a small group of socially conservative parents complained, will be introduced to the province’s schools in September—but not without controversy.
Chief among the things that disturb this group is the early age at which students will learn the facts of life. Kids in Grade 2 will learn about consent, kids in Grade 3 will learn about homosexuality & same-sex marriage (which is to say they will learn that such things exist ... ). Students in Grade 7 will get the facts on contraception, STDs, & oral & anal sex. Being products of a hypersexual era, they will likely know these things already (& a whole lot more), whether their parents want them to or not; some kids watch porn for the first time when they are 10.
But parents wary about sex ed in Ontario—or parents wary of progressive sex education anywhere in the country—shouldn’t despair at the thought of teachers taking health class into the future. They should rejoice. In fact, they have more reason to rejoice than their socially liberal counterparts, for there is no dissuading voice more powerful when it comes to sex than the voice of an enthusiastic, open-minded authority figure. Kids don’t giggle in health class because they are titillated, but because they are embarrassed. Talking to a teacher about sex, watching him circle the urethra on a giant diagram of a penis, or put a condom on a banana, does not typically make a kid hot & bothered; it makes her cringe.
Students will not find out about sexting from their friends—or from those sexting them—but from their teachers. In other words, when Susie receives her first explicit text message, she may not be able to shake the memory of Mr. Johnson’s lesson in sex ed about the “the dangers of dick pics.”
This doesn’t mean that cybersex will never be had again, or that kids will stop downloading porn, but that an intensely private world will, for the first time, be made public in a very sterile, cerebral & unsexy place. In the end, then, progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence.
What can be commented on this situation except everything in Canada is becoming multi-tiered & in the next few decades, we will see multi-tiered society, like the ones exist in developing countries, taking root in developed countries. There will be one service available for the public, which, of course, will be horrible (public healthcare, public education etc) & one for the private, where people, who can afford it, will pay for best of the best services.
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Last month, a group of anonymous Alberta medics began using the handle @StatusCodeRed to tweet records of lengthy response times, & instances of Code Red—that is, when no ambulances are available in a certain area—that often spanned entire city regions (including Calgary & Edmonton) & lasted several hours. For a time on Jan. 28, according to one tweet, there wasn’t a single ambulance available between Calgary & Lethbridge, a 200-km stretch. “I think AHS [Alberta Health Services] realizes,” Neil Wilson [Nanton's local reeve] says, “that we in the smaller communities are on the verge of revolution if they don’t do something pretty soon.”
George Porter, a paramedic who has worked in southern Alberta for more than 40 years, has experienced the problems first-hand. Over the past five years, he’s responded to multiple critical emergency calls that took up to an hour to reach. The cycle became familiar: Hospitals, which no longer had to foot the bill for ambulance transfers once AHS was introduced, began calling teams such as Porter’s to ferry rural patients into the city, although they were often healthy enough to take a taxi, a much cheaper option.
Darren Sandbeck, the AHS’s chief paramedic, says stories like Porter’s—& those shared anonymously on social media—are troubling, but are exceptions to the rule. AHS records show that 90% of response times province-wide are under 12 minutes (in line with other provinces). To reduce the response times of the remaining 10%, AHS is introducing non-ambulance transport vehicles & piloting “rapid transfer units”—multi-bed overflow rooms in a pair of Edmonton hospitals that have shown signs of early success. In March, Sandbeck will begin a tour of the province to “engage front-line staff in a conversation that will help us to hear their concerns & ideas for improving the system.”
Alberta’s problems, however, are hardly exclusive, says Chris Hood, president of the Ottawa-based Paramedic Association of Canada. “Across the country, we see extraordinary stories where people are experiencing long wait times . . . & paramedics waiting to off-load patients from their cots because there’s no available bed for them in the hospital,” he says. “These issues are not specific to EMS; they’re specific to health care.” He says Alberta’s circumstances are particularly severe, because the province is still tackling the transition (even 5 years on) to a provincial system, much as New Brunswick did in 2007, when it amalgamated 52 separate ambulance services. But the province is nonetheless an example of a national ailment—an underfunded & overburdened system—& “the people suffering are the patients.”
But Porter, the veteran paramedic, is worried his province will see more suffering before it makes any real changes. “It’s like a dangerous intersection,” he says. “The police, the firefighters, the medics, the residents all complain. They say they’ll send it to committee, that there’s no money in the budget. Then somebody’s kid gets killed &, within hours, there’s a crosswalks, lights, a crossing guard, everything. Why do we have to wait until that happens?”
As all Canadians may know already by now that new sex-ed curriculum of Ontario has been revealed & come September 2015, 7-year-olds (Grade 3) will come to know the meaning of same-sex relationships & gradually, within 5 years (age 12), will know what oral sex is.
I deliberately chose this article / opinion because that's the general attitude of people who are supportive of this curriculum. However, what it shows to me:
1. Disregard of people in a "democratic" govt: is this we called "democracy"? Is this the democracy Western leaders incessantly harping about in their speeches all over the world? It may as well be an absolute monarchy because at the end of the day, gov't is acting like, "I am going to throat-gag you with this, & you not only going to love it but will ask more for it."
2. What happened to diversity, Canadian multiculturalism & assimilation of new immigrants? As soon as something bad happens by a few deranged individuals, in the name of a specific religion, the whole group associated with that religion is blamed for not assimilating in the population & living in their own little bubbles (I'm deliberately not putting in any infamous labels here).
Who should be blamed for French ban on burqa in public or as Mr. Harper itching to bring burqa ban in Canada (it's a slippery slope, starting with niqab ban in citizenship oath ceremonies) or Mrs. Kathleen Wynne ignoring all immigrants, a sizable majority of which hails from South Asia, in bringing this curriculum?
Who is considering whom a "second-class" citizen & doing every bit that can be done to help push immigrants away, instead of helping them assimilate, to the point, that that immigrant / "second-class" citizen packs up & leaves Canada for good?
Will a majority of Muslims (I can't talk about other religious groups, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs etc but I do believe they are in the similar situation as Muslims) happily embrace this curriculum & gladly assimilate in the multicultural fabric of Canadian society? I firmly don't think so. This will only alienate those immigrants further, & next thing you know, someone is again pointing fingers at this group for not assimilating.
Assimilation is a two-way street & how can the majority of a group identify with their new country or society when a majority of the residents of that country are always coming up with laws & regulations to encourage those immigrants to disavow their whole belief systems? Is this called "freedom of religion" as such enshrined in the Charter? In fact, it seems more like, "be like me or you are my enemy" or that famous Mr. Bush's quote, "either you are with us or against us."
3. Do I really want my future kid to learn about same-sex relationships at the age of 7? Yes, as a Muslim, I am against homosexuality, & no I don't want my kid to learn about homosexuality. I don't care what people do in the hallowed halls of their bedrooms. People who support it in this country ... well, put it bluntly, are the same people who naively believe that Western countries are the beacon of peace in the world, & religion is the source of all evils in this world & women are only liberated when they take all their clothes off ... what's the point of wearing a bikini in the public, anyway (thanks to this curriculum, even little kids will know what breasts, nipples & female genitalia look like) ... might as well be completely free ... take everything off !!! (this will be explored more in my next blog with the help of Irina Shayk's fabulous choice of dress in the Vanity Fair's after-Oscars party).
Even as a very involved parent (once in the future), how will I be able to "un-teach" homosexuality at home when my kid is learning all about the wonderful world of same-sex relationships from those teachers in the school? As the article suggests, it's better that schools are teaching this than parents. Really? That kid will be even more confused then. Do I believe the story of Lot in the Quran, as told by my parents or do I believe what my teacher told me that my budding love for another human of the same sex is because of my genes? (everything nowadays is genetic; obesity, homosexuality & next will be racism, drug addiction, hatred ... all happen because of our genes ... eventually, we won't need to have a debate on "nature v nurture" because it's all nature's fault).
To further compound the confusion of a little kid, if he/she is enrolled in an Islamic school & he/she is learning about same-sex relationship in Grade 3, but then he/she can't find any of his/her friends / classmates having 2 daddies or mommies (since, homosexuality is strictly forbidden in Islam), then learns about story of Lot from the Quran; that kid is completely confused by now. What is right & what is wrong? Is homosexuality right or natural or is it right what the Quran says & what punishment those people in the Quran got? Do we want this confusion for tender minds of our kids?
4. Another argument is put forward in support of this curriculum that today's kids are learning all about sex through social media & they are learning this at a very young age. My problem with that is why are parents enthusiastically buying smartphones for their kids with such expensive data plans to go along with them. They won't able to sext, at least from their own phones, when they have those dumb phones (yes, they are still available in the market) with parental locks on it.
Furthermore, what happened to parents getting involved with their kids & teaching them about sex & relationships when they themselves see fit, according to their own religion, customs, & beliefs. I will explain the story of Lot & dangers of homosexuality to my kid when I see fit, as per my religion, & not when Mrs. Kathleen Wynne likes to think.
5. Some may say now, well, why don't you move out of Ontario, since this is only being instituted in Ontario. My belief is that this curriculum will spread, if not already, all over Canada like wildfire. Take my word for it. Some of it is already in other provinces' sex-ed curriculum & other provinces who doesn't have this invasive curriculum will enthusiastically adopt it.
Regardless of what the Charter or Constitution espouse, the North American gov'ts enthusiastically adopt anything & everything which remotely sounds Liberal, as long as it helps their agenda; homosexuality is all market-driven (money from marriage licenses, weddings etc), so why not promote it even more, line up govt's pockets behind the clever charade of equality & in the process, look good too in the eyes of voters.
