Victoria Silman | Assistant News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Fatema Ali
Three York researchers, all members of Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap: Improving Protections for People in Precarious Jobs, have had a hand in the federal government’s recent labour reforms under Bill C-86.
Political science Professor, Leah Vosko, heads Closing the Gap, which is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded Partnership Grant. Professor Eric Tucker, of Osgoode Hall Law School, and sociology Professor Mark Thomas also work within the partnership grant, which focuses on “informing effective employment standards enforcement throughout Ontario.”
Also involved in the reforms are researchers from 16 other universities and cross-sectoral partnership organizations.
According to the website, employment standards “set the minimum terms and conditions in areas such as wages, working time, vacations and leaves, and termination and severance of employment.”
Over six million employees not part of unions rely on employment standards enforcement to ensure workplace protections.
The changes to the code, influenced by Vosko, Tucker, and Thomas, include: equal pay for employees, both full and part-time, who perform the same work; ensuring five days of personal emergency leave, three of which are paid, as well as five days paid for victims of domestic violence; stipulating that schedules must be given to workers at least 96 hours in advance, and allowing workers to refuse shifts after this time-frame; and strengthening the federal Wage Earner Protection Program, among other things.
According to a statement released by the university, these reforms come after provisions of Ontario’s Fair Workers and Better Jobs Act from 2017, which is “designed to improve conditions of work for workers in precarious jobs.
“The Closing the Gap team also participated actively in the extensive consultations leading to the passage of that Act, and several team members prepared two commissioned reports for the consultations,” the statement continues.
Bill C-86 is an 850-page omnibus budget implementation Bill, which has faced some scrutiny. According to other news sources, the Liberal government vowed to stop using such sizeable bills because they “prevent Parliament from properly reviewing and debating” the recommendations presented.
In the statement released by the university, it is also explained that “the current provincial government has recently tabled legislation, repealing many of the provisions of the 2017 Act, as well as suspending a commitment to hire additional Employment Standards Officers and freezing proactive workplace inspections, both of which are key to enforcing the legislation as demonstrated by research conducted by the Closing the Gap team.”
At the time of publication, members of Closing the Gap could not provide comment.
