It's the same fight for all of us.

December 13, 2024

About 65 people joined the Justice for Workers organizing meeting on Tuesday where we all pledged to make this Holiday Season a SOLIDARITY Season. 

Read on for some of the highlights, and if you missed the meeting, you can still watch a recording of the meeting..

It’s time to legislate equal pay

We heard from Pam Frache, coordinator of the Justice for Workers campaign about why all workers need equal pay laws to make sure part-time, contract, casual, or temporary workers have the same wages and benefits as full-time, directly-hired coworkers.

Without this protection, employers are incentivized to create part-time, temporary and casual jobs instead of creating jobs with decent wages with enough hours to live on.

Provincially, we had won equal pay legislation. But Premier Ford cancelled this law soon after taking office. Federally, we also won legislation in the Canada Labour Code. But as of today, the necessary regulations have not yet been developed and so the new law has not been enacted.

The postal workers' fight to protect full-time jobs and stop the practice of creating part-time and casual work, is a good reminder of why employment standards are important to both unionized and non-unionized workers.

Support Postal Workers

During our meeting, we went live to a picket line at the Albert Jackson processing plant in Scarborough, where we heard from Mohammad Deen, a leading member of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Local 602. 

We learned: 

  • The CEO of Canada Post makes over $500,000 + bonuses per year, 
  • Canada Post has 44 Vice Presidents who each earn more $250,000 annually.
  • The starting wage of a postal worker is a just $22 per hour, and many don’t become full-time till 7 to 10 years. 

We also heard from Justice for Workers fighters from different communities who had visited picket lines.

We learned about: 

We agreed to keep visiting picket lines, send emails to Canada Post using this online tool, and to make our solidarity visible by posting photos of ourselves on social media, supporting postal workers. 

Amazon workers are fighting…and winning! 

Jack Cobb, an Amazon worker, shared two recent organizing victories. First, Amazon workers won an extension of the warning period before the employer can terminate workers for "low productivity."

Previously, a worker could be fired if they didn’t meet a certain productivity quota after only three warnings. But after sustained workplace action and campaigning, the employer agreed to increase the number of warnings to four. 

Second, Amazon workers won a 50% increase in the safety shoes allowance provided by the company, increasing it from $100 to $150. Safety shoes are important for health and safety, and are both mandatory and a part of the Amazon uniform. But they are costly. Winning an extra $50 for safety shoes is another substantial win for Amazon workers who perform labour intensive physical work.

These improvements were won in a single plant, but then extended right across Canada. As a result 40,000 workers will benefit from this organizing win! 

Justice for Injured Workers

The Workers’ Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) made headlines recently when they announced they were gifting corporations with a $2 billion hand out from the WSIB fund. 

At the meeting, we heard from Sang-Hun Mun, a community organizer with the Industrial Accident Victims' Group of Ontario (IAVGO) community legal clinic, and a member of Injured Workers Action for Justice. 

He explained that the so-called “surplus” in the Workers’ Safety and Insurance fund was created by systematically denying workers’ claims, under-funding benefits, and cutting workers off their compensation prematurely. He said rallies took place in Windsor, Thunder Bay and Toronto to protest this move. He also talked about the Road to Resistance Bus Tour (being organized by Justicia for Migrant Workers) that highlights the injustice experienced by migrant workers. 

Guelph: Support PSWs

We also heard from health workers at the Guelph General Hospital that management had announced the layoff of more than 60% of the hospitals personal support workers (PSWs). It is a shocking development since these workers are a fundamental part of patient care. 

Mark Zinger, Vice President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 57 (the union representing PSWs and registered practical nurses at the hospital) talked about the rally they organized on December 9, where nurses, PSWs and other health workers joined forces to resist the layoffs.

At our meeting, we discussed the possibility of supporting these workers by organizing a province-wide "Phone Zap" to let the Guelph General Hospital CEO know the whole province is watching and opposes the layoffs of these essential workers. 

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Unfortunately, since the meeting, the Federal government has signaled its intent to force postal workers back to work.

Our power as workers comes from the fact that it is our labour that actually makes the money for the company - and pays the big salaries of the CEOs. But if governments simply use legislation to force workers back to work, then employers have no incentive to even bargain with us.

This is clearly the issue with Canada Post as the federal government has recently forced both railway and port workers back to work, and has used legislation to end postal strikes in the past. If workers are not allowed to fight back effectively, it's an attack on all of us. 

But even if postal workers are forced back to work, that won't stop our solidarity. It will be even more important that you make your support for postal workers visible. You can download postal worker signs and shareables, and post your support on social media (please tag us @FairWagesNow or use #Justice4Workers so we can find your posts and amplify them).Â