Raise the Hammer

This is very bad news, just what the city needs more unemployed workers. It is very sad to hear that down there in North Carolina that workers have limited ways of organizing, it is a drive to the bottom.

Equally disturbing news that we received yesterday, is this the fact the workers who see their EI exhausted and who may be forced onto the welfare system, will find themselves having to volunteer. It is disturbing that a certain organization with the blessing of Ontario Works can get employers to pay them $10.00 per hour, pay volunteers a stipend of $30.00 for an 8 hour day of work. The catch is that for every dollar earned it is penalized at 50%, thus making it almost impossible to break the welfare wall. It is already written into the Ontario Works Act 1997, that a worker does not have any rights under employment standards, which means they can force you into a low paying job, where you will not get paid for a number of weeks. So you can be a skilled worker, forced into an unskilled job and have no protecton was so ever. It is already a given the workers who work in the precarious job market have a really hard time getting their rights under employment standards enforced. It can take up to two years just to get wages that have not been paid.

My concerns are related to Occupational Health and Safety and WSIB. What if the worker gets injuried, since they are not employees, then that are not entitled to any protection under the law. So what if a worker say lost a hand, will they only get a few hundred dollars from an insurance policy and told that is life, too bad for you.

Labour activists in this city need to start working together to educate the public about this indentured slave labour.

The poverty industry in action, those who make good money, entitled to benefits and pensions, yet they step on other workers and deny them the most basic rights under Labour Law.

Comment edited by grassroots are the way forward on 2010-03-11 21:35:32