The Hospital Employees’ Union and Together Against Poverty Society have produced a new resource designed to help BC workers who aren’t unionized to understand their employment rights. This document includes simplified statements on basic rights such as hours of work, vacation, health and safety, personal privacy and joining a union. Employment Rights in BC: A resource for non-unionized employees is available in English, Punjabi and Tagalog. You can view the press release here.
Join members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) for a BBQ and leafleting event on Saturday, August 15th. They will start the day at 10:30am leafletting the Templeton SkyTrain in Richmond, followed by a BBQ lunch at 11am. Attendees will then head over to the new McArthur Glen Outlet Mall for further leafletting. For more information, see the Facebook event and Fight for 15 BC website.
BC Employment Standards Coalition members Gurpreet Pabla and David Fairey published an opinion piece in the online version of The Province on the minimum piece-rate system for farm workers (separate wage rules apply to migrant farm workers hired under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program). You can read it here: Unjust treatment of farm workers should end. Their article was also published in the Georgia Straight. Thanks to the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for assisting with the publication process.
On March 12th, the government of BC announced a 20-cent increase to the minimum wage. However, even those minimum wage-workers employed full-time will continue to fall thousands of dollars below the poverty line.
The BC Federation of Labour points out that BC is falling behind places like the Northwest Territories, which is raising its minimum wage by 25%. Cities like San Francisco and Seattle are on their way toward a $15/hour minimum wage.
Please support the BC Federation of Labour’s Fight for $15. You can sign their petition at this link. The campaign offers numerous resources on reaching out to workers, including excellent Fact Sheets available in multiple languages. These fact sheets highlight BC’s minimum wage and poverty, the impact of the minimum wage on women, and on students.
While the BC Jobs Plan has focused on increasing the number of jobs in the province, many have raised concerns about quality of those jobs. For instance, how effectively does the province’s job-creation plan promote job security, enforced occupational health and safety protections, remuneration that is fair and liveable, and opportunities for workers to participate in workplace decisions that affect their lives? In particular, how does the BC Jobs Plan affect workers who are already at a high risk of poverty and precarious work, including racialized newcomers, migrant workers, and Indigenous peoples in BC?
In response to these concerns, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives hosted a conference in November to gather ideas for creative policy tools to create good jobs in BC. As part of the conference, BC Employment Standards Coalition member Anelyse Weiler, along with UBC researchers Dennis J. and Hannah Wittman, contributed a paper focused on farmers, farm workers and food security in British Columbia. Growing Good Agricultural Jobs in British Columbia considers the tensions within the current political-economic context between advancing dignified livelihoods for farm employers and hired workers. However, the authors argue that this tension is not inevitable, and that key policy changes can help to advance livelihood self-determination and better job quality for both farmers and farm workers.
Recently, the Vancouver Sun published an op-ed highlighting some of the ideas proposed in the longer paper by Weiler, Dennis and Wittman: In growing good jobs for B.C.’s economy, we’ve been neglecting a key ingredient.
