BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is from local resident Michael Speers on behalf of Justice for Workers Barrie and is in response to a story titled 'ONTARIO: Give gig workers more rights, transparency, benefits, committee recommends', published Dec. 13.
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The recent report released by the Ontario Workforce Recovery Advisory Committee has been getting positive headlines in many media outlets. The reality is, however, that what the committee – which didn’t have any worker representation on it – is recommending is nothing but the further entrenchment of policies that fail to provide real protection for workers.
We need to consider the words of Jennifer Scott, president of Gig Workers United: “This is what Uber and app-based companies wanted. They lobbied for the creation of a third category of worker and for portable benefits. If the committee and the Ontario government cared about workers in a just recovery, they wouldn’t kneel to app-based employers lobbying for legislative change to enshrine worker precarity into law.”
Gig workers are workers. They need to be treated as employees under the Employment Standards Act and provided with the benefits and protections that come with this designation. Creating a third category of worker will only increase the gigification of the economy. No worker should have to trade their rights for benefits that only add up to scraps.
The province needs to strengthen current labour and employment laws and address the real issue of misclassification. They should not be bowing down to greedy corporations who have clearly demonstrated that they will always exploit workers to make greater profits.
As CUPW president Jan Simpson said: “It isn’t raising the bar for gig workers – it’s lowering the bar for all workers.”
Michael Speers
Barrie
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