VANCOUVER—Ah, Labour Day. It’s the symbolic end of summer, the final blissful long weekend of the season and your last chance to wear white.

It’s also the day celebrating workers: both the activists of history who secured protections many Canadians now take for granted and the workers today who keep the economy afloat.

So how did the worker fare in Canada over the last year? Here’s a nonexhaustive roundup of stories that cut to the heart of the issues workers faced.

Changes to labour laws across the country

A major revamp of the federal labour code comes into effect on Labour Day this year. That doesn’t mean labour laws are changing for all workers; only federally regulated industries are governed by the Canada-wide rules, including air transportation, telecommunications and banks.

The changes coming next week are broad in scope. They add new options for federally regulated employees to take leaves of absence for personal reasons or if they become victims of domestic violence. They also require employers to pay part-time and casual employees the same rate as full-time employees for equivalent work.

Most workers in Canada aren’t protected by federal labour law, which means changes to provincial labour laws matter just as much, if not more.

In B.C., the only province currently governed by the labour-backed NDP, sweeping changes were introduced to labour laws for the first time in about 20 years. The most significant changes this spring were setting a minimum age of 15 and implementing legal protections against a union-busting move called contract flipping.

On the other hand, Ontario and Alberta both saw rollbacks in worker protections under premiers Doug Ford and Jason Kenney.

Alberta reduced its minimum wage for students to $13 and changed banked overtime rules. Previously, if an employee banked overtime, each extra hour counted as 1.5 hours. Under the new rules, overtime is banked as regular hours.

Ontario also loosened overtime rules this spring.

Temp agencies under the microscope

In 2017, an undercover investigation by the Star’s Sara Mojtehedzadeh and Brendan Kennedy revealed the safety, training and working conditions of an Ontario food-production plant where a temporary worker had died.

The province’s Ministry of Labour launched inspections of Fiera Foods in early 2018. They focused on Fiera Foods’ main facility but not its three affiliated factories, according to ministry records obtained by the Star. Fewer than half of the 30 temp agencies that listed Fiera or its affiliates as clients last year were inspected.

The inspections did not include any visits to Upper Crust, one of Fiera’s affiliate factories, where a 52-year-old temp worker died in October — four months after the ministry’s probe wound down.

App-based workers hold a union drive in Toronto

In Toronto brews an uphill but possibly precedent-setting battle to bring Foodora bike couriers into the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

It’s new and challenging terrain. Since most platforms acting as intermediaries in the bike-courier sector classify workers as independent contractors, they are largely excluded from employment laws that provide basic protections and the ability to form a union.

But advocates are increasingly contesting that classification, arguing that many gig economy apps direct and control significant portions of workers’ jobs. That, CUPW national president Mike Palecek argues, means they should have the same legal responsibilities as any other employer.

If the couriers successfully unionize, other people working on platforms could follow suit — think Uber and Lyft drivers and even serving staff or swim instructors currently working on the assumption that they are independent contractors.

Janitors in B.C. fight to keep their jobs — and win

Often newcomers with limited English, janitors work for low pay and are always at risk of losing their jobs if the contracting company that hired them loses its bid to continue cleaning. Until recent labour-law changes introduced new protections, it was common for employers in B.C. to “flip” janitorial contracts.

Contract flipping occurs when a portion of a workplace made up of contracted employees unionizes, only to have their contract ended and replaced with a contract with another, non-unionized company. Sometimes the same employees are lucky enough to be hired back, but without their seniority or union representation.

Janitors at BC Hydro this year fought a contract flip and won. After the janitors’ union met with the province about the provincial utility’s plan to change cleaning providers, BC Hydro decided not to change the contract after all. It was a well-timed fight; just weeks later, B.C. introduced a legislative amendment that guards against contract flipping.

University teachers demand their due

Professorships have been moving away from the model of secure, tenured appointments in favour of temporary and part-time arrangements for decades. A report released last November revealed the extent to which university teaching has become a precarious pursuit.

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The report, entitled Contract U, comes from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, based on Freedom-of-Information requests with all 78 publicly funded Canadian universities. It shows that more than half of all academic appointments made by the universities that responded to the requests weren’t full-time, permanent, tenure-track jobs.

A total of 53.6 per cent of positions offered by the universities in the 2016-2017 academic year were on contract. About 80 per cent of them were part-time.

Faculty associations are calling for a sea change in academia, arguing that full-time appointments are better than contract gigs for quality of teaching and academic freedom.

Three years of Phoenix, and it hasn’t gone up in flames

This year, Canadians across the country turned down promotions, accrued debt and delayed retirement because of a pay system that the government has concluded is beyond fixing.

Since its implementation in February 2016, the Phoenix pay system for federal employees has been plagued with problems. Employees got paid incorrect amounts or not at all. Insufficient tax deductions led to surprise deductions in future paycheques. The accuracy of T4 slips was anybody’s guess, and some accountants soon developed specialties in helping clients who had been “Phoenixed.”

As of April 17, there was a backlog of 245,000 Phoenix transactions that had yet to be processed.

Late auditor general Michael Ferguson called the implementation of Phoenix an “incomprehensible failure” because of what its premature launch cost public employees. The government has since pledged to replace the system, which has already cost the government $1 billion.

Proposed class-action forces WestJet to reckon with sexual-harassment allegations

Former WestJet flight attendant Mandalena Lewis is determined to see the company taken to task for its policies on dealing with sexual-harassment allegations in the workforce.

Court documents filed in 2016 in B.C. Supreme Court say Lewis was on a stopover in Hawaii in January 2010 when an unnamed WestJet pilot allegedly pulled her onto a hotel bed and proceeded to kiss and grope her. The allegations have not been tested in court.

She proposed a class-action lawsuit in 2017 on behalf of current and former female flight attendants at WestJet, which she said has failed to implement anti-harassment programs. WestJet has denied that allegation.

This year, she successfully fought in appeal court for the class action to be allowed to go forward. The company tried to get that decision overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada but wasn’t granted a hearing. The case could set a precedent for holding employers to account for the anti-harrasment promises they make to employees.

The biggest private-sector investment in Canada ever — but who will get the jobs?

The $40-billion LNG Canada project in Kitimat, B.C. has publicly committed to using a “hire local first” policy when awarding contracts, as its guarantee of jobs for Canadians was one of the conditions for its approval. The promise of “10,000 jobs” through the project has become a major talking point for B.C. Premier John Horgan.

LNG Canada has not set specific targets or quotas for how many of the workers will come from B.C. Government correspondence obtained by the BC Liberals, revealed during an exchange in B.C.’s parliament in April, estimated that about 35-55 per cent of the workers will come from within the province. Hiring for the project is currently underway.

Canada Post strikes again

Leading up to last Christmas, workers at various Canada Post locations went on strike, usually for periods of one or two days at a time. It led to delays in the processing of packages, especially because the postal service’s three main international receiving centres were among the main targets.

In addition to worrying holiday shoppers, the 2018 Canada Post strike was a major test of the federal government’s commitment to workers’ right to strike. Federal Labour Minister Patty Hajdu legislated the workers back to work last November, citing the prospect of economic distress. The move infuriated labour groups, who saw it as the government stripping away their most important bargaining chip.

Port workers and employers fight over robots

Eighteen months of heated negotiations between the employers at Canada’s largest port and the union representing its workers ended with a scare. The B.C. Maritime Employers Association locked out International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers for a couple hours in May — cutting off a full day of port operations in British Columbia.

The big sticking point was automation. Aware of recent terminal upgrades in places like Melbourne, Australia, and Long Beach, California — which led to substantial job losses — the union wanted employers to take steps to minimize job replacement by machines. Eventually, the parties agreed to consult with one another before additional automation is brought into B.C. ports.

The story doesn’t end there, though. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is now pushing federal candidates to develop platforms on preventing robots from taking away good-paying human jobs.

With files from Sara Mojtehedzadeh, Brendan Kennedy and Brennan Doherty

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