Since June 2021, the GLRC has been conducting an interview series titled "Workers' Stories in the COVID-19 Era," aimed at building a collection of worker narratives during the pandemic.

For May Day 2022, we present our research assistants' reflections on the interview series. What have these interviews taught them about workers’ experiences? Has the pandemic shifted workers’ situations? How have workers tried to resist during the pandemic?

The project is led by GLRC Executive Ethel Tungohan (Associate Professor & Canada Research Chair, Politics). Interviews were conducted and edited by Christina Love (Undergraduate Student, Indigenous Studies and French), Tinu Koithara Mathew (PhD Candidate, Human Resources Management), and Suzanne Spiteri (PhD, Sociology).

The post May Day Reflections | Workers' Stories in the COVID-19 Era appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

Read all the installments here.

The post Workers' COVID-19 Stories appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

The Story So Far is a series of research briefs by statistician Andrew Mitchell and GLRC Director Luann Good Gingrich that uses data from the monthly  (LFS) conducted by Statistics Canada to examine labour market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The post The Story So Far: COVID-19 and the Canadian Labour Market appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

In the fourteenth installment of our series Workers’ Stories in the COVID-19 Era, we interviewed Alexandros, a musician in the Toronto area. A self-described “workaholic,” Alexandros talks about the instability of being a musician and music teacher during the pandemic. As a musician, working three jobs is normal for him. COVID impacted his livelihood.

For privacy, all names have been changed to protect the identities of our interviewees.

Interview

Christina: Can you describe your jobs, the field you work in, and give a general walkthrough of typical tasks or duties?

Alexandros: So, I have multiple jobs within the realm of music. I work as a teacher in the private sector, I am an accompanist at 91��ɫ, and I’m a performer. Teacher is self-explanatory – I teach music. Usually, I’ll teach for private schools. As an accompanist for 91��ɫ, I basically show up to dance classes and I improvise music according to the instructor’s specifications. As a performer, I perform live music for the listening pleasure of other humans.

I’ve been doing all these jobs since about the age of 18. That’s when I started teaching and performing. I started accompanying when I was 22, so I’ve been doing that as well for the past seven years. As a musician, I constantly do odd jobs on the side. Mostly it’s contract work: sometimes I’ll compose original music, shoot videos, shenanigans like that.

Christina: Would you say that you’re independent or do you work for a corporation or with an agent?

Alexandros: I’m self-employed and I find all my own jobs. This usually means that I’ll have multiple ongoing contracts simultaneously with different organizations. For example, I’m on a contract with 91��ɫ but I also have other ones with schools where I have to show up x number of weeks per year and teach. I manage all my own contracts for performances too. These will usually be with some sort of entertainment company, or I’ll reach out to venues directly. Typically, I play in hotels and bars, though, pre-pandemic, I also did a fair number of wedding receptions.

Christina: That sounds like you’re juggling a lot. How would you say that the pandemic has impacted your work and working conditions?

Alexandros: Throughout the majority of the pandemic, obviously, there was very little performance work. That meant that all my performance income was, at the very least, cut in half, if not completely decimated. The few performances I did have were held over Zoom which made for a lousy time. I really hated performing that way. So much of the art of performance is connecting with the audience, and you just ��Dz�’t get that when you’re remote.

As for teaching, all the classes were also held over Zoom which is unideal. Especially for music, I want to emphasize that so much of learning music can’t come from reading a textbook or hearing a lecture. The hands-on aspect is integral and suddenly it just vanished. In-person you also get to play alongside your students and jam together – this doesn’t happen online. The work became fairly clinical as a result and none of us were having a good time.

The hands-on aspect is integral and suddenly it just vanished.

The entire experience of being a musician and a worker changed for the worse during the pandemic. My hours were significantly cut because a lot of students didn’t want to even bother with taking music lessons online. I had a lot less students, which meant I was working a lot less hours and taking in a lot less money. Same goes for performance work. As I said earlier, there was almost nothing, and of those slim pickings, it was all online. The work with 91��ɫ was much the same as before the pandemic. Hours weren’t cut there, but it also switched to being online which detracted from the quality of the experience. Funnily enough, since you usually ��Dz�’t get much consistency with the contracts at 91��ɫ, I actually got more hours there during the pandemic than before. It didn’t make up for lost income, but it was a bit steadier employment, which is more than many can say. Now that we’re opening up, my hours have been increasing, though they’re not yet at pre-pandemic levels.

Christina: Do you have any sort of body representing your, and other musicians’, rights? Or is self-advocacy more of the norm?

Alexandros: At 91��ɫ I think we do have that, but I’m not in the loop on it so I wouldn’t know what steps were being taken by that body or not. I’m pretty sure we get emails from them, but I ��Dz�’t check my 91��ɫ emails; it’s too much effort. As for everything else, I’m not part of the Toronto Musicians’ Association and I ��Dz�’t have representation as a teacher working for private schools; there’s no union I’m aware of for that. I do put my foot down when I need to, however.

Christina: What impact has working during the pandemic had on your mental and physical health and wellbeing? Is it generally worse, better, or the same as pre-pandemic?

Alexandros: On the whole, I would say that my mood was definitely worse due to the measures that we needed to be taking because of the pandemic. The quality of my lessons and performances took a major hit with the digital transition. You also miss that human connection that is so important. I’m sure everyone can relate to that pandemic experience. Even working in a corporate job when you’re sitting in a meeting, there’s still a level of camaraderie that doesn’t translate online when everyone’s isolated in their homes and is just a face on a screen, if that. During the early days of the pandemic, my professional social needs were not being met.

You also miss that human connection that is so important.

When you’re performing live, you get response from the audience and a sort of atmospheric energy is all around you, whereas on Zoom, you’ll perform for these little black boxes, and they’ll put up clapping emojis after. It’s just like, “This is what my life has come to?” It was discouraging, like a cloud over my mood most of the time.

Christina: Do you think that you’re compensated fairly for your time? What is job security like for you?

Alexandros: For the most part, I would say I’m compensated fairly for my time. Because I’m self-employed, I make my own rates for lessons and performances. It’s only the 91��ɫ contract that I ��Dz�’t determine and even then, they more-or-less give me a fair amount of money. As for the second part of your question, for the most part, there’s no job security. All of my work is contract work, pretty much. The 91��ɫ contract is yearly, and you never know for sure you’re going to get it renewed until you do. Working with schools and performing is heavily dependent on the market. If there’s no demand, you will be working and earning less. With the schools, it’s more consistent because there will always be kids who want to learn music, even if there are fewer students during events like pandemics, so that one is a bit more secure than performing. In terms of performances, even if you do have a contract, the people employing you can terminate it as soon as they get sick of you. There is next to no job security in my area of this industry.

Christina: How would you describe your work-life balance?

Alexandros: I do think that I’m somewhat of a workaholic and I have a really hard time saying no to jobs. I honestly can’t gauge my work-life balance in a healthy way because I do not have a healthy relationship with my work. I love my work and what I do, but I’m always willing to take on more and do more and sacrifice more hours for work. It’s not a healthy relationship so I ��Dz�’t know how to answer that question.

I honestly can’t gauge my work-life balance in a healthy way because I do not have a healthy relationship with my work.

Christina: How has your relationships with your superiors changed as a result of the pandemic?

Alexandros: In my day-to-day interactions with my superiors, I would say that there has been no change aside from the occasional email reminding us to follow the health guidelines, or something small like that. Definitely a lot of other workers would have felt changes, especially those working directly under a manager or supervisor, but I really didn’t. They weren’t more demanding and were sympathetic for the most part.

Christina: As a gig worker, do you experience more employment instability because of the pandemic and how does this make you feel?

Alexandros: I’d say that COVID directly is the culprit for this issue. Mostly things have been fairly consistent except when a family at my teaching job has gotten exposed and they get sick and need to quarantine. In those cases, they obviously will cancel lessons until they get better which slashes your hours for a couple of weeks, especially if they are friends with, and exposed, other families. At a certain point you get dejected and it’s just like, “Man, this again?” You can’t really be angry at that, but it definitely contributes to job insecurity.

Of course, the pandemic contributed to job instability what with the fewer hours and cancellations, but being a musician generally is an unstable life unless you have significant commercial success. If you’re not hustling and grinding everyday to get work, you’re not going to be able to feed yourself. Even when you get contracts, like I said before, you never know how long that income will last. Anyway, the pandemic didn’t change the nature of being a musician so much as exaggerate the existing problems we deal with. This is where the broke musician stereotype really comes into play because you will be broke unless you’re working all the time. Thankfully, I enjoy sniffing out new contracts and making new connections, but it’s not for everyone, and you only really get stability if you’re at the top of the game.

This is where the broke musician stereotype really comes into play because you will be broke unless you’re working all the time.

Christina: What supports were you able to access through your work and through the government during the pandemic, and were they enough?

Alexandros: I did apply for CERB at some point and got it so that was a big help. Other than that, there were really no other supports that I am aware of through the government, and I didn’t get any through my jobs. You can always use more money so I wouldn’t say that CERB was enough, especially considering cost of living, incidentals, and the fact it was only available if you made under a certain amount of money per month.

Christina: Do you feel safe working?

Alexandros: Yes, I do. All I can do is the best that I can to ensure my safety and I think I’m doing an ok job. Also, because I have more of an established relationship between my clients as their music teacher, I ��Dz�’t get as much hostility as other workers do for asking them to follow precautions. There’s a level of respect that you ��Dz�’t get in customer service-type jobs, so when I ask them to wear masks or distance more from me, they’ll generally do it.

Christina: If you had power, what would you have done differently during the pandemic?

Alexandros: I ��Dz�’t know.

It’s trauma that’s been normalized.

Christina: Any final thoughts?

Alexandros:  It’s funny how I was reading the postings on the GLRC website about other workers’ experiences during the pandemic and some of them are straight up horror stories. The lengths that they were overworked and underpaid are truly horrific. Comparatively, my experience doesn’t seem to be as bad. Of course, there’s the overworking, but that’s more self-inflicted than anything. But yeah, I didn’t experience trauma like the other workers have and it was sort of shocking how my experience, in this regard, doesn’t seem to be the norm. It’s trauma that’s been normalized.

The post Play that Funky Music, Contract Musician appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

In the twelfth installment of the Workers' Stories in the COVID-19 Era dialogue series, we interviewed Regan, a seasonal factory worker in the GTA. Regan describes what it was like working in a food production job in the summer seasons of 2020 and 2021, highlighting the precarity and lack of worker supports. She believes that safety is not being prioritized for essential workers and that there are some changes that need to be made in order to treat everyone with the respect they deserve.

For privacy, all names have been changed to protect the identities of our interviewees.

Interview

Christina: Can you describe your job, when you were employed, and what some typical duties were?

Regan: I was a full-time seasonal production line worker for a food production company. I found this job the year before the pandemic and have worked it the summers of 2019, 2020, and 2021. My daily tasks consisted of running machines and filling skids or wood pallets to prepare for shipping. What I would do is basically in the mornings I would help organize the other staff members and make sure they knew what their duties were—what orders need to be filled, and what orders need to be placed. During the day I would fill pallets and make sure the line machines didn’t stop working. As the day went on, I would make small fixes as they were needed. At the end of the day, I would do more administrative tasks—I’d log and track order numbers and clean.

Christina: How has your work been impacted by the pandemic?

Regan: There was a lot that happened. Right before I started working in the summer of 2021 there was actually a delay of about two weeks because there was a huge breakout of COVID-19 at the factory. So, the factory was closed until the workers were clear. Other than that, it was pretty much business as usual; we just tried to maintain more distance from each other. We’d try to eat outside and wear masks in the building mostly.

I will say that there was a difference between the first and the second summer of the pandemic. During the first year of the pandemic when I was working there, there wasn’t really much difference from what I had experienced pre-pandemic. Masks weren’t really mandated, and physical distancing wasn’t enforced, so it was very deficient in terms of safety. Of course, this year there was a lot more that they had to do to comply with Public Health rules and try to prevent more large outbreaks. The reasons they did this were purely economic; they didn’t want to get penalized, and they didn’t want to have to shut down the business.

Christina: Has your relationship with your coworkers and boss changed during the pandemic?

Regan: In some ways, yeah. The factory I worked in was very loud, so communication is always kind of hard regardless of the time, but masks made it almost impossible to hear people when they were talking or trying to get someone’s attention. This has meant that some stupid mistakes have been made and the relationship between coworkers became more strained. If someone was doing something wrong or a machine was broken and they needed help, unless you were right next to them and yelling into their ear, they wouldn’t be able to hear you.

In addition, there was a lot of atmospheric change. After work in a job like this, you’d usually hang out for a bit with the other employees, just chatting and socializing, or sometimes you’d all go out together for drinks or something. It was a lot more distant this year compared to last year and especially compared to before the pandemic.

In terms of management, they’ve been under a lot more pressure to maintain safety, given that the outbreak I talked about earlier was the second big outbreak that had happened there. They had to be more uptight about some of the rules. There was a lot more pressure because basically what had happened was quotas were the same as the years before because our demand hasn’t gone down, but there were heavy caps placed on hiring. What ended up happening was the workers complained a lot more about being overworked and being under a lot more pressure because they didn’t hire as many people as they should have. I’d say that we were understaffed by at least 40% compared to the last years, but we were still doing the same amount of production.

I’d say that we were understaffed by at least 40% compared to the last years, but we were still doing the same amount of production.

Christina: How did this gross understaffing impact you?

Regan: So, we have different speeds that we run the machines on. I’d say the average speed we run the machines on, at a safe level, was about 30, and that number refers approximately to bags per minute. Sometimes if you needed it to be a little quicker, you’d go to 34 and you’d still be ok. But because of the lack of staff, we’d have the machines going at 40-45. What this does for me, as someone who’d also work mechanics and try to keep these machines working, is increases my workload as they’d break down a lot more because of the strain of this high output. This made a lot more work and, counterintuitively, made things slower at times, and then management would be cracking their whips… It was an all ‘round messy situation.

To compensate for everything, what we ended up having to do would be longer shifts. We used to do standard 8-houur shifts which then became 9-hour shifts and sometimes it’d be 10-11 hours just because we needed to fill the daily quotas. Sometimes we’d be running around from 5am to 4pm, which is a lot of work, especially if you’re not expecting it.

Christina: Are you unionized and how do you think that this has impacted your pandemic working experience? And jumping off that, as a seasonal worker, did you get any benefits, sick pay, or overtime?

Regan: No, my company is not unionized and that did have a big impact on our working experience. There were a lot of disgruntled employees, like our forklift driver. He was probably one of the most overworked people at the factory and he’d always complain. Essentially, there were two forklift drivers, then, to cut costs, they fired one of them. That’s a 100% labour increase and I can guarantee you he was not making double. But his complaints never got taken seriously by management.

For us non-specialized workers, they wouldn’t have mechanics there all the time, or a manager there to run things, so we’d be left to our own devices, and I’d end up taking a leadership role most of the time. There wasn’t anyone there to argue for us, which was important especially during times we’d have to work 11 hours. During the 11-hour shifts we were entitled to an additional break that would never be given to us.

There were no benefits as a seasonal worker, although you did get overtime after, I believe, 44 hours. With the level of work we were doing, you’d pretty much be guaranteed overtime. I liked it but I can see why others had issues with it. Sometimes I’d work 6-day weeks, just because they needed someone able to run the machines or to do certain repairs not everyone could do, so I was on-call a lot of the time. There were some workers that were there 7 days a week though, and that was crazy. I think I would average about 55 hours a week, sometimes less, sometimes more.

The overtime was good, in my opinion, but there weren’t benefits or sick leave and I really resented that. For example, I needed to take two days off from work to get vaccinated and I got sick from the vaccine, so I had to take a couple more days off as well. I didn’t get sick pay for any of that and when some of my coworkers got sick with COVID, caught at work mind you, they got nothing either.

Christina: How has working during the pandemic impacted your mental and physical health and well-being?

Regan: There were definitely two sides of that coin. On the one hand, I was happy to be out of the house doing something and was grateful to be employed. On the other, it was scary sometimes working during the pandemic, especially when your coworkers are getting sick. Coming in this past year after an outbreak where literally everyone at the factory had gotten COVID was horrible; there was just this constant fear that I’d be next. There are three branches of the company I worked for: there’s production, where I work; administration and office work; and there’s the truckers who deliver our product, and everyone from all three branches got COVID this past spring.

There were also the workers who wouldn’t wear masks properly and who refused to get vaccinated and went partying. If anyone got sick, there was also this huge pressure to come back to work as fast as possible because management didn’t want to have to do layoffs and hiring all the time. It was tough trying to keep everything contained and keep working.

If anyone got sick, there was also this huge pressure to come back to work as fast as possible because management didn’t want to have to do layoffs and hiring all the time.

Christina: What supports and resources, if any, were available to you, as a worker during the pandemic, from the government and your employer?

Regan: My employer sometimes bought pizza for everyone so that was pretty dope *chuckles*. I think we were exempt from the pandemic pay so we didn’t get that extra two-dollar bump. I’m actually not sure how that happened because they are essential as a food production plant. Because we were working such long hours, my coworkers and I weren’t able to collect CERB, CESB, or CRB. There wasn’t any real government support, I’d say. In terms of workplace support, they didn’t offer much besides employment and even then… One of our drivers’ wives had died of COVID she contracted from him when everyone caught it at the workplace, and I think he only got three weeks off.

Christina: With pay??

Regan: Uhhh…no. I know when he was back he was like, “Oh, gotta make up for the lost pay.” The only thing I can say is that, though we didn’t get pay, our managers were fairly accommodating with giving time off to recover from vaccination.

I’d have to count my factory as one of the luckier ones too. We only had about 8-12 employees in at a time and they were fairly decent at implementing health protocols after Public Health made them. But you’d hear horror stories from the guys working in other factories in the area or on the news. There was this one plant down the street from ours that had around 200 workers and you’d periodically hear things like, “40 workers contracted COVID-19.” It was this dehumanizing experience of like, “Oh, people are dying, but at least I’m in a nicer place that still doesn’t offer pay when you’re sick.”

You need the money even though working some of these frontline factory jobs is almost a death sentence. Not working’s not really a choice for me; I have tuition and living expenses to pay for plus I help my parents with the bills sometimes.

Christina: What could your employer and the government have done better?

Regan: One major thing was PPE; the workplace was always having shortages of hand sanitizer, gloves, masks, soap. If you work in a food facility you sort of need gloves, but we were running out of them regularly. The only way for us to eat lunch and be properly socially distanced was to eat outside and they ordered some benches for us to do so. Problem was that it would rain a lot, or we’d get 30+ degree days where eating outside wasn’t really an option. If we ate indoors, there was a small 10x10 foot room for 12 people, so distancing wasn’t really an option in those conditions and there weren’t enough cleaning supplies to wipe things down after everyone was done. Our lunchroom was also split into a training room, so you’d always have new hires coming in and out. I think that better workplace safety measures and greater investment in preventing COVID would have been good.

In terms of the government, they could have done a lot better. We needed more financial support what with people losing houses and rationing their food, of course, but we also needed rule enforcement. They should have listened to the scientists and made sure everyone was following the evidence-based guidelines that keep us all safe. For instance, I can’t think of anyone who’s ever got anything more than a scolding for not wearing a mask or not wearing it properly, inside and out of work. They probably should’ve been getting fined so that they’d be more conscientious.

Christina: If you suddenly had godlike powers, how would you change things going forward?

Regan: This is a tough one. As much as there were the negative aspects to this job…I almost had to feel happy because I was getting money to pay rent. Definitely a weird mix of emotions and a bit Stockholm-y for sure. I’ve been kicked in the shins so much I can’t stand up straight.

Anyway, if I could change things, I’d change the government response to make it a lot safer and give the workers more support, especially for people who didn’t feel safe. For example, I’d have coworkers who were immunocompromised. So, 1) they couldn’t get vaccinated and 2) they were extra vulnerable to COVID.

A huge thing is workplace regulation and enforcement. What would happen to us on-site is that we were forced to work longer hours regardless of our feelings or commitments; they had quotas to fill, and we didn’t matter. Safety was also insufficient. We’d spray down door handles but not the machines or the lunchroom, and the ventilation of the facility was quite poor. At the very least, there needs to be stricter enforcement of things like that.

If I had ultimate power, however, I’d change regulations, government assistance, instate mandatory benefits, and mandate paid sick leave. It was unfortunate how essential workers were essentially being sacrificed just to reach certain quotas.

Christina: Is there anything you think the general public should know about working during the pandemic, particularly as a factory worker?

Regan: I hope the public realizes that these are not safe conditions for workers. Even beyond the dangers of working directly in an unsafe place, there’s the environmental factors. We were in a COVID hotspot and, a lot of times, the factory workers would all take the same bus to work. We’re having to take these risks, though, to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads.

Other than that, I want the general public to know how little assistance a lot of these workers could access. Some of my coworkers lost homes, family members, and businesses because of how little help there was for them. I’ve had coworkers say to me, “I feel so sick, but if I miss this day of work, I won’t be able to eat for the rest of the week.” It’s not a choice for a lot of people. There is no alternative for us.

Christina: Any final comments?

Regan: Yeah, I want to touch on how crazy the job search is, particularly compared to how many places are understaffed. There’s literally no one hiring and that creates a desperation when you ��Dz�’t have something like UBI to back people up. In fact, one of my coworkers was a dentist who had to shut down his practice due to COVID-19. To be a dentist making $16/hour in a factory job is the perfect picture of how bad things are out there.

One of my coworkers was a dentist who had to shut down his practice due to COVID-19. To be a dentist making $16/hour in a factory job is the perfect picture of how bad things are out there. 

One final thing is how exhausting all of this work and stress is. You just get bone tired and I’ve had friends tell me that they’ve grown to hate jobs they once loved because of their experiences working during the pandemic. We’re not lazy. We’re being exploited.

The post Please, Sir, I Want Some Rights appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

Executive Summary

The care work sector has been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and migrant care workers have largely been left out of public discourse. As labour standards and healthcare are provincial jurisdictions, the experiences of migrant care workers will depend on which part of the country they work in. To better understand how these experiences might differ, this report compares provincial and territorial wage top-up programs, government containment policies, and vaccination priorities. It includes data from March 2020 to June 2021.

The findings show major inconsistencies in the definitions of care work across provinces and territories, along with significant variations in how provincial wage top-up programs covered, protected, and supported care workers. Levels of COVID-19 and government containment policies were also varied between provinces, creating increasingly dangerous work environments for care workers. Despite the fact that care work an essential component of Canadian society, these findings demonstrate that its value, protection and support will vary depending on the province or territory.

Read the full report

Written by Leah Nicholson (BA, Political Science, 91��ɫ)

Download [PDF]

The post Contrasting Care: Provincial variations in care work policy during COVID-19 appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

Christina Love is a contributor to the GLRC’s interview series entitled Workers’ Stories in the COVID-19 Era. Her post below features findings and quotes from those interviews.

TW: Mention of suicide in the worker quotes (Karl).

History

In 1894, over 50 labour organizations from across the country petitioned parliamentarians to create a federal workers’ holiday [1]. Since then, Labour Day has been a Canadian statutory holiday celebrated the first Monday in September. Originally a holiday that platformed speeches, parades, picnics, and worker solidarity, Labour Day has increasingly changed in its nature since the 1940s. Now, among the mainstream, Labour Day is more of a family-centred holiday that is largely treated as an additional weekend day.

The day was borne of the working struggle and celebration of its victories. Crucial to this struggle was the successful 1872 printers’ strike in Toronto which instigated the Trade Union Act, decriminalizing unions [2]. The now-legal unions could begin to do what unions do – they began to organize, demanding better wages, fair treatment, and lower working hours. The industrial standard from before the Act was a 12-hour workday and a 6-day workweek [3]. Since unions have come onto the scene this has significantly shifted, and the working standard for most jobs now is an 8-hour workday and 5-day workweek.

The current de-politization and sanitization of Labour Day is reflected in the policy decisions of our leaders and the increasing restrictions on worker organizing and the power that worker organizations can hold.

Present

Neoliberalism has meant a workforce that is increasingly precarious and disenfranchised. Add on a pandemic and you have rampant injustice at its extremes.

In terms of unions, this has manifested itself in combative legislation that seeks to undermine the power of the collective and to limit the scope of what they can do. Of special note is back-to-work legislation. Basically, governments have steadily eroded workers’ legal abilities to strike by enacting legislation that can force them back to work. Particularly, for example, CUPE 3903 members at 91��ɫ since 2018 would remember the Ford government forcing an end to that year’s historic strike, effectively infringing on workers’ bargaining power [4]. Most recently at the federal level, Bill C-29 was tabled in the House of Commons on April 28, 2021, forcing striking Port of Montreal workers back to work [5]. If workers cannot strike, their leverage effectively vanishes, allowing employers to ignore worker demands.

In response to the public health crisis of the pandemic, the Ontario government passed Bill 195, which reduces the legal power of the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA) and other unions, with no designated future end [6]. For all unionized workers, this bill overrides collective agreement provisions, and interferes with collective bargaining and the grievance process. For nurses specifically, this bill notably empowers employers to redeploy nurses to units in which they’re not qualified to work, and ignore their objections.

Precarity is at an all-time high, particularly among young workers. Experiencing a 6-percentage point increase in unemployment from 2019-2020 is just the tip of the iceberg for young people [7]. The pandemic has exacerbated an increasing trend that has been steadily growing since the 80s; 78.95% of young people in 1989 had fulltime, permanent jobs [8]. In 2019, this fell to 70.15% of young people [9]. People are still working, mind you, but it is getting harder and harder to find fulltime, permanent, positions.

This is a dual issue reflected in legislation that makes employers responsible for greater expenses for fulltime employees, disincentivizing the voluntary hiring of fulltime staff, and a simultaneous desperation for work among the people due to a lacking social safety net. Young workers put up with terrible conditions, low pay, and unreliable work because they have to. We ��Dz�’t have free post-secondary education, we ��Dz�’t have a Universal Basic Income, and there are huge housing and affordability crises in huge urban population centres like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. People are taking what they can get because they have no choice.

It is galling that we celebrate a holiday every September that was intended to uplift and promote solidarity with workers, yet at the same moment, the actions of governments and businesses undermine the very goals and premise upon which Labour Day was founded. How long before unions are so legislated that they’re effectively recriminalized?

The Workers’ Voices

The people who have faced, and are facing, the impacts of these policies and these social, economic, and political trends are the workers. This begs the question: What are the workers saying? We interviewed frontline and essential workers throughout the summer as part of our Workers' Stories in the COVID-19 Era dialogue series about their experiences of work and labour in Canada and the world, specifically concerning the changing nature of labour as affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Below, we have pulled a quote from each of our interviews to highlight the views of workers, spoken by the workers themselves.

I have never been worse abused by other people than I have been working in retail, this being wholly exacerbated by the pandemic. You begin to feel less than human, between the unreasonable demands of managers and the customers who treat you like scum. – Emma, former Shoppers Drug Mart post office clerk and cashier

I think my anxiety is way higher than it's ever been in my life. I think I have to figure out my day, their day, entirely… But we need to make that all work, so that I can still work and keep a professional noise level and am able to work with my kids, and have them be able to have some sort of normality to their day. – Felicity, educational assistant and parent

So, the pharmacist owned the branch where I worked, and she was very discriminatory; she favoured the people who worked at the pharmacy more than any of the other employees in the store. For example, she got all of her pharmacy staff vaccinated in early January, and the rest of the staff…she never even talked about getting them vaccinated or discussed anything with them. – Lucy, former Shoppers Drug Mart cash supervisor

Even if I had perfect time-management, the workload has increased to the point where we need to be getting overtime or have more staff be hired. How can I manage twelve hours of genuine work in eight hours even if I'm perfect at prioritizing?... For me, there's no paid overtime but I’m putting in overtime every single day. – Audre, Canadian medical researcher

It was just too hard. We had all these new ‘COVID’ changes in place to reduce labour costs, which severely limited our kitchen staff, let alone the adaptation to online ordering. With Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes, you get a “ding ding ding order request” and you have to accept it and prepare the order superhumanly fast, and the orders just keep coming in, like “ding ding ding ding,” fucking constantly. You’re constantly stressed, constantly behind, and with absolutely no help. &�Բ�����;– Damian, GTA line cook

I was still working full-time and trying to find a job that didn't make me actively want to commit suicide. Near the end of my time at that second veterinary clinic, suicide was an option, it was a part of my brain, and it was a way out. But because I was working full-time, if I went to places like Durham Recruiter, they pretty much told me that they couldn’t help me because I was working, even though I was always one paycheque and $50 away from starving… - Karl, former vet assistant turned hot tub salesperson

With this pandemic, the approach to unions have changed. Before, workers were chased by unions and now workers are chasing unions for membership, knowing that unionization provides them with some security and socio-economic protection. – Edward, Ghanian public utility sector worker

A big thing was that sometimes I’d have to call in sick for some shifts due to health issues, and while they didn’t fire me for being sick, I wasn’t given any sick pay at all, and I had to find someone to cover my shift. So that’s a major financial hit I took whenever I wasn’t feeling well enough to work. – Angela, former Shoppers Drug Mart cashier

I wanted to honour my country and my traditions by continuing to work in a way my father and forefathers did, in a way that I thought would honour the land and the sea, but the pandemic showed me that I will be left behind by change, that my country will not protect me. I could barely afford to keep food in the mouths of my wife and children… The poor get poorer, the sick get sicker, the rich get richer. – Joseph, traditional Maltese fisherman

I would say don't hedge your bets on whatever current employment you have, and always be ready at any given point to switch to a new form of employment. You as an individual are inconsequential to your employer. – Attilio, laid-off Old Navy merchandiser

It’s a difficult situation to be told you have no choice of where you're going to be working or else you could lose your job. They don't outright say it, but you know it's in the background. You try to grieve something, but it doesn’t work. – Ahed, Ontario nurse

The post Labour Day, the Pandemic, and Canada appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

In the tenth installment of the Workers' Stories in the COVID-19 Era dialogue series, we interviewed a senior nurse who has worked at a GTA hospital since the 1980s. Below, Ahed shares their experiences as a worker on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. They talk about the mismanagement of pandemic protocol by the government and hospital administration as well as the need for nurses to have stronger labour rights. When comparing COVID-19 to SARS, Ahed is shocked that this pandemic response has been so horrible.

For privacy, all names have been changed to protect the identities of our interviewees.

Note: When Ahed references (passed into law July 24^th, 2020) they are specifically speaking to the impact that this has had on nurses. Namely, the fact that this Bill allows hospitals to deploy nurses to units they are unqualified to work in and, as per the , “it also grants enormous latitude to employers to override collective agreement provisions and the grievance arbitration procedure” across all unionized workers. The government will continue to possess these powers indefinitely.

As of August 24, 2021, 26, 835 Canadians have been killed by COVID-19.

Interview

Christina: Can you describe your job, typical duties, and how long you've worked there?

Ahed: I work in a short stay unit at my hospital. They do procedures, so people stay overnight and usually go home the next day. I've worked at this hospital since the early 80s and am senior staff. We ��Dz�’t do chronic care in my area. Mostly, nurses prep charts, do paperwork, restock materials and medications, and we do patient care and discharge teaching. There are also some things that require more fine-tuned nursing skills.

Before the pandemic, we were only managing floor-type patients who were in for their procedures and then out. But with Bill 195, we started getting pulled to different units because they over hired on ours and were understaffed on others. This was also in conjunction with a sort of pandemic hysteria because the government was handling things terribly. Everybody was horribly scared, horribly afraid for their families, horribly afraid because there were no supplies. I worked as a nurse through SARS; I can't believe that the government didn't know to do more. A huge thing should have been some sort of disaster planning put in place to have the infrastructure ready to repurpose different Canadian industrial production plants in times of emergency. The hospital outsources a lot of our materials to places with lower production costs, but when these countries get impacted by disasters and supply lines are down, we have no backups ready. Most of us in healthcare could foresee this coming, unfortunately. Viruses mutate, viruses change, the flus get more virulent, and people get sicker.

I worked as a nurse through SARS; I can't believe that the government didn't know to do more.

Christina: What sort of response has the government had to COVID, and do you think that our governments have learned from past public health crises?

Ahed: To address the first part of the question, the pandemic response has been non-comprehensive, flip-floppy, and rather than listening to scientists and healthcare experts, regulations were implemented in a way to pander to partisan popularity among targeted demographics. The Conservative leadership is, and has always been, less focused on preserving and protecting human life so much as cutting corners for businesses. As a nurse, I am appalled.

For years the government has been cutting a lot of our healthcare budgets. For example, Mike Harris’ government cut back on homecare big time. It's never really bounced back, and it's needed, especially with an aging population. People need to be able to access care at home in a much broader sense than they are now, while still being able to access acute care if and when they need it.

The government really didn't know what to do with COVID. And that is another discussion that SARS should have triggered. A big part of the problem is four-year increment governments. They’re only thinking in electoral increments and ��Dz�’t necessarily look into the future beyond strategizing what will make them popular. They ��Dz�’t take necessary actions to help our people; they only think in four-year increments so they're not thinking about the long haul and the long term. There really needs to be some sort of bureaucratic department that does think of the long term and plans accordingly and makes contingency plans, so that, for example, businesses that get shut down for one thing can get retooled to produce something else reasonably easily. This happened a little bit with alcohol producers converting to produce hand sanitizer, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

[Governments] only think in four-year increments so they're not thinking about the long haul and the long term.

There were a lot of things we were unprepared for that we should have been. We’ve gone through SARS, we’ve gone through MERS, we've gone through HIV. All these things are precursors and really, a pandemic is something that was going to happen and will happen again. And they will happen over and over again due to the nature of viruses and how they mutate, particularly in a globalized context.

Christina: From a nurse’s standpoint, what do you think people need to understand about nursing during a pandemic?

Ahed: The thing with pandemics is that people don't get it. Hospitals have to be able to manage their occupancy. If hospital occupancy isn’t managed, all hell breaks loose and people are dying in the streets. They're dying in the hallways of hospitals if that’s not managed. People need to understand that it’s not just the pandemic virus that kills during pandemics; it’s also the fact that our healthcare system gets so bogged down that we’re at a lower capacity to treat other patients, too. We can't just create healthcare people to work in pop-up hospitals. It takes too long to train them and they’re superfluous once the pandemic is over. The healthcare system really needs to be able to figure out how to expand and contract to accommodate crap like this and the public needs to be pushing for this.

It just becomes overwhelming when people are dying like this. People made this big outpouring for the healthcare workers initially that, “Oh yeah, you're doing great” and “We stand by our nurses and frontline staff” and all that which fizzled out really quickly. We were basically improvising left, right, and center. We didn't have stuff and my unit was pulled into critical care. We were told that's where we were going because we had added nursing skills. I have numerous health comorbidities and I was scared of taking care of COVID patients because I have no immunity, no protection. We didn't have equipment and resources; we were counting masks like we counted narcotics. And we still do; we're careful with the N95s. Everybody should be outfitted with N95s, but we’re not.

Christina: What were some of the changes to your experience of nursing, either organically or institutionally, during the pandemic?

Ahed: A lot of people left critical care nursing and a lot of people retired because of Bill 195 and the dangers of being a nurse. A lot of people couldn’t cope with it anymore. Just the misinformation, the lack of consistency… I know during SARS, one day we were told to fully suit up, next day we were told, “Don't worry, you're scaring the patients.” We got no consistency there. We had a little bit more consistency with COVID, but it was still really sucky and it became very confusing. You had to look at your hospital email every two seconds because they were notifying you of this that and the other thing because that's how they communicate with people, which makes it difficult when you can't access the website when you're at home due to security protocol.

A lot of people left critical care nursing and a lot of people retired because of Bill 195 and the dangers of being a nurse.

We even put ourselves in a WhatsApp group to try to communicate with each other about what the heck was going on in the unit because we were getting different stories from different people. It was a shit show. For the first four to six months, it was just a mess. We got pulled into the coronary care unit, we were told to do what we could. They also tried to give us assignments, and there was no way I was going to take an assignment because I am not a critical care nurse. I will help, I will do what I can with the skills that I have, but I am not going to take full responsibility over a critical care patient. They were so short staffed; they're still short staffed because they're doubling up on intubated patients on my unit, and really, it's a one-to-one job. People don't want to go to our coronary care unit anymore because of that, but they're also doubling up in critical care. We don't have enough chronic-care places that accommodate people that are intubated and who don't need acute care; there are just no places to put them.

It was a shit show. For the first four to six months, it was just a mess.

I was virtually untrained in critical care nursing, and I was expected to do what I could, which was… I felt just totally useless. I mean, here I am, a senior nurse, and they’d be saying, “Do this drip, do that drip.” I was really out of my depth and it's like, “Well, they showed us these new IV pumps, but we don't really use them in our unit.” So, I really haven't had a heck of a lot of practice and yet I'm supposed to be running this critical care medication drip and calibrating everything. You look like you're stupid, which is not the case; it's that you're untrained and you haven't practiced at it. You do tell that to people, but in a pinch, it frustrates your coworkers and you feel bad. And then you have a bad relationship with them because you can't do stuff that they want done, and they're short staffed so they need it done. All you can do is turn people, help them lift, maybe draw some blood, start an IV, and all those kinds of things, but it's just not enough to properly support a critical care unit, it's just not.

If I wanted critical care nursing at this age, I would have already been doing it, but it's back-breaking work and you're dealing with difficult families and tough decisions. If I could retire, I would, but I can't afford to retire.

If I could retire, I would, but I can't afford to retire.

It’s a difficult situation to be told you have no choice of where you're going to be working or else you could lose your job. They don't outright say it, but you know it's in the background. You try to grieve something, but it doesn’t work. I didn't actually go through the formal grievance process, but I got doctor's notes and everything and they still ignored them and said, “No, you have to keep working in critical care.” And I'm thinking, “Okay well, let me go and revise my will.” It was one of those situations where you think, “If I die, what's going to happen to my kids?”

There should have been something special if somebody ended up dying because of this job. I mean, nobody goes into health care to die. Nobody. Nobody goes into the job for that, and you don't get danger pay. So, to go into work and think, “I could catch something and die” is too much. It’s just too much to deal with.

The basic healthcare worker is super empathetic and gives and gives and gives of themselves to their job and their patients. And then their life is going to be sacrificed because of this? That is ridiculous. We should be protected, and there was very little notification of what was being done to protect us, to help us. To give our hospital administration credit, they tried to give us information, but there wasn't much information to give us because the government was twiddling their thumbs. Doug Ford is all for business; he's not for healthcare. He is about business and money, and that's where his focus is, not healthcare.

Christina: What supports were available to you through your hospital, through your union, and through the government as a nurse and frontline healthcare worker during the pandemic?

Ahed: Well, we got less than the teachers on our contract dispute. Nurses are nurses, they’re charitable people. They didn't fight last year in 2020 when our union contract came up for negotiation. A lot of nurses felt that we at least had jobs during a wave of mass unemployment, and it would not look good to ask for more money. And that's what I was told by one of the union reps when I specifically told them, “This is the time we have leverage, let's use it.” The response from their end was, “Oh, we can't use it because it would look bad, because then we're money hungry.”

I think we got something like a 0.5% increase, which isn’t even the rate of inflation. Every year we lose money. I think that annual cost-of-living wage increases should be mandatory and built into our contract negotiations; that should be a baseline.

Every year we lose money.

We got two payouts of ‘pandemic pay’ from the government, and it wasn't very much money. The first time it was like 500 bucks and the second time was like 200. It was kind of a joke between the nurses because the amount was so small and we only got it twice. The level of stress on critical care departments is horrible, horrible. People are having to make difficult life-altering decisions about who lives and dies, who stays on a respirator and who doesn't. For hospital staff to have to make those types of decisions is heartbreaking and it rips you apart.

Eventually, after a couple of months they had a number to call for stress and a number to call for assistance. You could also call your EAP, which “in four sessions or less, your problem can go away,” which is a fucking joke when it comes to mental health. It has to be ongoing; you can't just do it in four sessions. I mean, that's nuts, that's emergency band aid, that's ridiculous.

Christina: Have your interactions with other people outside of your nuclear family changed as a result of your being a nurse during the pandemic?

Ahed: The people on my street know I'm a nurse and initially they didn't want to come near me, they didn't want me to touch their cats. Of course, I understood, but it's very isolating.

At the beginning of the pandemic, my hospital offered those hotel rooms to stay to protect our families and they were offering this laundry service for clothing, which you were never guaranteed that you’d get your clothes back. I think that, in general, hospitals should be supplying uniforms nowadays. They do it for the operating rooms and stuff but when it comes to pandemics, they should be supplying everybody uniforms in a closed system and there should be on-site places to stay.

There needs to be some give and take, and some back storage of emergency equipment to be able to function during something like this. Scrambling around trying to secure intubation and ventilators for people should be something that should be relatively easy to increase supply of.  Whole companies that are creating things like video games should be able to retool their computer components to something else that is beneficial to healthcare for when there’s a pandemic.

Christina: How do you think the country should move forward?

Ahed: I think Canada needs to be working towards more self sufficiency for everything. Because if this happens again, and especially China being our primary source for a lot of medical supplies, it’s a risk because you're going to lose your supply.

Pandemics are going to be the norm. This is going to happen again and again, maybe not on such a big scale, but they will, and eventually we will hit another bigger scale one. We've got to be prepared for this. Healthcare being on high-tension, high-alert over a year and a half now is ridiculous, and training more people is problematic because it takes four years to produce a nurse and many more years to produce a doctor. So, you can't just expand and contract your staffing easily because there would always be an over or underabundance.

Everything’s got to be looked at with a pandemic in mind. There needs to be some flexibility and ability to accommodate when something like this happens, better than we have with COVID. Even if it's not perfect, it needs to at least be better than what's happened. That's a huge deal, and that is a general systems thing because everybody's got to do it and it can't just be one country; it's got to be everybody because it impacts everybody.

Christina: What has the role of ONA (Ontario Nurses’ Association) been during the pandemic, and have they been effective?

Ahed: *Laughs.* First of all, nurses are giving personalities. Nurses go into nursing because they're empathetic and they want to care for people. You're constantly told to work through everything and anything. My oldest daughter said that it is a toxic work environment. There are no rewards for excellence except little nameless things like the Nightingale Award where you get a little bit of money, but it’s not a lot and not many people can get selected for it. You don't get any pay increase beyond what your union can negotiate after 12 years, there’s no bonuses, and no raises for higher qualifications.

Inside the hospital, the regular nurses weren’t getting more during COVID, but they were offering more money to casual nurses from agencies and stuff, from what I heard. I don't know exactly what was offered in specific, but I heard that they were bribes.

ONA has been there to sort of emotionally support nurses a little, but generally, because we cannot strike and even information pickets are very limited, nurses have little power in the workplace. It’s not democratic and we cannot leverage a strike, or threat of a strike, to get the things we need, the pay we need, the equipment we need, the treatment we deserve.

Most nurses are giving personalities, so they don't want to complain or cause problems, because then you're seen as a troublemaker. Nurses are nonconfrontational about everything but their patients. For themselves, they will take a lot of crap before their fuse blows. I think that's going to change the more guys that get into the job. But at this point, it's predominantly women, and they’ve been socialized largely to operate in a misogynistic world where it’s safer to stay silent.

On day shift, you're lucky if you get a coffee break, let alone going to the bathroom. Numerous times I had lunch when I worked days at four or five o'clock in the afternoon. I didn't eat all day because I was running like an idiot. If you’re doing the job properly, you don't have time to have breaks or to take a breather. The way they teach you to do the job and what actually happens are two totally different things. You put your patients first and everything else is second.

If you’re doing the job properly, you don't have time to have breaks or to take a breather.

So, you're running around like an idiot all the time and trying to cope. Nobody's got time to complain properly, nobody has time to follow through, and anytime you do you’re looked down on, as opposed to being an innovator trying to fix something.

Christina: If you could change anything about the pandemic response and how it relates to your working experience, what would you change?

Ahed: Unlimited funding would be great. That's unrealistic, but a huge increase in funding would have nonetheless solved a lot of problems. From worker benefits and hazard pay to an increase in productive capacity, more funding would have significantly aided our pandemic response as healthcare workers.

I think communication between the scientific community and the general public is also crucial. We need to have a good advertising plan, a good plan to accommodate different things like how to tell things to science-deniers. How can you present to them in an effective, knowledgeable, and relatable way? How can you reach people out in the boonies?

Christina: So, there's been a lot of symbolic support for nurses and healthcare staff during the pandemic with those yard signs and the announcements in stores, etc. Do you think that people now treat you with more, less, or the same amount of respect and consideration as before the pandemic?

Ahed: Some people do treat you with a little bit more respect. But generally, people take you for granted. It's just like being a mom, you get taken for granted. You bend over backwards, you do what you need to do, you do extra, and it gets taken for granted because that’s what the standard is. A big example of this would be Nurses’ Week. Normally, we get a lot of different giveaways, and we have a huge party, and so on. In 2020, the union took a poll about what we should do for Nurses’ Week. The response was to save the money for next year, for when we could do something, which we never did this year. So, we’re not getting it for 2 years in a row. We got one or two little handout things like a pen or whatever, which is kind of a joke since we have to supply our own pens at work anyway because the hospital doesn’t.

I told the union that we should just be given a $10 gift card for coffee or something. In some ways, lip service is done, but that's about it. You don't get the bonuses you're supposed to, they expect you to get the ‘bonus’ though the work that you do. You're supposed to get job satisfaction because you're doing a job well done. That’s very little. They make a show of thanking us periodically in emails, but not much else.

Everything's going up in price and we're making less and less money each year, so that should change. We should at least get a minimum of cost-of-living wage increases, and we should get full benefits. Oh my god. Don't even get me started on benefits. I ��Dz�’t know of any nurse over the age of 40 who doesn’t have a back issue, but our chiropractic coverage is only for $400 a year. For glasses, you only get $500 every two years. Isn’t that nice if a nurse’s vision goes off after a year, you can't see for a year before you get covered. It's nuts. We need better medical coverage and that needed to have been one of our bargaining demands, especially during a global health crisis. It just floors me that nurses are not being taken care of by healthcare.

We should at least get a minimum of cost-of-living wage increases, and we should get full benefits.

Christina: Is there anything else you want to discuss or anything that you want the public to know about nursing in Ontario and during the pandemic?

Ahed: If you love your kids don't encourage them to go into nursing. None of mine are.

During COVID, people keep demanding more from us while they themselves do less. I know of a few patients that refused to get out of the critical care unit when they were able to and when medical advice supported it. They were threatening staff with reporting them to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and to the College of Nurses because their every whim wasn’t catered to.

Also, this is my own personal perception, but anybody who is selfish enough to not get vaccinated against COVID for non-medical reasons should be charged. If they get sick with COVID, for every cent that they cost the healthcare system—the ventilator, everything—they should be whacked with a huge bill because they're stupid and that kind of stupidity should not be allowed in this situation. This is something that should be mandatory. You should not risk everybody else because of your personal stupid choice. I understand, it infringes on rights, but you know what? Your right to spread illness is less important than another person’s right to safety from the virus. Vaccination is mandatory for healthcare staff, and it should be that way for everyone else who can get it. People who ��Dz�’t get vaccinated when they can basically say that they ��Dz�’t care if seniors, people with chronic illness and disability, or children die—let alone the variants that are increasing spreadability and severity across all demographics.

I don't know what else to say except nurses are undervalued. It is a chronic problem. It’s going to be a challenge to get people to work in hospitals if they ��Dz�’t improve the healthcare system. We’re not even getting cost-of-living, and that's disgusting. Nurses make a decent amount of money, but you're not getting proper increases, so you make less each year. That's disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to anybody who does not get annual cost-of-living wage increases.

The post Frustration on the Frontlines appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

In the fifth of their series of briefs looking at the labour market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, statistician Andrew Mitchell and GLRC Director Luann Good Gingrich examine the intersecting power dynamics defined by gender, nationality/race/ethnicity, and age that result in compounding vulnerabilities and economic exclusion, using data from the monthly  (LFS) conducted by Statistics Canada. 

Find more from this series

The “viral inequality” of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession has exposed the deepening and precise segmentation of the Canadian labour market. Our examination of labour market outcomes in the previous four research briefs highlighted the importance of examining a wide range of social and economic factors and their influence on the profoundly uneven experiences of the “pandem-ecession”. In this brief, we use regression modeling of Statistics Canada’s public-use Labour Force Survey (LFS) data to continue our investigation of labour market impacts of COVID-19. With an eye to detail and precision, we look for the story beneath the story.

In each of our analyses to date, we have seen that while the effects of the pandemic have been more severe for immigrants, women, and youth, our results have uncovered varying impacts across these groups. Not all immigrants, or all women, or all youth have suffered equally. In this brief, we employ multivariate regression techniques to better isolate how labour market impacts of the pandemic may differ between and within sociodemographic groups once we control for factors such as province, age, education, family type, and immigrant status. Our focus is on the intersecting power dynamics defined by gender, nationality/race/ethnicity, and age that result in compounding vulnerabilities and economic exclusion.

The post The Story So Far: COVID-19, the Canadian Labour Market, and Intersectionality appeared first on Global Labour Research Centre.

In the seventh installment of the Workers' Stories in the COVID-19 Era dialogue series, we interviewed Ali, an educational sector worker; Edward, a public utility worker; and Ronald, a health sector worker. In the interview, the workers talked about the challenges they’ve faced in the wake of the pandemic including government intervention, socio-economic impacts, and the role of unions in bolstering employment rights. Despite working in different sectors, all of the workers emphasized the importance of investment in infrastructure to promote health and safety.

For privacy, all names have been changed to protect the identities of our interviewees.

Interview

Tinu: What were some of the challenges that workers have faced due to COVID-19?

Ronald: There was a lot of pressure put on healthcare sector workers. We were drained and exhausted emotionally as well as physically. The number of patients who contracted COVID-19 skyrocketed, which also meant that the workers had to do overtime. As an African country, we already had issues and inadequacies with our health system. When the pandemic hit us, things became worse as workers didn’t have enough personal protective equipment. Many of us workers contracted the virus due to the lack of access to healthcare resources and adequate infrastructure. Furthermore, some healthcare workers were not classified as frontline workers and, as a result, they didn’t receive benefits from the government.  The healthcare sector is all about teamwork. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, cleaning staff and all others must work together to ensure the health and safety of people. It doesn’t work and it’s not fair if some workers are excluded from receiving support.

We were drained and exhausted emotionally [and] physically.

Ali: COVID-19 has really impacted the economy both from the macro perspective and the micro, that is from the national to the household level. In terms of the educational sector, the academic structure has changed, and the government had to adjust to this new structure. All students could not be present at the same time in a school to avoid overcrowding, and so courses that were supposed to be taught in a period of 12 weeks were squeezed to be taught in a period of 10 weeks to reduce contact. Poor internet connectivity and lack of electricity supply will affect the quality of academic outcomes in the long run. As for the workers, private school workers suffered a lot compared to government sector workers because they depend on proceeds from parents who enroll their kids in those schools. Since those kids were not in the school, private school workers, including teachers, janitors etc., were either laid off or were asked to work at a reduced salary. There was no job security for them. This was the case at all levels of education, primary and secondary.

Edward: The public utility sector is slightly different. Most of the workers had to be on the field despite all challenges and few had the opportunity to work from home. If somebody has no water flowing or if somebody has no power, you need to attend to it for them. This exposes them to a higher risk of infection because of the nature of the services that a utility worker delivers. They had several challenges but had no other options or significant adaptations made to the sector. Many of us were victims to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Tinu: As a worker, what might you tell the people in power (managers, the government, etc.) about your situation?

Ali: I think people in power should try to regulate the activities of private schools. Governments should support private schools in difficult situations like that of this pandemic by assisting to take care of the staff of those private schools who have faced many issues stemming from COVD-19. When the finances of the schools are stabilized, the government should also regulate these schools to ensure protection of the workers. Unions must also extend their services to the private sector and liaise with the government and the schools for the welfare of the workers.

Edward: Well, for the public utility sector, the primary concerns are related to issues of health and safety. COVID-19 really exposed the weaknesses of our healthcare system. While some of the workers had face masks and PPE provided by their employers, many workers did not. Cooperation and collaboration are key, and workers must raise their voice in a collective manner to change their situations. Unions must include clauses related to health and safety in their collective agreements so that the workers will be better equipped next time, should there be another pandemic.

Cooperation and collaboration are key, and workers must raise their voice in a collective manner.

Tinu: Do you think unions and workers’ organizations matter at this stage of the pandemic?

Edward: Our National Constitution allows freedom of association. Labour action is very important. With this pandemic, the approach to unions have changed. Before, workers were chased by unions and now workers are chasing unions for membership, knowing that unionization provides them with some security and socio-economic protection.

Before, workers were chased by unions and now workers are chasing unions for membership.

Ali: In the education sector, unions have stepped in to negotiate better terms for those who were asked to work at a reduced salary and negotiated emoluments for those who were laid off. Unions have complemented the efforts of the government to some extent, but beyond that, they give support to those who have lost their loved ones and they provide sanitation and personal protective equipment kits to members.

Ronald: Healthcare sector unions produced masks and distributed them among the workers. Unions also produced some educational videos on how to manage through the pandemic. Though unions were not consulted at the beginning, the government eventually included unions in discussions surrounding worker and pandemic response. Unions also used social media platforms for the dissemination of information. There were collaborations among doctors’ unions, pharmacists’ unions, and hospital unions to put pressure on the government for better outcomes for the welfare of workers. Because of these efforts, the government started offering some tax relief, utility subsidies, and extra salary to workers.

Tinu: How did COVID-19 working arrangements affect the socio-economic status of the workers and their families?

Edward: You know, we always advocate that one income source is not enough. So, people, apart from their main income source, have private businesses a lot of times. People and their families had their income level affected one way or another, and a lot of business had to shut down or reduce their service capacity. This was like a chain reaction. For example, the lack of meetings and conferences negatively affected the hospitality industry.

Ali: The education sector witnessed some unique impacts. COVID-19 affected the psychological state of most parents because they had divided attention because their kids are at home while they are working, whereas earlier they could work peacefully since the kids were at school. Workers had difficulty in asking for permission to stay home to take care of their kids. Additionally, the pandemic has resulted in a new source of pressure on their family income. Before, children got fed at school and the government absorbed the cost. Now, kids have to be fed at home using their parents’ income. This has put tremendous pressure on the breadwinners for the family. There were some isolated reports of rising teenage pregnancies as well, as most of the kids were home.

Ronald: Emotional stress was too much. Some of us had to leave our children at home and we couldn’t see them for several days. The schools were also closed. The workers had to self-isolate and healthcare workers would have to be quarantined at a hotel or a hospitality centre for several days before being able to see their families. Stigmatization during the early days was another concern because we are in the health sector and we deal with the patients directly. The uncertainty related to health and safety posed by COVID-19 caused a lot of stress among health sector workers and their families.

Tinu: What can be done to manage a pandemic-like situation while safeguarding the interests of workers?

Edward: We need to have a resilient healthcare infrastructure, both human and physical, to better be prepared for events like pandemics. When COVID-19 emerged, we realized that we were not proactive enough.

Ali: Governments should take the lead and collaborate with formal and informal sector workers to mitigate the economic impacts of a pandemic-like situation.

Ronald: I agree with Edward and Ali that health and safety are very important, and governments must ensure that the infrastructure is in place to safeguard the interests of people. Furthermore, I also think that unions can play a key role in advocating that.

Health and safety are very important, and governments must ensure that the infrastructure is in place to safeguard the interests of the people.

Tinu: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Ali: Educational workers are also public sector workers. Hence, the wage disparities must be avoided. It shouldn’t be that the politicians and their families get the maximum wage increases and other public servants get just nominal increases.

Edward: We need to be proactive when it comes to the health and safety of people.

Ronald: I am a union member, and I would like my union to negotiate for better wages with the government as soon as the pandemic is over. We had been through a lot already, and we have really been pushing for this because of the pandemic.

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