Canada Can’t Forget It’s Frontline Workers: Workplace Reform in the Wake of COVID-19

Service Worker in Pizza Shop by Ashwini Chardhary is licensed under Unsplash

Since the COVID-19 pandemic first took hold in Canada March 2020, there has been no shortage of speculation as to how workplaces will change when the “new normal” finally arrives. Microsoft announced in October that it would allow employees to work remotely for up to fifty percent of their working week, and other studies have shown a shift in overall employee preference for working from home at least part time. But for all the excitement surrounding increased flexibility and healthier work environments, there has been little talk about what the future of work might look like for those who spent more time in their workplaces during the pandemic, not less. 

Thousands of Canadian essential workers did not have the luxury of working from home. The pandemic exposed workplace threats and value systems that demanded they risk their health and safety so that the rest of society could be protected. While doctors and nurses put their lives at risk to treat patients in COVID wards, other front line workers went to their jobs in fast food restaurants, grocery stores, and retirement homes where they had no choice but to work in close proximity to others, interact with a scared and impatient public, and put their health at risk, often for no more than minimum wage.

Across the country, some of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks arose in bakeries, meat processing plants, and Amazon processing facilities. Looking back at the last nine months, it is clear that provincial health and safety policies were ill equipped to deal with the reality of a public health crisis.Going forward, federal and provincial governments have a responsibility to reassess their protections for Canada’s essential workers. This should begin with improved sick-leave and unemployment insurance policies, as well as increased consideration for the working conditions and scheduling practices of Canadian workplaces.

Sick Leave

Most Canadian provincial sick leave policies are ill equipped to handle the impacts of contagious diseases in the workplace.Ontario offers three days of unpaid job-protected sick leave per year (prior to 2019,  before Premier Doug Ford repealed Bill 148, workers had ten days for illness, bereavement, and personal emergencies); Quebec mandates two days of paid leave plus ten days of partial or unpaid leave depending on the type of employment. Excluding temporary COVID-19 policies, workers are also eligible for short or long-term disability benefits through federal employment insurance (EI) if their illness exceeds the periods described above. However, in order to access even short term EI, there is a wait time of one week - enough time to spread a virus and put an entire community at risk.

When it comes to contagious illnesses, such as influenza or COVID-19, these two paths miss the mark. Employment lawyer Lior Samfiro notes that it would be untenable for many businesses to offer medium to long term paid sick leave on their own, but that “one of the things the government can do is waive that one-week period so that if [a worker is] sick for the next three days and [they] cannot work, [they] can qualify for  EI.”

Stable Scheduling

In addition to inadequate sick leave policies, Canadian front line workers also had to grapple with unstable scheduling practices.  These practices have developed into a culture of an overworked and underemployed segment of the Canadian labour force. A Canadian study published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics illustrates that Canadian regulation (or lack thereof) of shift scheduling practices contributes to “unstable working hours” and “cultures of competition in minimum wage workplaces.” Retail employers routinely overhire for part-time positions in order to have a pool of workers available to call upon at a “moment’s notice” and avoid paying overtime in the process. 

The result is that workers must compete to be the most available in order to be selected as regulars and be assigned to the number of shifts they need to support themselves. In doing so, workers lose job stability, as their hours are constantly changing from week to week with fluctuations in weekly earnings. Further, American analyses have shown that women, black people, and low-wage earners see more drastic fluctuations in work schedules and earnings than their white, male, higher-paid counterparts. In Quebec, “retail employees were reluctant to refuse last-minute shifts for fear that they might later be denied permission to leave work for a sports event or a parent-teacher conference.”

Current Canadian legislation commonly requires employers to pay a minimum of three hours’ pay for any last minute shifts called within forty-eight hours, as is the case in Ontario. These ‘three hour rules’ are not enough to ensure that Canadian low-wage workers have the dignity and work-life balance that they helped so many of their fellow citizens maintain through grocery deliveries, warehouse packaging, and a myriad other essential services.

Legislating specific scheduling practices is all but impossible to do given the variance between workplaces and the variety of, often valid, reasons employers may have for scheduling some employees more than others or calling in last minute shifts. However, it is certainly possible to mandate weekly schedules and disincentivize last minute shift changes by requiring wage-increases for workers forced to put the rest of their lives on hold to be on stand-by. Of course, last minute illnesses and emergencies mean there will always be cases in which an employer has no choice but to make last minute schedule changes, but by placing a price on workers’ time outside the workplace, Canada can move away from the cultures of competition that contribute to underemployment and poor labour conditions.

American Senator Elizabeth Warren has been advocating for similar measures since 2017 through the “Schedules That Work Act”, which has yet to make it to a vote. Similar efforts were made by the Ontario Liberal Government prior to 2018, and the Canadian government recently pushed for changes to employer accountability through Bill C-65 in 2018.

“A single mom should know if her hours have been cancelled before she arranges for day care and drives halfway across town,” Warren said of the bill. “Someone who wants to go to school to try to get an education should be able to request more predictable hours without getting fired, just for asking. And a worker who is told to wait around on call for hours, with no guarantee of actual work, should get something for his time.”

There has never been a time in recent history where the workplace was so perfectly poised for change. The pandemic’s chaos has shown Canada its flaws and given  us a priceless opportunity to build new workplace legislation that benefits all Canadians, especially those whose services we depend on like never before.