Workers across the country are finding it more and more difficult to access good jobs with decent pay, pensions, and benefits. Today’s Canadian youth are the first generation to have a lower standard of living than their parents. The youth unemployment rate is 13% which is double the national average. To add salt to the wound, 48% of young workers are classified as part-time, 1 in 3 are in temporary positions, and there are 300,000 unpaid interns in Ontario.
We need a strong labour movement that fights for good jobs for all and protects gains won in the past. One of the most difficult struggles today is around two-tier contracts.vTiered agreements have become a major strategy of corporate Canada to lower the conditions of working people in every sector. Different terms and conditions based on date of hire divides the labour movement by eroding solidarity between generations.
Protecting good jobs for all means protecting good jobs for young workers and all new hires. Because of Canada’s changing demographics, two tier contracts also serve to entrench racial inequities in the workplace; the new hires excluded from the full protections and benefits of the Collective Agreement are disproportionately more likely to be racialized workers or immigrant workers.
There have been a series of strikes and lockouts in recent times when unions took a strong stance to reject two-tier contracts. This Labour Council played an important role supporting solidarity rallies and pickets when USW 9176 went on a nearly two year strike against concessions including a two tier contract, and during the recent negotiations at Canada Post where CUPW refused to accept pension roll backs for new hires. This kind of action is going to need the support of every union in Canada if we are going to beat back the intensified attacks on job security and pensions that we are now facing. This is a struggle of upmost importance for the Canadian labour movement, because there will be no meaningful solidarity between labour and the younger generation if we cannot reverse this trend.
Therefore be it resolved that the Toronto & York Region Labour Council urge all affiliates to do everything possible to resist two-tiered contracts, and prioritize support for unions defending their members against tiered agreements.
Further be it resolved that the Labour Council urge all affiliates to utilize the Campaign Planning Handbook and State of Readiness documents in preparing for contract fights that involve employer demands for tiered agreements.
