In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, employment standards enforcement includes reactively investigating employee complaints and, to a lesser extent, proactively inspecting workplaces. Analyses of administrative data from Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MOL) show that the use of complaint data to inform workplace inspections is quite limited. Strict adherence to the MOL’s procedures for workplace inspections is not conducive to the investigation of some of the most common empirical complaints. Accordingly, the paper argues for more strategic enforcement by making greater use of complaint data to guide workplace inspections triggered by complaints and for the increased use of penalties in these inspections.

A new research brief released through the Yellowhead Institute at Ryerson University gives a glimpse into this new research. “What’s at the “Core of Indianness”? Bill-C92, Labour & Indigenous Social Services” examines the Supreme Court of Canada case NIL/TU,O v BCGEU and the jurisdiction of Indigenous labour relations with focus on the “core of Indianness.” Since the late 1970s, the “core” has emerged in case law around land rights, hunting, fishing and harvesting rights, and labour relations to determine what counts as Indigenous activity and labour and, following from that definition, what falls within (or outside) federal jurisdiction. However, this concept as been – and is – highly contested.

Access this research brief here: https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2020/11/10/whats-at-the-core-of-indianness-bill-c92-labour-and-indigenous-social-services/

A new article from Eric Tucker, Leah Vosko and Sarah Marsden examines sickness and caregiving leaves from a feminist political economy framework, asking what we owe workers as a matter of common humanity. The article lays out options for transformative alternatives built upon the principles of universality, sufficiency, security, and flexibility.

This open-access article can be accessed here: https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/scholarly_works/2810/

“Are franchisees more prone to employment standards violations than other businesses? Evidence
from Ontario, Canada” uses an administrative dataset from the Ontario Ministry of Labour and investigates three hypotheses about employment standards violations among franchised businesses:
(1) franchisees have a higher probability of violating employment standards than other
businesses, (2) franchisees have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related ES
violations than other businesses, and (3) franchisees have a lower probability of repaying
monetary/wage-related violations than other businesses. The results suggest that overall, franchisees are indeed more likely to violate ES, have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related violations, and are less likely to repay such violations. However, the results vary substantially by industry. While franchisees had only marginally higher probabilities of an ES violation in two of the seven industry groups
examined, five of the seven industries showed substantially higher probabilities of a monetary violation. The results also show that franchisees in three industry groups (retail, accommodation and food services, and education, public administration, healthcare and social services) are particularly prone to monetary violations.

Crises – like pandemics – they argue reveal the limitations of our existing laws and institutional arrangements can can open up new windows of opportunity to create fairer and more just arrangements.

In a blog post for Law & Work, Tucker and Vosko explore what we can do to improve existing laws around employment insurance and leavers to make a fairer society for workers.

The group provides evidence-based guidance to federal and provincial government agencies to ensure the health and safety of migrant agricultural workers is taken seriously.

Dr. Vosko, drawing on the work done in the Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap project, as well as related work on employment standards enforcement among migrant agricultural workers with Eric Tucker (York University) and Rebecca Casey (Acadia University), argues that inspections of farms (in person) are a crucial piece of protecting farm workers, as well as live and ongoing translation and accompaniment for workers who become sick and larger changes to temporary migrant programs to make it easier for workers to refuse unsafe work and safeguard their health and livelihood.

See migrantworker.ca for more information on the expert working group, as well as the recommendations made to provincial and federal governments during its COVID-19 response.

See Y-File for more information on Dr. Leah Vosko’s involvement.

See the Toronto Star for a letter to the editor published on Labour Day calling for better protections.

This book is the culmination of years of research (beginning in 2012) and is the only comprehensive analysis of employment standards in Ontario. The research team would like to thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their support through its Partnership Grants program, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Labour for providing access to the administrative data upon which this study is based. Thanks as well to the project’s numerous academic and community research partners, and all the graduate students who worked as RAs, without whom a study of this magnitude simply would not have been possible.

The book is dedicated to the Workers’ Action Centre and all those fighting for fair employment standards in Ontario.

Book Summary

The nature of employment is changing: low wage jobs are increasingly common, fewer workers belong to unions, and workplaces are being transformed through the growth of contracting-out, franchising, and extended supply chains. Closing the Enforcement Gap offers a comprehensive analysis of the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario.

Adopting mixed methods, this work includes qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with workers, community advocates, and enforcement officials; extensive archival research excavating decades of ministerial records; and analysis of a previously untapped source of administrative data collected by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour. The authors reveal and trace the roots of a deepening “enforcement gap” that pervades nearly all aspects of the regime, demonstrating that the province’s Employment Standards Act (ESA) fails too many workers who rely on the floor of minimum conditions it was devised to provide. Arguably, there is nothing inevitable about the enforcement gap in Ontario or for that matter elsewhere. Through contributions from leading employment standards enforcement scholars in the US, the UK, and Australia, as well as Quebec, Closing the Enforcement Gap surveys innovative enforcement models that are emerging in a variety of jurisdictions and sets out a bold vision for strengthening employment standards enforcement.

Closing the Enforcement Gap Research Group

Leah F. Vosko
Guliz Akkaymak
Rebecca Casey
Shelley Condratto
John Grundy
Alan Hall
Alice Hoe
Kiran Mirchandani
Andrea M. Noack
Urvashi Soni-Sinha
Mercedes Steedman
Mark P. Thomas
Eric M. Tucker

International/Quebec Contributors
Nick Clark
Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau
Tess Hardy
John Howe
Guylaine Vallée
David Weil

In practice, employment standards legislation includes ways in which legislated standards may be avoided, including through exemptions. With a focus on the Ontario Employment Standards Act, this paper develops a case study of exemptions to the Overtime Pay provision of the Act and regulations and examines in closer detail three particular areas in which exemptions apply. Through this study of the Overtime Pay exemption, the system of exemptions is presented as a contradictory approach to the regulation of employment standards that, in effect, reduces coverage, contributes to the avoidance of key legislated standards, and undermines the goal of providing protection for workers in precarious jobs.

Iudiciani, a York University student in his final year of undergrad studies in the Department of Politics, was awarded a Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE). DARE gives opportunities for undergraduate students to engage in research supervised by York faculty members. He spent this past summer helping clean administrative data from the Government of Canada’s Labour Program and at the award celebration on Oct. 2 presented early findings on employment standards enforcement under Part III of the Canada Labour Code.

Funded by a John R. Evans Leader’s Award from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and in partnership with the Labour Program, this project will ultimately create database on labour standards compliance to improve our understanding of labour standards in the federal jurisdiction to guide future policy changes.

Check it out here.