For many British Columbians, the first Monday of September is a chance to enjoy a long weekend, mark the end of summer, and prepare for the start of the new school year. However, let’s not forget why we call this annual holiday Labour Day.
The origins of Labour Day can be traced to 1872 when printers in Toronto went on strike for the nine-hour day. Yes, Labour Day started in Canada. Unions were illegal in 1872 and it was considered a criminal conspiracy to strike for a shorter workweek. Twenty four leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union were imprisoned and as many as 10,000 working people converged on Queens Park to demonstrate their solidarity. They won and their victory inspired working people around the world.
While working people today have so many more rights than our forbearers did 150 years ago, including the right to join a union, Labour Day continues to matter. On this day every year, we take time to recognize workers who have fought for a better life for themselves, their families and their co-workers. Because of the risks they took, rights that many of us may take for granted – like the minimum wage, the eight hour day, the weekend, paid vacations, overtime, parental leave, employment insurance, protection from harassment and discrimination, job security, workplace safety standards, and even universal healthcare – have become enshrined in law or collective agreements. The Labour Movement has also been on the front lines fighting racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and advocating for civil rights and social justice. On Labour Day we also take time to reflect on what remains to be done to ensure that working people and their families have access to their fair share of our province’s bounty in what is an evolving economy.
On Labour Day we remind ourselves that we need to do more than fight for new rights. We need to continue to stand together to defend the ones that have already been won by our predecessors. We remind ourselves that there are those who would turn back the clock on workers’ rights. Let’s not forget that during the sixteen long years the BC Liberals held power in British Columbia they used their majority to make working people more vulnerable. In their first year alone they ripped up collective agreements in the health care and education sectors to cut jobs and reduce wages and benefits. The public served by those sectors continue to suffer. The BC Liberal Government implemented a decade-long freeze on the minimum wage (at $8/hour, the lowest minimum wage in Canada) and introduced a training wage, allowing employers to pay new workers only $6 per hour. They weakened child labour laws, allowing employers to hire children as young as 12 to engage in hazardous work. They discouraged the enforcement of employment standards by cutting positions in the Employment Standards Branch and requiring workers to “self-help” before they could file complaints.
The BC Liberals consistently put the interests of their wealthy and well-connected friends ahead of the interests of average working people. They’ve made it pretty clear that, given the chance, they would not hesitate to do it all again.
A new era for working people
Over the past two years, Premier John Horgan and my colleagues in the BCNDP Caucus have repaired a lot of the damage inflicted on working people by the BC Liberals while they were in office. So far, our government has changed things for the better by:
- charting a path to eliminate the lower minimum wage for liquor servers and committing to raise the minimum wage to $15.20 an hour by 2021,
- beefing up the Employment Standards Act and eliminating the “self-help” kits,
- raising the working age for children and protecting children from hazardous work,
- introducing job protections for people on domestic violence and compassionate care leave,
- Ensuring our first responders have presumptive coverage for mental health issues so that they don’t have to prove they experienced trauma on the job,
- Improving protections for temporary foreign workers who are vulnerable to abuse,
- Reviewing BC’s workers’ compensation system to ensure every worker is safe at work and adequately compensated if they are injured on the job.
I am proud of what John Horgan’s government has accomplished for workers so far. Yet we wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to stand up for working people in the Legislature if working people and their unions hadn’t stood up for themselves and each other in the workplace and at the ballot box. They mobilized to educate the public and their co-workers about the damage being done to them by the BC Liberals and inspired them with the belief that life could be so much better if we stick together. There is more our government wants to do with and for the people of British Columbia. This Labour Day, whether we are celebrating it with family and friends or at a union rally, let’s remember that when working people support each other on the job, in their neighbourhoods or with their vote, we all benefit.
Happy Labour Day!
