Cannexus21

Governments, employers and unions must all work urgently to address several critical weaknesses in Canada’s employment laws and policies to ensure the post-COVID re-opening of the economy can be safe and sustained. This presentation will consider specific ways jobs need to be protected and strengthened in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down large sections of the national economy. It will take years to rebuild the quantity of work back up to a level that fully occupies Canadian workers; at the same time we need to repair some obvious and damaging flaws in the quality of work, if we want that re-opening to last and succeed.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understanding specific areas for improving work: protections for people working from home; limits on multiple job-holding; and other precarious work practices
• How to achieve an expansion of public sector jobs; more comprehensive income support; and better wages for low-wage essential workers
• Developing stronger mechanisms of worker representation to ensure safe practices