L'anglais seulement

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14,2004 * TORONTO STAR * A21
Atkinson Foundation

Work agency protects immigrants and youth

Clinic offers seminars, legal help
Funded research aids temp workers

'There's a widespread violation of temporary workers.'

Project co-ordinator Deanna Ladd

VIVIAN SONG
STAFFREPORTER

Deadbeat bosses, beware: TOFFE wants you.

Toronto Organizing for Fair Employment, under the leadership of the Parkdale Legal Clinic, has been engaging employment agencies mat are perceived to exploit newcomers and young people, and offers seminars and legal help to temporary workers, who often don't know their rights.

"There's a widespread violation of temporary workers," says project co-ordina-tor Deanna Ladd.

"They're not being paid public-holidays pay and vacation pay. We're campaigning (with) workers and employers to make the changes needed. Employers must respect the law ... and the workers themselves must come forward and stand up for themselves."

With the help of an Atkinson Foundation grant -$50,000 a year for up to three years - the clinic has been able to conduct research on ways to improve the wages and working conditions of temporary workers across the city, through a project called "Improving the Quality of Employment for Contingent Workers."

TOFFE is the only community organization in the Greater Toronto Area that specifically addresses the issues faced by temporary workers, including lack of benefits, uncertain work schedules and no job security.

Though temporary workers learn to expect the unexpected, many are unaware of their rights and don't know how to recognize when someone is taking advantage of them.

Doug Yardley, who had been working through a temp agency for two years, had no idea he was owed statutory holiday pay until he followed up on a TOFFE poster advertising seminars on workers' rights. He attended and learned he was owed $321.

"If s good to know they're there. It's like having a union," Yardley says.

Among the most vulnerable are the immigrants who take temporary work to gain the Canadian experience full-time employers say they need.

Even if they're doing an outstanding job, Ladd says, employers often are reluctant to hire them because they would have to pay the agency a fee.

Agencies also take a percentage of wages paid, so temporary workers take home less than permanent workers doing the same job. "When you're doing the same work as the person next to you, but you're paid $8 an hour while they're getting $15, a system like that puts people in precarious jobs, creating classes of workers," Ladd adds. The ultimate goal, she says, is a public inquiry into the temporary employment industry, which is self-regulated.

"We're pushing the government because the real changes are needed at the ministerial level," Ladd says. "We're pushing the Ministry of Labour to look at the Employment Standards Act and protect the employees."