Shaking Off the Part-Time Blues
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- Published on Monday, 18 May 2015 00:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1117 .... May 18, 2015
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Shaking Off the Part-Time Blues:
Fighting for the Rights of Ontario College Workers
Tracy MacMaster
We've all followed the news that part-time, insecure employment is growing. I work at an Ontario college as a full-time library technician. Every day I work side by side with part-time employees whose jobs are the same as mine, but whose working conditions are dramatically different. Part-time workers in Ontario colleges do many different jobs – some are long-time support staff, teachers or student workers – but all have one thing in common – they work without many of the standard protections Ontarians enjoy. College employees are exempted from major portions of the Employment Standards Act that provide the most basic protections for workers in Ontario. Work breaks, statutory pay... for holidays, overtime, a minimum wage, all of these rights are enjoyed by part-time and full-time workers in virtually every other sector in Ontario, from CEOs to fast food workers. College workers are one of the very few exceptions to the rule.
As full-time workers, we gain minimum rights and much, much more through our collective agreement – decent wages, benefits, fair use of overtime, a transparent process that preserves jobs in times of lay-off – all won through successive years of collective bargaining. Without a union, part-time workers simply do without the rights that every other worker in the college enjoys.
