Toyota Autoworkers Take on the Liberals
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1597 ... April 30, 2018
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Toyota Autoworkers Take on the Liberals
Bruce Allen
About a hundred autoworkers, led by workers from Toyota, and their supporters rallied in front of Queen’s Park in Toronto on April 22. They were protesting the Liberal government’s decision to allow an "exception" for the auto industry for personal emergency leave (PEL) days. The exemption was brought into effect in January 2017. When the government ushered in a series of reforms to labour law in the province through Bill 148, it kept the PEL day exemption for the auto industry.
Under Bill 148 workers in the province are entitled to 10 days of personal emergency leave. This leave can be used for sickness, bereavement, family emergency. In the event of an illness no doctor’s note... is required. The first of these two days used are paid. Under the exemption autoworkers are entitled to seven days a year of personal emergency leave and three days for bereavement. None of these days will be paid. Scrapping both flexibility of how workers use PEL days and the removing the two paid PEL days is a boon for the auto industry.
The government agreed to this exception bowing to pressure from Toyota. Toyota claimed the PEL days provided for in Bill 148 would keep its operations from being competitive. The Toyota workers behind the rally decried this. They declared it makes autoworkers second class citizens.
