$10.25?? That’s Too Low! Raise the Minimum Wage!

Liberal Convention, Toronto, January 2013

Road Trip! Rally for Rights and Democracy

Protest at the at the Ontario Liberal Convention1:00 pm on
Saturday, January26, 2013

Rally at Allan Gardens in Toronto (Jarvis & Carleton), followed by march to the Ontario Liberal Convention at Maple Leaf Gardens

Buses leave from Kingston in the morning and will return in the evening.

Labour Day 2012

We are in the process of updating our social media skills – it’s a slow process. Check out our Labour Day information at the facebook page below. It will be updated as the poster is finished and details will be added as we have them. See you in the park!!

http://www.facebook.com/events/110400775771449/

OFL – ONTARIO DAY OF ACTION: DEMAND PROSPERITY, NOT AUSTERITY

Originally posted from OFL.ca

Time, Date & Location:

NEW TIME 
3:00 – 5:00 pm
April 21, 2012
Queen’s Park, Toronto

Tell Premier McGuinty to build Ontario, not tear it apart.

Premier McGuinty put banker Don Drummond in charge of recommending nearly 400 cuts to jobs and public services in Ontario. At a time when Ontarians are in desperate need of economic recovery, these cuts will jeopardize every aspect of society: from health care to full-day kindergarten to pensions. No public service is safe. However, in McGuinty’s reckless plan to balance Ontario’s books by putting more people out of work and destroying the social safety net, he refuses to roll-back corporate tax cuts that are starving the province of billions of dollars that could be better used to create new jobs and help tens of thousands of struggling Ontario families to get back on their feet.

Ontarians from all sectors of society must come together to tell Premier McGuinty that he cannot cut his way to economic prosperity. Ontarians need a job creation strategy and it is time that banks and corporations began paying their fair share.
The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is working with community groups and organizations across Ontario to call on workers, retirees, students and community members to join a mass rally at Queen’s Park from 3:00 to 5:00 pm on April 21 to demand prosperity, not austerity!

Help to mobilize your members, your families and your communities to stop the cuts and put Ontario on the road to economic recovery.

Our collective future depends on it.

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Download the Call-Out and Poster (11in x 17in)
Download the Call-Out and Poster (8.5in x 11in)
Registration Form (PDF)
Registration Form (DOC)

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Register Your Buses:
Carrol Anne Sceviour: 416-443-7670 csceviour@ofl.ca
416-441-0722 (fax)

For More Information:
Laurie Hardwick: 416-571-3087 lhardwick@ofl.ca

Promote the Rally Online:
Twitter Hashtag: #A21NoCuts
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/A21NoCuts

Take Action Today:
Help to mobilize thousands of workers, retirees, students and community members to join the Ontario Day of Action in Toronto to stop the cuts to decent jobs and public services and to demand an economic recovery for everyone, not just the one percent.

Unions and Organizations Can:
• Invite friends on Facebook:http://on.fb.me/A21NoCuts
• Pass an emergency motion to support the Day of Action
• Appoint an organizer to coordinate your members
• Outreach to community and local Occupy activists
• Bring signs, banners and union flags to show support
• Secure funding for buses from your co

For full details, please go to OFL.ca

Kingston Needs a Living Wage Policy

To see the entire poster with all the information, please click here.  Living Wage Launch Poster2

 

People have been working hard at trying to establish what wage would allow Kingston workers to have a decent life in our city.
The Kingston Community Roundtable on Poverty Reduction is pleased to announce that economists  Don Drummond and Jim Stanford will be the keynote speakers at the launch of their Living Wage for Kingston Report  Wednesday 26^th  October, 5:30 to 7:30 pm at Rideau Heights Community Church (183 Weller Ave.).Please RSVP to roundtable@spckingston.ca or (613)546-2843
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The Economics of Poverty
Why is it so hard to reduce poverty and what happens when we fail to tackle it?  The truth is, poverty costs all of us socially and economically.  We have failed to tackle poverty with targeted long-term investments over the life course of individuals.  The result is that the cost of not reducing poverty is higher than the cost of the investments necessary to improve the lives of low-income families.
How we choose to fight poverty is just as important as the question of how much to spend.  If poverty were attacked the right ways, the savings from reducing it could be substantial and the improvements in the quality of life for all citizens, significant.

 

Clear Promises on Key Health Issues Missing from Ontario Election

From the Ontario Health Coalition:

Huge Health Care Rally, September 13 at noon at the Ontario Legislature
All Political Parties Must Address Key Health Concerns

After two decades of health restructuring, access to public health care services in Ontario is suffering.  Acute and chronic care hospital beds have been cut in half. While home care has increased and more long-term care beds have opened, extreme levels of hospital overcrowding yield evidence that hospital bed cuts have gone too far.

“While promises to improve access to home care are welcome, all political parties’ platforms are lacking details on how the parties will deal with the severe shortfall of hospital beds across Ontario,” said Natalie Mehra, Ontario Health Coalition Director. “The McGuinty government deserves credit for the improvements they have made in access to family doctors, nurse-led clinics, community health centres and family health teams. They have also reduced wait times for a number of surgeries and treatments. But there is a severe shortage of acute care hospital beds, and access to longer-term care for seniors both in hospitals and in the community is poor and inequitable.”

“This election Ontarians need to push our political parties for clear commitments on the key health care issues,” she concluded. “Will they stop privatization and protect public non-profit health care? Will they commit to keeping small and rural hospitals’ acute care and emergency services open? Will they restore closed hospital beds and services and address the severe shortage of hospital beds? What concrete steps will they take to improve democratic governance and public accountability? And importantly, since they all want to download ever more patients out of hospital into home care, will they commit to establishing a stable public non-profit home care system, like every other province in Canada?”

Key Findings on Access to Care:

• After two decades of hospital cuts, Ontario has the fewest hospital beds per population of any province in Canada.  In fact, Ontario is fourth from the bottom of all industrialized countries in numbers of hospital beds per population, followed only by Turkey, Chile and Mexico.
• 18,500 hospital beds have been cut since 1990.
• Ontario’s hospital occupancy rate is now 98%, far above occupancy rates in the rest of the industrialized world.  Bed shortages have contributed to ER backlogs, cancelled surgeries, high infection rates, and longer waits for care.
• More than 23,900 people are waiting for placement in a long term care home. New beds are needed in public and non-profit long-term care homes and minimum care standards are needed to ensure adequate care levels.
• More than 10,000 people are on wait lists for home care. Ontario has the most privatized home care system in the country and is the only province that runs home care entirely through a destabilizing competitive bidding system.
• Access to front-line medicine (nurse-led clinics, community health centres, nurse practitioners, family doctors, and family health teams) has improved. Continued progress is needed, particularly in underserved areas.
• Wait times for some treatments and surgeries have improved.
• Democratic governance of health care institutions and services is being eroded.

Labour Day 2011

What is a Living Wage?

 

A living wage is based on the principle that full-time work should provide families with a basic level of economic security, not keep them in poverty. It is the amount needed for a family of four with two parents working full-time to pay for basic necessities, support the healthy development of their children, escape financial stress and participate in their communities.

Kingston has a group of people working on a Living Wage campaign. See their website here:     http://livingwagekingston.wordpress.com/living-wage/

 

Employers, Not Taxpayers Should Pay for Injured Workers

OFL MESSAGE TO MCGUINTY:

 (TORONTO) – The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) marked June 1^st as Injured Worker’s Day by hosting a media conference and joining a rally at the Queen’s Park legislature to draw attention to the struggles of the thousands of injured workers who are unfairly excluded from Ontario’s workers’ compensation coverage.

 “Workers in unprotected sectors are often left with no option for compensation outside of a costly legal battle with employers who have the resources to fight back,” said OFL President Sid Ryan. “These workers, who are too often women, are left to rely on taxpayer support through social assistance and the provincial health care system, instead of the employer who injured them.”

Twenty-eight percent of Ontario’s employers are currently being allowed to get away without paying into Ontario’s workplace health and safety prevention and enforcement systems. This leaves an estimated 38 percent of Ontario’s workers without Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) coverage.

“It is shameful that so many injured workers are being driving into poverty and hardship because there is no government protection for them,” said Maryam Nazemi, an Early Childhood Educator who was injured on the job in 2004 and was ineligible for workers’ compensation benefits. “Too many employers are able to cut corners and put workers at risk. They don’t pay into the government’s inspection system and they certainly don’t offer support to workers when we get hurt. They think that when we are no longer useful, they can throw us away.”

The Ontario Federation of Labour is calling on the McGuinty government to:
-       Put and end to the poverty facing injured workers;
-       Extend mandatory WSIB coverage for all workers, in all sectors;
-       Restore injured workers benefits to the full cost of living;
-       Eliminate experience rating;
-       Eliminate “deeming” and practices that limit injured workers’ post-injury benefits.

“It is time for the McGuinty government to stop sweeping injured workers under the rug,” said Ryan. “Every worker deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.”

The Ontario Federation of Labour represents 54 Ontario unions and over one million members.