Labour
Standing with Toronto’s workers
Nothing in this city gets built, cleaned, cared for or kept running without working people. As an engineer, I know that better than most, good work is done by people who are paid, protected and respected. I’ll stand with workers, union members and non-union alike.
My pledge to Toronto’s workers
- I will never balance the city’s books on the backs of the workers who deliver its services.
- Everyone who works for the City (or on a City contract) will earn at least a living wage, union or not.
- I will bargain honestly with City workers and keep the agreements we make with them.
- I will keep public services public, and the good jobs that come with them.
- I will defend every worker’s right to organize (free of intimidation) whether they choose a union or not.
- I will treat the dignity and safety of working people as the measure of a well-run city.
What a mayor can deliver
Fair pay for the people who run the city: bargain in good faith, honour agreements, keep the City a living-wage employer (no return to minimum-wage City jobs), fix the staffing crisis.
Strengthen and enforce the Fair Wage Policy: in place since 1893; contractors pay fair wages, benefits and safe conditions for union AND non-union workers; resource the Fair Wage Office; keep wage-thieves and repeat violators off City bid lists.
Good jobs built into every project: community-benefit, local-hire and apprenticeship requirements on major City construction.
Keep public services public: no privatizing good jobs to cut a corner.
Respect workers’ right to organize: the City won’t do business with employers who intimidate workers who want a union, and stays neutral when workers on City-funded work choose to unionize.
Protect precarious and gig workers: extend rideshare/delivery driver protections, cover temp-agency and contract workers, recognize newcomers’ credentials faster.
What I’ll fight for
Labour law is provincial and federal, a mayor pushes for it.
A minimum wage that moves toward a living wage: Ontario’s minimum is $17.60/hr, a GTA living wage is $27.20; about 1 in 6 Toronto workers earns below it; plus paid sick days for all.
Make it easier for workers to form a union if they choose (card-based certification), and anti-scab (anti-replacement-worker) protection when they are on the picket line.
Real employment-standards rights for gig and platform workers (close the “engaged-time” gap).
Stronger enforcement of the Employment Standards Act.
Not in a union? You’re still covered.
Most Toronto workers aren’t in a union and this plan is for them too, the Fair Wage Policy has protected non-union workers on City contracts since 1893; enforce it and extend a living-wage floor to City-funded work; protect gig/temp/precarious workers via City licensing and purchasing; defend workers’ right to organize if they choose. This is about workers, not union leadership. No pressure either way.
A city that takes care of its people starts by taking care of the people who take care of the city.
Authorized by the campaign to elect Bahira Abdulsalam for Mayor.
Bahira Abdulsalam for Mayor 