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.
