Suggestion for Upcoming Budget

From: bill_longworth@hotmail.com
To: ignatieff.m@parl.gc.ca; brison.s@parl.gc.ca; mccallum.j@parl.gc.ca
Subject: Suggestion for upcoming budget
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:24:31 -0500

Hon. Michael Ignatieff,
Leader of the Opposition

Hon. Scott Brison
Opposition Finance Critic

Hon. John McCallum
Chair, Liberal Economic Committee

Dear Sirs:

Re Permatemp Employment

I want to propose a serious budgetary matter that I encourage you to bring up with Finance Minister Flaherty as he seeks your input on the upcoming Conservative Budget.

A most important factor in getting the economy back on track is getting money and security in the hands of Canada's workforce.

At the present time in Ontario, 23% of Ontario workers are employed in part time, contract, and casual employment without the benefits and security provided to their fellow full time workers often doing exactly the same job in the same workplace. Stats Canada would indicate that the same pattern is demonstrated across the country. It is discriminatory to have two classes of workers working side by side with different compensation packages. A more serious problem though, is the hightened insecurity of part time, contract, and casual work which effectively blocks 23% of the workforce from the purchase of "big ticket" items thus reducing this 23% of the workforce from consumption beyond their basic needs, and thereby hurting the national economy.

When governments found serious inequities in the workplace in the past, they introduced "equal opportunity" and "pay equity" legislation to correct the inequity.

In order to provide fairness in the workplace and to increase job security to stimulate consumption by the 23% of the workforce employed in part time, contract, and casual employment, might I suggest that the government introduce a "Fairness and Ethics in Employment Practices Commission” which would act as an oversight body with authority to monitor employment trends for large employers and in the extreme implement measures to ensure compliance with the stated objectives to:

(a)Revert long-term part time and contract workers to full time status after 3 years with the exception of part time work necessitated by school/college/university attendance,

(b) Insure that an ethical percentage of a company’s work force is indeed classified as permanent with equal salary and benefits to peers with the same employer,

(c)Insure that part time and contract workers could not be discharged because they were approaching full time status by virtue of reaching the 3 year term,

(d)Ensure that any staff reductions of part time, contract, and casual employees were terminated for just cause or if terminated by reason of overstaffing were not replaced for a reasonable time to insure legitimacy for the dismissal,

(e) Insure that government hiring set a model of permanence for private business to duplicate,

(f) Insure that contract workers were formally offered positions as permanent employees once they had successfully served a three year tenure and insure that they could not be released because they were reaching that period of permanence,

(g)Monitor part time/contract employees for large employers (over 300) to insure that the proportion of non-permanent employees continued to shrink over subsequent reporting periods.

(h)Insure that all part time and contract workers in Canada were provided benefits equivalent to those offered full time employees with the same employer.

As stated in point 5 above, I also believe that governments should be a role model for enlightened employment practices and inform all departments that part time, contract, casual, or permatemp positions are no longer to be offered and should be replaced with permanent positions effective after a pre-defined and reasonable probationary period.

I believe that the above policy initiative areas would resonate with Canadians both as socially responsible to improve our "Canadian Way of Life" and would provide significant stimulous to the Canadian Economy.

I am continuing to monitor and report on this problem on my site www.fairjobs.ca.

Sincerely,

William Longworth,
contact details removed

December 15, 2008