Building Balance, Fairness, and Opportunity in Ontario’s Labour Market

This submission to the Ontario Changing Workplaces Consultation represents a comprehensive effort by Unifor to analyze the causes and consequences of these negative trends in Ontario’s labour market, and to propose a set of policy responses to the economic, cultural, and technological pressures that are reshaping the world of work. Our submission begins by documenting the broad evolution in Ontario’s labour market, including the expansion of precarious work, growing inequality of income, the erosion of institutional bulwarks, and the consequent insecurity faced by most working people. It finds that a combination of cyclical and structural factors has contributed to a fundamental shift in economic bargaining power away from workers – and this shift has allowed employers to determine terms of employment that are increasingly precarious and exploitive.