The truth about essential work

[Music]

do you remember the moment

the kovid 19 pandemic became real for

you

for me it was a weekend shift at the

toronto star it was mid-march and i was

on night reporting duties

that evening tim hortons canada’s

favorite coffee shop

was in the news for asking workers to

get a doctor’s note

to take an unpaid sick day

i was thinking about what it meant to

have to choose between

a day’s income your health and the

safety of customers you were serving

food to and i was also thinking about

the food itself

because a couple of years earlier i’d

spent a month

working undercover at an industrial

bakery that counted tim hortons amongst

its clients

and while our favorite coffee shops were

about to be shut down for months

the factories that supplied them would

be deemed an essential service

by now we’ve all heard the term

essential worker

for me the term describes many of the

jobs i’ve spent my career writing about

i was hired six years ago as the toronto

star’s labor reporter

at that time and still to this day the

star is the only mainstream media outlet

in canada

to have a full-time position dedicated

to covering these issues

so many of these jobs are truly

invisible we don’t see the people

picking our crops

or the people processing and packing

that food

many of us barely even notice the

ubereats driver dropping off the final

product

this reality has significant

implications

through my journalism i’ve learned that

the growth of jobs in which workers have

little voice and power

impacts everyone and visibility for

these workers

is crucial to keeping our society

healthy

now in the middle of a pandemic it’s

more crucial than ever

i want to rewind to before pandemic

times and ask you to think about the

last time you sat in a coffee shop

munching on a pastry for me this used to

be an almost reflexive activity

one that i’d never think twice about

until i ended up as a temp agency worker

on a deafening and crammed production

line

folding raw pastry into croissants

destined for companies like tim hortons

i wanted to understand the impact of

precarious work on workers themselves

so i started digging through court

records and i found a factory

a significant employer in the area that

was heavily reliant on temporary labor

it takes bravery for anyone to speak out

about their employer

but for low-wage workers with little job

security

putting that job on the line to tell

your story is sometimes next to

impossible

so after conversations with my lawyers

and editors at the star

we decided that getting a job at the

factory myself

was the best and really only way to tell

the story properly

so i showed up at the factory one day

and told them i was looking for a job

they gave me a number for a temp agency

and they told me what day to show up at

the plant

in the lead up i felt incredibly nervous

but once i started working there was

really no time for

jitters along with my new colleagues i

got about five minutes health and safety

training and

off i went to a frenzied production line

where

my main preoccupation was just keeping

up with the ferocious pace of work i was

paid minimum wage and cash

wages that i picked up at a payday

lender

five temp agency workers at this company

have died in industrial accidents

ivan goliashov was 17 when he was

crushed to death

by a doe mixer amina de abi was a

refugee

hoping to become a nurse when she died

after her head scarf

got stuck in a faulty conveyor belt

enrico miranda was a trained engineer

working as a cleaner when he was crushed

to death by a machine

and two other workers were hit by

transport trucks

i worked at this factory for a month

after my last shift i got into my car

expecting to feel relief instead i felt

an enormous weight on my chest for me

taking this job

and leaving it were choices but for

thousands

of workers in survival jobs across the

city these choices are non-existent

if you’re in one of these jobs what i’m

describing might sound familiar

or you might be asking yourself what

does this have to do with me

fast forward to the copit 19 pandemic

as part of our coverage my colleague at

the star and i began investigating a

massive

outbreak it happened at an industrial

bakery

not far from the one i’d worked at it’s

again a significant employer that hires

over 2 000 torontonians

to make the pastries we buy at the

grocery store

184 workers at this company tested

positive for the virus

one died none of this was reported to

the public

by health authorities the workers i

spoke to

said the company was reliant on

temporary workers

workers who often didn’t feel

comfortable speaking up about safety

issues

workers who sometimes didn’t have a paid

sick day or couldn’t afford to stay at

home if they felt ill

workers who were juggling multiple jobs

what this outbreak showed us was that it

was no longer possible

to draw a sharp line between what’s

happening behind

factory doors and what’s happening in

the broader community

kofi 19 is the most powerful example

that we are all

connected our city is only as safe as

its most vulnerable resident

residents who in policy decisions and

civic conversation

are often invisible

this kind of work may feel distant to

you but for many it is

a way of life in the greater toronto

area and hamilton around half of us

are now in jobs with some degree of

precarity

whether that’s topping contract to

contract or not having access to

a pension or benefits even before the

pandemic

precarious work had implications for our

families

our health care system our various

social fabric

yet so often we don’t talk about it

in families especially immigrant

families there’s often a cone of silence

around our work lives

spaces that are essential to putting

food on the table but

can sometimes make us feel small

isolated

or powerless we’re taught to feel

grateful for having a job

and i understand why jobs don’t just put

food on the table

they shape our identity our purpose

our sense of community but what the

pandemic showed us was that

so many of these jobs that have so long

been undervalued

jobs in which workers often feel

silenced or invisible are actually

crucial to how our society functions

so how do we make the invisible visible

i’d like to encourage you to do

something very simple

start talking about work that might mean

seeking out more stories in the media

about

jobs that you previously thought had

little to do with you

or it might mean starting to talk about

how you feel about work

do you feel comfortable asking for a

sick day can you stop checking your

emails on the weekend

is there a lingering sense of guilt if

so ask yourself why

it wasn’t until i started my job as a

labor reporter that i heard from my dad

who immigrated from iran about how he

used to work such long hours at a

plastics factory that he’d sometimes

just sleep on the shop floor until his

next shift

it wasn’t until i started delving into

these issues as a journalist that i

began to understand

the true toll of my mom’s erratic

schedule as a low-wage

caregiver having these conversations

can mean huge personal revelations and

they may inform the way you see the

world

on a bigger level they may change the

way you perceive and

value your own work and the work of

those around you

and that might be good for all of us

[Music]

you