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