Employment & labour

Writing from our researchers this year

Dec 18, 2024
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Precarious work, and the impacts of precarity on the lives of British Columbians and temporary foreign workers, is the focus of the Understanding Precarity project co-directed by CCPA-BC and was addressed by a number of researchers. Here are some highlights…. View Article

Soaring cost of living—especially for housing—causes living wages to increase across BC

Nov 20, 2024
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The 2024 living wage for Metro Vancouver has risen to $27.05 per hour, a 5.3% increase from last year. This significant increase highlights the region’s deepening affordability crisis fuelled by sky-high housing costs. Living wages are also going up across the province as our new report shows. While inflation has eased from record highs, essential… View Article
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Exploitable and deportable by design: Why migrant workers’ housing is harmful to their health

Sep 11, 2024
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Canada’s treatment of migrant workers is drawing international scrutiny after UN investigator Tomoya Obokata warned that its Temporary Foreign Worker Program “serves as a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery, as it institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights.” Migrants, activists, and researchers, however, have known for… View Article

Addressing the racism of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Sep 2, 2024
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There is renewed attention on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in the wake of the recent damning report from the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery that calls the program “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Yet, the central critiques and recommendations made in the UN report are being ignored… View Article
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Trapped in the wage gap

May 30, 2024
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On June 1, BC’s minimum wage is going up to $17.40 per hour. Despite this welcome pay raise for the 240,000 lowest-paid workers in the province, the minimum wage remains over $3 per hour lower than the lowest living wage in BC ($20.64 in Dawson Creek). In BC’s largest cities, Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria,… View Article
Democratic employee ownership

The case for expanding democratic employee ownership in Canada

Apr 29, 2024
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Workers lack democratic rights in the corporations and institutions that govern their work lives. As we find ourselves in an era of high inequality the question of ‘why shouldn’t working people be the owners and beneficiaries of the fruits of their labour?’ becomes timely and necessary. Read this research report on what it’d take to make democratic employee ownership a reality in Canada…. View Article
Beyond recovery panel discussion

Beyond Recovery: A paradox in COVID-19 pandemic recovery | Panel discussion

Apr 23, 2024
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This year, the CCPA–BC Office, in collaboration with SFU Faculty of Health Science researchers and UNITE HERE Local 40, published ‘A paradox in COVID-19 pandemic recovery: Increased precarity of women hotel workers in British Columbia’. A panel discussion held on April 10 featured the report’s authors and hotel industry workers. They explored the report’s findings,… View Article