“Our $12.95 comes not even close to a living wage in this province. Workers in Nova Scotians deserve better; They deserve better wages; they deserve better working conditions, they deserve paid sick days; They deserve a fair wage.”
“It’s always on our mind. Before I was redeployed somebody had tested positive at the call centre, and you think about it while at work. Then when you come home you worry about what you may have brought home.” Janitors do essential and dangerous work, but wages are very low and too often it’s all about doing more with fewer workers.
Free webinar”: How do we protect precarious workers. Presenter Darius Mirshahi.
Some lucky people get to work from home while low paid workers are expected to risk their and everybody’s health, until they’re laid off and face hunger and homelessness. Judy Haiven has some suggestions on what to do about it.
Solidarity Halifax asks us not to forget about the Black janitors who worked at Founders Square and were fired when the cleaning contract was flipped by Armour Group. Here is something we can do, friends.
We talk with Jackie Swaine of the SEIU and Danny Cavanagh, president of the NSFL, who together are calling for legislation with teeth to protect workers against wage theft and contract flipping.
In this article originally published in RankandFile.ca on April 4 Jason Edwards explains what legislated measures would protect workers like the Founders Square cleaners against contract flipping and resulting job loss and loss of union representation. This morning I met with NSFL president Danny Cavanagh and SEIU Local 2 president Jackie Swaine who are lobbying the government to enact similar legislation, we will have a story on that later.
Another rally at Founders Square this morning. Armour Group may have assumed those noisy happenings would stop by now, but supporters of the fired Black workers aren’t going away. For this reporting job I was joined by my son Simon, an excellent photographer.
News release: Join us as #WeRise to end poverty, precariousness, and prejudice in the janitorial industry. Let’s show that Halifax is united for workers rights and for an end to racial discrimination in all its forms.
Lynn Jones, who helped organize the protests in support of the unjustly fired Founders Square janitors, is very happy about how Halifax responded to her call for action. But she is angry about the way the unfair treatment of Black workers was sanitized in much of the local press. Reporters, grow some spine, she says, and ask some follow-up questions rather than just write down what the Armour Group and the new cleaning contractor tell you.