Week 3 and 4: Happy March break!

THIS WEEK WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE.

Have you ever worked in an unsafe workplace? What did you do?

What do we need to know about health and safety in the workplace?

Read all the messages to learn what other people have told us about Health and Safety.

Look at the questions other people have asked.

Then post a message with

1. ONE NEW FACT about health and safety and

2. ONE NEW QUESTION about health and safety.

Your NEW FACT can be an answer to somebody else’s question or the answer to a question you have.

You can find the facts on the websites listed below, another resource, or you can speak from your own experience.

3. Let us know where you got the information.

4. Give your message a title in the topic line that lets us see what your fact is about.

WEBSITES:

Safe Workplaces: The Right to a Safe and Healthy Workplace

Find out about Workplace dangers

Find out about your Right to participate in decisions affecting health and safety at work

Find out about Workers' Compensation

Find out about the right to refuse

Find out about what to do if you are injured at work here and here

Find out about how to make a complaint

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Week 2 Topics: Fair Pay, Pay Equity, Hours of Work

Here are some questions to think about for your discussion. You do not have to answer all of these questions. Talk about what is interesting to you. Ask your own questions.

Fair Pay

What do you think about minimum wage?
Have you ever worked for minimum wage? Or less?
Is it enough money?
How much should people get paid?
What is a fair wage?
Some workers are not covered by minimum wage laws. Is this fair?
How can workers get fair wages?
How do governments decide on what the minimum wage should be? Who do you think they listen to?
How should governments decide what the minimum wage should be?

Pay Equity

Click here to read Moonstar's discussion about unions and Walmart.

What is the difference in pay for men and women?
Is this fair?
Why do you think women get paid less than men?
Are there other groups who get paid less?
Have you ever worked in a place where women get paid less than men?
What can workers do about this?
What can governments do?
Who else should do something and what should they do?

Hours of Work

How many people work more than 40 hour a week?
What do you  think about this?
How many hours should people work?
Should it be the same for everybody?
Is workload a equality issue? If so, how?
Is workload a safety issue? If so, how?
Do unionized workers have different rules for hours of work than non-unionized workers? What do you think about that?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Here is an excerpt from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Budget (page 53-54):

A LIVING WAGE FOR CANADIAN WORKERS
Minimum wages are far too low in all provinces to put working families with even full-time, full-year jobs above the poverty line.

A single person in a large urban centre needs to work fulltime in a full-year job and earn at least $10 per hour to escape poverty.

Even $10-per-hour fulltime, full-year jobs supplemented by current government income supports leave most families in larger cities at risk.

A two-adult family with children has to put in about 75 weeks of work a year at $10 per hour to get above the poverty line.

The conventional view is that providing decent wages for so-called lower-skilled workers leads to job losses,
but higher wages can work in a positive way by raising productivity and job quality.

The fact that employers are under pressure to pay good wages will lead them to invest more in capital equipment and in training.
Higher minimum wages can lower worker turnover and increase experience and skills, reducing employer costs.

If all employers pay the same wage and benefit package, firms must compete with one another on the basis of non-labour cost factors, such as quality and customer service, which require more skilled workers.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
From the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Click here for the full article.

• On average a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. Over a year a man working full-time earns an average $14,600 more than a woman working full-time.

• More than 72% of part-time workers are women. Almost half of those women cannot find full time employment or are caring for children or have other family responsibilities. Part-time workers earn on average nearly $4 an hour less than full-time workers. In the last 10 years, the number of women holding multiple jobs has grown by 45%, while the number of men holding multiple jobs has risen by only 4%.

• The poverty line for a family of four living in an urban centre is $28,098; in a large urban centre, it is $32,759. Compare these figures to a typical starting clerical wage of around $20,000. The impact is clear - today, 56% of families with children headed by a sole-support mother are poor.

• For women of colour the wage gap is even bigger. Looking at the unionized sector, women of colour earn $2.50 (or 15%) less than the average hourly wage earned by women, and $4.67 (or 25%) less than the average hourly wage earned by men.

• Wage inequity follows women for life. Because the Canada Pension Plan is based on an individual’s earning history, many women retire into poverty. The average CPP benefit currently paid to women is $285 per month; for men it is $410 per month.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
From CUPE

The Canadian Union of Public Employees asked 700 worker about overwork and:

• 87% said their workload has increased in the past year.
• Many said that finding the balance between work and family life is difficult. 40% of workers had children in childcare and 19 per cent had responsibilities for adult dependent care.

From CUPE

Excessive workloads or work overload isn’t just having too much work to do or working longer hours. Employers today are intent on making us work harder and faster. They are changing the way we do our work. Their goal is to be able to have us do more work with fewer workers. In the end it all amounts to the same thing – our bodies and our dignity just can’t take it.

Work overload includes:
Long and difficult hours
Unreasonable work demands
Pressure to work overtime (paid and unpaid)
Fewer rest breaks, days off and holidays
Faster, more pressured work pace
Performance monitoring
Unrealistic expectations
Additional, often inappropriate, tasks imposed on top of ’core’ duties (doing more than one job)
No replacements during sick leaves or vacations

Work overload can result in serious problems, including:
Stress, Injuries, Accidents, Exhaustion, Anxiety, Depression, Illness, and Increased exposure to health and safety hazards such as noise, temperature extremes and hazardous substances

Week 1 Topic - All Groups

1. Post a note telling the group your name and where you are living.
2. Describe a place where you have worked and say what you liked or didn’t like about it. Or tell us what your ideal job would be and why.
3. Tell us what you think the most important right for workers is.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: here are some extra things to read and discuss if you have time.

March 6 is the beginning of the International Women’s Day celebrations. IWD is on March 8. IWD is a day to celebrate and advocate for rights for women workers. So to get us in the mood…

Read and listen to the song Bread and Roses http://webhome.idirect.com/~pnanrms/breadandroses.html

This song was inspired by a strike of women textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. They carried a banner that said “We want bread and roses too.” Bread and roses have come to symbolize the fight for equality and dignity for women. The song tells us that we need bread to survive but we also need something more that just bread. What do you think about that?

Other links about women workers and IWD:

Why do we celebrate IWD? http://www.cupw-sttp.org/pages/document_eng.php?Doc_ID=62

Canadian government: http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/dates/iwd/index_e.html

CAW: http://www.caw.ca/whatwedo/women/index.asp

Women’s history Links: http://www.litwomen.org/WHMlinks.html - links

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