County officials are welcoming planned amendments to looming changes to employment legislation designed to ease the impact on municipalities.
Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017 proposes significant reforms to both the Employment Standards Act, 2000 and the Labour Relations Act, 1995 including an increase in the minimum wage to $14 in the new year and $15 by January of 2019, as well as changes to minimum vacation entitlements for some workers and enhanced protections for temporary workers.
Municipalities have been particularly concerned with changes to on-call provisions requiring minimum notice and on-call pay. Both county officials and member municipalities have expressed concern about how the legislation will impact winter control operations and volunteer fire departments.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has been lobbying the province to ensure the changes don’t unduly impact municipalities. On Nov. 14, AMO received notification from labour and municipal affairs ministries announcing proposals that Bill 148 be amended at Standing Committee to add exemptions to the on-call pay and the 96-hours notice scheduling rules. On-call provisions would be changed to facilitate the continued delivery of essential public services. The proposed amendments also include an exemption for firefighters from the equal pay for equal work provisions with respect to employment status.
“This is very welcome News for Ontario municipalities,” states a report from county human resources director Andrea Lawson.
“At the County of Wellington, we continue to review the proposed legislation changes in detail alongside our current policies and practices to ensure that we are aligned and prepared for the impending legislative changes.”
Councillor Chris White, who chairs the administration finance and human resources committee, told council further information on the local impact would be forthcoming.
He said the human resources department “is going to be producing a pretty comprehensive report analyzing what the impacts are going to be: minimum wage and part time work and all of those things that need to be ironed out.”
White said the amendments regarding firefighters are particularly welcome.
“There was a concern around the three-hour pay out for people on call,” said White, noting changes impacting firefighters “would have meant a 17 per cent tax increase for Guelph-Eramosa alone.”
White explained that under the original provisions of the proposed bill, if a department had four full-time and 20 part-time firefighters, “those volunteer firefighters were going to have to go up to the full-time rate. That’s been amended out of the bill,” White stated.
“We don’t know how all this is going to play out at the end of the day when the regulations are all done. There may be some grievances brought forward at some point around this legislation. So it’s not done by any means. AMO has asked from the start, and to this day, that municipalities be exempted from Bill 168 and the government has said it was never their intention to pull us in.”
