Local labour unions are holding a car rally to demand more protections for workers this Labour Day.
It replaces the annual Labour Day Picnic.
The Thunder Bay and District Labour Council is launching a campaign calling for replacing lost jobs with better ones, strengthening public healthcare, and improving the social safety net.
Council President Carlos Santander-Maturana says communities need a national strategy to help recover from the pandemic.
“There is a lot of worry about how workers can return to work with fewer child care spaces available and fears about the return to school,” Santander-Maturana says. “Now more than ever, we need a national strategy to deliver child care that is accessible to everyone. We need to ensure that for-profit long-term care becomes a relic of the past and that workers needing sick leave don’t worry about taking a day off when they need it.”
He adds the Ford government showed a lack of foresight when it decreased the minimum number of paid sick days from ten to three.
Santander-Maturana is concerned that without adequate protections, workers will be put in danger by any second wave of COVID-19 cases in Thunder Bay.
The car rally is this afternoon from 1:00 to 2:00, heading from the Community Auditorium to City Hall and ending at the OPSEU Regional Building on Memorial Avenue.
