Harper government to scrap Fair Wages Act

The Huffington Post:

Where there's overtime work, there's usually overtime pay. However, an adjustment in the Harper Conservatives' omnibus budget bill may just change that for a number of contract workers. 

It's a law known as the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act. Its mandate? To ensures that contractors working on federal government construction projects must pay their workers the prevailing wage in the province plus overtime pay.

The law originated in the Great Depression but could now disappear thanks to 10 words buried in the 425-page budget: “The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is repealed." That's it. No context, no further explanation, no justification to be found in the budget.

The move, according to critics, means that certain workers on federal construction projects will no longer be entitled to the provincial prevailing wage, which ranges anywhere from $20 to $30 an hour. Instead, these construction workers could be paid as little as the provincial minimum wage, according to the Toronto Star. The law also says that no construction worker has to work more than 48 hours per week without time-and-a-half overtime pay.

"To whose benefit is it to drive down the fair wages of Canadian workers? Let me point out a secondary problem this raises. How are we going to attract bright, young men and women into the building trades if the normal wage is now going to be $8, $9 or $10 an hour instead of the $20 or $30 that it is now? Try feeding a family on $8, $9 or $10 an hour. Nobody in his or her right mind is going to go into that industry." 

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