The Business Lobby Wants To Take Paid Holidays From Toronto Workers

The business lobby is once again trying to end guaranteed paid holidays for retail workers in Toronto.

Under pressure from business, Toronto City Council is considering allowing more retail stores to open on statutory holidays, which could end or limit guaranteed paid days off for affected retail workers covered by the city’s Municipal Code.

According to Unifor, permitting more businesses to open on public holidays will erode hours of work protections for workers in the city. The union is currently engaged in a campaign to protect retail workers’ right to guaranteed days off.

As Samia Hashi, Unifor’s Ontario regional director, explained to Class Struggle, these municipal protections provide workers with guaranteed paid time free from work. “This is about making sure that the days off valued so much by retail workers remain days they can spend with family, spend in their communities,” Hashi said.

In Ontario, the Retail Business Holidays Act requires that certain retail establishments close on public holidays. The Act does not cover Toronto, however, which sets out its own Code for retail businesses.

Workers covered by the retail holiday closing rule in Toronto’s Municipal Code enjoy additional protections beyond those provided for in the provincial Employment Standards Act. Whereas all workers covered by the ESA are entitled to payment for public holidays or premium pay if they agree to work on the holiday itself, workers covered by Toronto’s municipal rule can’t be compelled to work on their paid holidays. Many workers in Toronto are now at risk of losing some or all of this right to guaranteed time off.

According to the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, SmartCentres and Yorkdale’s wealthy corporate real estate owner, Oxford Properties, have both been lobbying Toronto’s city council since 2023 to overturn the retail holiday closing rule.

Under pressure from the retail business lobby more broadly, the city has periodically opened consultations on whether or not to change the regulations covering retail public holidays. As a Unifor representative told Class Struggle, since at least 2008, workers have clashed with the business lobby over Toronto’s rules protecting paid holidays.

A similar push from business in 2018 resulted in the municipal government in neighbouring York Region passing a bylaw allowing more retail businesses to open on public holidays, in the process sacrificing workers’ guaranteed days off.

Toronto’s Municipal Code presently requires full retail closures on nine public holidays: New Year’s Day; Family Day; Good Friday; Easter Sunday; Victoria Day; Canada Day; Labour Day; Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. On these days, workers protected by the Code are guaranteed paid time off.

However, the Code also already provides exemptions to a large number of businesses, meaning workers in exempted establishments can be asked to forgo their time off. For example, pharmacies and gas stations are not covered by the rule, and neither are many small businesses.

In addition, the Code has created several “tourist area exemptions,” whereby whole retail districts are carved out of the public holiday closure requirement. The “Downtown Yonge Street Business Improvement Area,” the “Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement Area” and the “Distillery Historic District” are all excluded from the rule. Those working at the Toronto Eaton Centre and the Hudson’s Bay Company as well as at the Queen’s Quay Terminal are also unprotected.

Should Toronto’s city council cave to pressure from the business lobby, further exemptions could be approved, ending paid time off for a great number of Toronto workers.

Unifor has been involved in similar municipal consultations concerning the city’s public holiday closure rule since 2008, and opposes the further deregulation of shopping rules that would erode hours of work protections for workers in the retail sector.

As Hashi told Class Struggle, “Unifor has long been part of this fight. Labour has been a part of this fight, and because of our strong opposition to changes of these shopping rules, we’ve been able to protect these guaranteed days off.” But as Hashi further explained, business organizations have been pushing for years to weaken these vital hours of work regulations and compel workers and unions to give up their guaranteed days off “We believe this would contribute to the erosion of retail workers’ working conditions,” Hashi said.

But this has been anything but a top-down campaign from the union. Rather, rank-and-file workers have mobilized to protect their guaranteed paid holidays. As Hashi put it: “This is a fight taken up by our members who work in the retail industry and are saying, ‘We have to stand up against this because they’re coming for our days off.’”

Moreover, union members understand that rules like those outlined in the ESA and the Toronto Municipal Code set a floor for all workers. Allowing business to undermine those rules puts downward pressure on all workers, union and non-union alike. “These workers are looking to their union to take on the bigger fights that impact workers beyond just our members. We’re a social union so we’ll fight in whatever way we can. Business has their voice heard, so we want to make sure retail workers have their voices heard too,” Hashi said.

Paid time off is a key indicator of decent work. Paid days off allow workers time to rest, balance life outside of work, and participate in the political and cultural life of their communities and society more generally.

Unfortunately, when compared to workers in other wealthy countries, those in Canada have relatively few paid holidays and vacation days. By contrast, many European countries guarantee a dozen or more public holidays to all workers, particularly in Scandinavia. For example, workers in Iceland, Sweden and Norway enjoy 15, 13, and 12 paid public holidays, respectively.

When we consider paid vacation time in addition to public holidays, the contrast between Canada and much of Europe is even starker. On top of public holidays, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain and Sweden all mandate a minimum of 25 days of annual paid vacation. In a calendar year, these minimum standards add up to more than six weeks of paid time off each year in most of those countries. Moreover, paid vacation entitlements set out in collective agreements often improve upon these entitlements, and in countries where sectoral union contracts cover the vast majority of workers, additional paid time off is widespread.

In Canada, by contrast, most provinces require only two or three weeks of paid vacation each year, depending on how long a worker has been with their employer. These are paltry entitlements when compared internationally. A 2022 study, for instance, found Canada ranked 39th out of 43 countries when it came to vacation entitlements.

Many unions in Canada have bargained additional vacation time for their members beyond what is set out in provincial minimum employment standards. But because union density is only roughly 30 per cent (and just 15 per cent in the private sector), the reach of union negotiated vacation time is limited.

Extra vacation and holidays also reduce the annual hours worked by workers in most European countries. In 2022, workers in Canada put in an average of 1,686 hours of work, compared to 1,440 in Sweden, 1,425 in Norway and 1,394 in Denmark.

It is thus vital that the public holidays workers in Canada correctly enjoy remain protected. These fights can be national, provincial or local. In the case of Toronto retail workers, keeping guaranteed days off is integral to worker well-being.

As Hashi emphasized: “Protecting these rules is tremendously important to workers’ mental health and well-being. These are workers who often work in precarious conditions, and often work part-time or in multiple jobs. Being able to have these days off means that they can spend time at home to recharge and spend time with their families, to be able to be active in their communities, and to plan their lives. If a retail worker is working multiple jobs and juggling different schedules, it’s important to know that these days off are guaranteed.”

Since the 1990s, neoliberal provincial governments in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, have deregulated hours of work to “flexibilize” business operations, in the process simultaneously subjecting workers to precarious and insecure part-time work, excessive and poorly regulated over-time, and unpredictable and sporadic schedules. This has opened working time as an ongoing terrain of class struggle.

Ensuring that Toronto retail workers keep their paid holidays free from work is a local fight in this much larger battle against the erosion of working conditions and the deregulation of working time.

It’s a fight we should all support.

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