Systemic Change

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The Workers’ Resource Centre believes that in order to achieve its mission and vision of a more just society for working people and their families, the organization must do more than just provide individual support and public education to workers regarding their existing rights and benefits, but must also engage in initiatives that will result in changes in public policy leading to improvements to the living and working conditions of workers in Alberta and beyond.

The Centre played an important role in helping Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) become entitled to Employment Insurance regular benefits by identifying, in 2009, key jurisprudence supporting the eligibility of TFWs to those benefits. At that time, the EI Commission frequently and erroneously denied TFWs unemployment benefits when they lost their jobs, solely on the basis of technicalities related to their “closed” work permits. The successes of the WRC’s appeals at the Umpire level paved the way for thousands of vulnerable TFWs across the country to access EI benefits when they lost their jobs through no fault of their own — benefits that they had paid for, like Canadian workers, through deductions from their pay for EI premiums.

The Centre has also contributed to the public policy dialogue in the following areas:

  1. The impact of the federal government’s Temporary Foreign Worker program in Alberta.
  2. The development of the Canadian Experience Class program for Temporary Foreign Workers.
  3. Employment Agency regulations under the Alberta Fair Trading Act.
  4. Alberta’s minimum wage policy.
  5. Pension reform.
  6. Revisions to the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Code.
  7. Enhancing the accessibility of EI sickness benefits to eligible workers whose immediate family members died as a direct result of a crime or of a military service-related injury in a special duty area.
  8. Participating in the Vibrant Communities Calgary Living Wage Action team to lobby the City of Calgary to adopt a living wage policy.
  9. Participating in the Technical Working Group for the Alberta occupational Health and Safety Code – Education, Training, and Certification group under the Enhanced Protection for Farm and Ranch Workers Act
  10. Supporting the incorporation of bullying and harassment into Alberta’s Health and Safety legislation.