Closing the Enforcement Gap : Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs

The sole source of protection for many workers in precarious jobs, this book reveals gaps in the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario, Canada, and offers a bold vision for change drawing on innovative initiatives emerging elsewhere.

The nature of employment is changing: low wage jobs are increasingly common, fewer workers belong to unions, and workplaces are being transformed through the growth of contracting-out, franchising, and extended supply chains. Closing the Enforcement Gap offers a comprehensive analysis of the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario.

Adopting mixed methods, this work includes qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with workers, community advocates, and enforcement officials; extensive archival research excavating decades of ministerial records; and analysis of a previously untapped source of administrative data collected by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour. The authors reveal and trace the roots of a deepening "enforcement gap" that pervades nearly all aspects of the regime, demonstrating that the province’s Employment Standards Act (ESA) fails too many workers who rely on the floor of minimum conditions it was devised to provide. Arguably, there is nothing inevitable about the enforcement gap in Ontario or for that matter elsewhere. Through contributions from leading employment standards enforcement scholars in the US, the UK, and Australia, as well as Quebec, Closing the Enforcement Gap surveys innovative enforcement models that are emerging in a variety of jurisdictions and sets out a bold vision for strengthening employment standards enforcement.

Closing the Enforcement Gap Research Group

Leah F. Vosko
Guliz Akkaymak
Rebecca Casey
Shelley Condratto
John Grundy
Alan Hall
Alice Hoe
Kiran Mirchandani
Andrea M. Noack
Urvashi Soni-Sinha
Mercedes Steedman
Mark P. Thomas
Eric M. Tucker

International/Quebec Contributors
Nick Clark
Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau
Tess Hardy
John Howe
Guylaine Vallée
David Weil

"This manuscript explores the enforcement of employment standards, using a mixed-methods approach to examine Ontario as a case study. Drawing on interviews with workers, community advocates, and enforcement officials as well as new archival research, the manuscript demonstrates that enforcement of the province's Employment Standards Act fails too many workers. In the second part of the manuscript, scholars from the US, UK, Australia, and Quebec present "views from elsewhere" to compare and contrast their cases with that of Ontario, drawing out a widespread "enforcement gap" that pervades nearly all aspects of employment standards. In the end, the manuscript surveys innovative enforcement models that are emerging in a number of jurisdictions and sets out a new vision for the enforcement of employment standards."-- Provided by publisher