Ontario Working for Workers Act 6.0 introduced

The Ontario government introduced the Working for Workers Six Act, 2024 on Nov. 27. The proposed measures include creating a new parental leave and long-term illness leave and Workplace Safety and Insurance Board changes delivering rebates and lower premiums. The package also cracks down on bad actor employers, with mandatory minimum fines of $500,000 for corporations convicted of repeated offences within a two-year period under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

“As our government continues to bring back better jobs and bigger paycheques to Ontario, we are keeping workers healthy and safe no matter where they work: On a highway, a job site, or the shop floor,” said David Piccini, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. “Our government’s proposed sixth Working for Workers bill will introduce game-changing measures to grow Ontario’s workforce by bringing more women into the trades, cracking down on bad actors who exploit newcomers and harm workers, and introducing nation-leading cancer protections for firefighters.”

The proposed sixth Working for Workers Act and its related regulatory changes, if passed, would:

• Create a new parental leave for parents through adoption and surrogacy
• Create a new 27-week job-protected long-term illness leave for workers with a serious medical condition which would be one of the longest provincial leaves in Canada
• Require properly-fitting PPE for women in all sectors to bring more women into the trades
• Unlock $400 million to invest in worker health and safety, including mental health and recovery, through the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB)
• Invest up to $1.4 billion through the Skills Development Fund to train over one million workers across the province
• Giving back over $2.5 billion through rebating WSIB surpluses to hundreds of thousands of safe employers, reducing business premium rates to the lowest average level in half a century, and putting more money back into workers’ pockets by waiving the fee for apprentices taking their first Certificate of Qualification exam. Under Premier Ford, Ontario has cut or reduced fees for each apprentice by $330, putting almost $3.6 million back into the pockets of nearly 11,000 apprentices.
• Honour workers by celebrating the contributions the Golden Generation of Skilled Tradespeople who built our province into what it is today, and who are passing on their wisdom and expertise to the next generation of workers to shape Ontario’s future, by creating a new Skilled Trades Week during the first week of November.
• Crack down on bad actors that exploit newcomers and harm workers by introducing new standards, fines and lifetime bans for fraudulent immigration representatives that exploit newcomers.