WAN organizers Sara Moriarty and Mark Nichols

ALL WORKERS UNITE is not a new message. But the Workers’ Action Network (WAN) thinks it is still the best message to use to mobilize working people to get the “decent work” they need and want.

The network is a new creation of Common Front N.L., a long-established alliance of social justice and community groups in Newfoundland and Labrador. It replaces and builds on the long-running Common Front Fight for $15 and Fairness N.L. campaign.

‘One collective voice’

“Our $15 and Fairness minimum wage campaign was a good first step,” says Sara Moriarty, one of two full-time WAN organizers, “but we saw that low wages were just one of many issues workers faced.” We came to the conclusion it was time to “regroup and figure out what would be better,” she says. The WAN is the result.

Moriarty says the WAN intends to cast a very wide net. A statement on their website explains: “We believe that the best way to bring about decent work for EVERY worker is for ALL non-unionized, low-wage workers to come together and organize as one collective voice.”

The WAN call for “decent work” speaks to a broader and more generic vision of what issues regular working folks face every day. A post on the WAN website defines decent work this way: “Decent work is about more than fair wages and benefits: it means a work environment free of harassment, abuse, discrimination, precarity, and other unjust labour conditions which deny the dignity, rights, and economic well-being of workers. ALL workers deserve decent work.”

Information please

A desire to have workers themselves set their own agenda for action is one thing. How to actually make that desire not just possible, but a likely possibility, is quite another.

“I spent 10 years in the service industry,” says Moriarty. “I put up with a lot of exploitation and saw how it gets normalized. I probably knew there were things like employment standards. But I wasn’t about to read up on it in the Employment Standards Act.”

The first big task for WAN is to spread the word that workers—all workers—have rights and real ways to get those rights. A series of “know your rights" fact sheets to download off their website, is one way they are doing it. Another is by inviting workers to join in Zoom webinars.

Moriarty says their first on February 7 was a welcome learning experience. She says it revealed how important and essential listening is. The webinar participants were most concerned with issues about work scheduling—even though that was not the original topic. But hearing those concerns will help her and her co-worker Mark Nichols provide useful support.

The WAN has no agenda or pre-packaged remedy that workers are expected to take up as their own. The prime objective is to connect with workers as they are, where they are and provide whatever support they ask for so they can set their own objectives and agenda.

“Mark and I could talk all day about what we think is best” says Moriarty “but it wouldn’t get us any closer to our objectives. We have to facilitate as much workers’ rights education as we can, to get workers themselves directly involved.”

Weak protections; weak enforcement

“The Labour Standards Act provides insufficient protection for non-unionized workers in this province, and zero protection for gig workers who are misclassified as self-employed, independent contractors,” Nichols stated.

But, as weak as they are, the laws are barely enforced.

“Consequently, the overwhelming majority of nonunionized workers have no paid sick days and earn less than a livable wage. Gig workers, such as those delivering orders from local restaurants, earn even less than our poverty-level minimum wage and have no access to employment insurance.”

People can contact the Workers’ Action Network online through workersactionnl.ca or by calling 709-771-0024.

- 30 -