This column originally appeared in the Globe and Mail

The pandemic has demolished many conventional wisdoms when it comes to our economy, equality and work – especially essential work, so much of which is done by women.

Where would we be without the labour of women this past year? And yet as critical as that labour has been to the well-being of the country, we are still fighting for respect and fair pay.

Paid sick days have become the tip of the iceberg for much broader calls to improve employment standards and labour rights across the country. The base of the iceberg is the fight for fair wages and decent work for all. It’s why union women struggle to raise the minimum wage, campaign for the universal right to unionize and demand the right to identify and refuse unsafe work. In Canada, a handful of CEOs declare record profits year after year while the floor for minimum workplace standards is vanishing beneath our feet.

Just as we have seen throughout history, the current crisis weighs heavily on women, as well as non-binary and gender diverse people. Even more so on racialized women. Our workplaces are battlegrounds because bosses take more and more money for themselves while women have to fight for fair wages and access to adequate personal protective equipment. After decades of advocacy, we still do not have a meaningful and accessible system of childcare in this country and the gender pay gap continues to undermine women’s experience of work. All of this has been made far worse through this pandemic.

So when Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, appears to be at his wit’s end because people keep asking about paid sick days, let me share an ounce of truth: we’re not about to stop demanding or organizing.

Frankly, too many politicians have let ideology get in the way of a proper pandemic response. – one that puts people and workers first.

They have allowed the entire weight of a pandemic to fall onto the shoulders of women. Women are working harder than ever on the front line, and yet more than 20% of women are underemployed, evidence of the systemic barriers in our job market. More women than men have lost their jobs amid the crisis, dropping our labour market participation by a full percentage point.

We’re going backwards.

Union women have been fighting for workplace justice for decades. The very roots of International Women’s Day we celebrate on March 8 stem from the fight for fair pay, safe work and the right to a union for all.

More than 100 years after the first celebration of women’s achievements and potential, workplace struggles are just as important. Any personal support worker knows just how tragic and challenging this past year has been.

So while certain politicians will be remembered for having stood in the way of workers, women and everyone who hold up our communities in good and bad times, there are still a few things they don’t know.

One day we will have mandatory paid sick days in every province in Canada and employers will pay for them.

One day, employers will no longer be able to outsource their responsibilities to temporary agencies, scraping every dollar of profit they can from working class communities, leaving workers vulnerable to weakened workplace rights and permanently low wages.

One day in this country, we will usher in a universal pharmacare program that will drastically lower drug costs for average Canadians and secure the next building block of Canada’s public health care system.

Women, women’s democratic movements and workers’ organizations see the connections between decent work, affordable housing, racial justice, access to education, public health care and childcare, and the all-important safety net that lifts everyone up.

Women have been fighting for these things for a long time and we are not about to give up now.

While politicians come and go, the sisterhood continues uninterrupted – and so do our demands for gender justice.

And in these times of crisis, politicians can listen and act – or they can step aside.

Lana Payne is Unifor’s National Secretary-Treasurer.

The past year has laid bare the inequities in our society.

COVID-19 has shown that workers struggling to get by on minimum wage – from personal support workers, to grocery and warehouse workers – and those in the gig economy are not only essential, but put themselves at risk to keep our communities running during a pandemic.

Working families across our province have been forced to make impossible decisions between staying home when they are sick or going to work and risk spreading a deadly virus to their co-workers.

With an election in Ontario just over a year away, you’d hope that we’d have a chance to make their voices heard and use the lessons of the pandemic to fix the systemic problems it has exposed by electing a government truly committed to doing so.

The ruling Conservatives, however, have introduced a new election financing law that could stifle that debate by amplifying the voice of the rich and quieting that of working people.

The new law would double the personal allowable political contribution from $1,500 to $3,000 – something only rich donors and their beneficiaries will be able to take full advantage of.

Already, Ontario’s Conservative Party not only has the most individual donors – 12,867 in 2019, compared with 7,828 for the NDP and 5,205 for the Liberals – but also the most people who donate the maximum allowed.

It stands to sense and reason, then, that Conservative stand to benefirt most by boosting the maximum donation.

At the same time, the new law would severely limit the voice of working families, who must pool their resources to have a voice approaching that of the Conservative’s wealthy backers.

It would do this by limiting how much so-called third-party groups, such as unions, community groups or non-profits, can spend in the full year before an election, up from the previous six months.

Premier Doug Ford knows exactly what he is doing. This is a clear move against groups such as Working Families, which Unifor is proud to participate in because we believe it is vital that the needs of working people are front and centre during any election.

Coming out of this pandemic, we will need a vigorous debate about the policies to rebuild Ontario and the rest of Canada. Working people, those on the frontlines over the past year and most affected by COVID-19’s devastation, need and deserve to have their voices heard.

This new law, however, is about stopping that debate, and limiting discussion on such issues as paid sick days and the state of long term care.

Democracy is about having these discussions, out in the open and with everyone heard, and then deciding how to move forward. This new law however, stifles that discussion.

Let’s face it, working people aren’t donating $1,500 to political campaigns, let alone $3,000. The numbers bear that out. While fully 6% of Conservative donors hit the max now, only 1.9% of Liberal donors do, and 1.2% for the NDP.

Working people are too stretched just paying the bills to make big donations. They’re too busy worrying whether they’ll bring COVID-19 home to their families. They’re too stressed wondering if they’ll get a vaccine any time soon.

We can’t let ourselves be too distracted by life and death issues to notice this torqueing of the province’s election laws to Conservative advantage.

The new bill goes beyond financing, and into some disturbing territory.

It prohibits citizen-advocacy groups from accepting donations from the same people, from using the same advertising agency for their separate campaigns, and from even talking to each other about the election.

Think about that. this law would not only limit how much those advocating for working families can spend to make their voices heard, it would control who we can talk to, and even what ad firms we can use.

Unions share common goals about making life better for working families. But under this new law, we can’t talk to each other about that.

Sounds like a government that knows its policies should see it turfed from office – and so wants to silence those who would remind voters how badly it has failed them.