Pillar marks World Day for Decent Work by signing charter and renewing call to the network

Pillar CEO Maureen Cassidy and Board Chair Kapil Lakhotia this week signed a Decent Work Charter furnished by the Ontario Nonprofit Network, pledging the organization will continue to champion decent work conditions and practices in our society, our local communities, and within our own organization. The Charter is associated with the ONN’s Pathways to Decent Work, a resource that allows organizations to explore Decent Work strategies that best suit their context.

Pillar has long championed more equitable workplaces in the nonprofit sector and issued a call to action to our local network in 2021, sharing important milestones on our own journey to align to Decent Work principles. Pillar’s commitment to Decent Work has been accelerated by our strategic plan, by our drive to be accountable for our own complicity in the sector’s inequitable practices, and by our commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth. We look forward to reporting again on the work of our 

Pillar signed on as a living wage employer in the Ontario Living Wage Network in 2021 and we're glad to have other organizations in our network as company, including Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre, Growing Chefs! Ontario, Inn Out of The Cold, London Environmental Network, ReForest London, United Way Elgin Middlesex, and Urban Roots London. We recognize that many of our member organizations already pay living wages. Consider the value of making it known.

We are also encouraged this year by the role given to frontline workers in the Health and Homelessness Whole of Community System Response. After the activism and research by #TheForgotten519 in 2022, the City of London and the community at large are more aware of the conditions of work in the nonprofit sector and the way that it can affect the conditions of care. Pillar is an active participant in the Workforce Development Table for the Hub Implementation Plan and we are committed to helping ensure that all workers in the first three hubs and across the system are compensated fairly and supported through training and workplace procedures that keep them physically and psychologically safe.

We know that this is a critical need in the Hub Implementation Plan and a critical challenge across the local nonprofit sector. In collaboration with the regional Workforce Planning and Development Board, we reported this year that the sector continues to struggles with attracting, hiring, and retaining workers at rates higher than other sectors of the economy.

Workforce development continues to be a major concern for the sector and a nonprofit workforce development strategy is one of the asks in our wish list for federal budget 2024, submitted this year.

And, slim though it may be as a workforce development resource, we are lobbying our local MPs to support a re-funding of the dwindling Canada Summer Jobs program to better support opportunities for young people and nonprofits alike. You can read the letter here that we and 23 of our members sent to MPs Peter Fragiskatos, Arielle Kayabaga, Lindsay Mathyssen, and Karen Vecchio.

We also recognize that others continue to lead in assuring Decent Work in our region and sector. In particular, organized labour should be acknowledged for ongoing advocacy for better working conditions, especially in the health and education sectors and, recently, for leadership in protecting teachers delivering the Ontario school curriculum from “Parents’ Rights” activists.

Decent Work is, of course, more than fair wages. It also respects the need for "social protection," including adequate rest from work. 2023 was the first full year in which Ontario employers with greater than 25 employees had to have a plan guaranteeing their employees a “right to disconnect” from work. For amazing thought leadership on the place of rest in work and, especially, social purpose work, we’ve been following our colleagues at Impact Organizations of Nova Scotia who have been exploring how our relationship to work needs to break with exploitive practices. We recommend bookmarking all three of these articles and checking them out. But next week, when you’re back to work.

• We’ll Get Back to you Monday: Reclaim Friday, Rest, and Repeat,;
• Resisting a Rest: How Urgency Culture Polices our Work; and, just this past week,
• Off the Clock? Exploring Our Relationship With Time and Work.

Nonprofit work is hard, but it can be decent.

Indeed, it must be. Pillar supports the network’s and the sector’s path to Decent Work. Best wishes for a happy World Day of Decent Work and, whether your weekend is long or short, for the rest you deserve.