Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jesse McLaren and Kate Hayman discuss how better treatment of workers can reduce the strain on a province's health care system:

As front-line health-care providers we urge the premier to follow the Hippocratic principle, “first, do no harm,” and to not intervene to stop the $15 per hour minimum wage and paid personal emergency leave days.

If Ford is interested in ending hallway medicine, he should support policies that prevent people from getting sick in the first place: a higher minimum wage, and paid personal emergency leave days for all Ontarians.

Low wages prevent people from accessing healthy food, safe shelter, and filling their prescriptions. According to a study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, 1-in-10 Canadians can’t afford to fill or renew their prescriptions, and this rises to a third for low-income families. When patients can’t afford to preserve their health and take their medicine, they often end up in hospital.

Until this year, the situation was even worse for Ontarians without paid personal emergency leave days. The seemingly obvious medical advice to “stay home when you’re sick” is impossible for those who can’t afford to.
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When it comes to labour policy, all the premier has to do to start supporting the people and help end hallway medicine is … nothing. Let the minimum wage increase, and protect access to paid personal emergency leave days.

Backtracking on legislation designed with input from health providers, public health experts, and economists will only hurt vulnerable Ontarians and our health-care system.

- Samantha Marcus reports on New Jersey's new legislation allowing striking workers to access unemployment benefits - a development arising out of the mistreatment of telecommunications workers. And Erica Johnson reports on the latest revelations as to how employees in similar positions at Bell and Rogers have been expected to pressure customers.

- Eric Holthaus discusses the new generation of climate activists which has never known the issue as anything but an imminent existential threat. Clare Hennig points out the problems with treating climate conditions which are still subject to substantial change in both directions as a "new normal". And Jon Queally reports on the gall of the fossil fuel sector in demanding handouts to protect against the rising sea levels caused by its carbon pollution.

- Finally, Nikolas Barry-Shaw highlights just the latest poll showing that Quebecers don't share the obsession of their political class with discriminatory identity politics.