The impact of building worker power

As someone who has been leading ONN’s decent work movement building and public policy work for the last eight years, I often come across people who have been part of our movement in one way or another. They always have an important story to share.

Just this past week I was in a meeting with an Executive Director and her staff, someone I had not connected with since 2018. She asked me if I remembered her from one of the decent work learning circles we held that year (we conducted eight across the province, to learn about women’s working conditions in our sector). She shared how she was inspired by the conversation and the energy of her peers in the learning circle and, shortly after, advocated to her own ED at the time for decent work: better pay, health and dental benefits, and professional development opportunities. She turned to her staff and said this is how we got decent work. 

I share this story to underscore how impactful building worker power is, and the long-lasting importance of building a decent work movement in 91��Ƶ’s nonprofit sector. This is not the first story I’ve heard nor will it be the last.

Looking back

I came to ONN in 2017, just as we were planting decent work seedlings:

• We just published what are now seminal decent work reports: ChangeWork and Shaping the Future.
• We had consulted with the provincial government on reforming the Employment Standards Act with a nonprofit lens: our response to the repeals later in 2018.
• Status of Women Canada (at the time) had awarded us a grant to explore what decent work for women in nonprofits means and looks like, and then advance it.
• We were in deep conversation with our Pensions Working Group to figure out a sector-driven pension solution. Ultimately endorsing OPTrust Select as the defined benefit pension plan for the sector. 

I remember three things so clearly from that time: 

1. The hunger of nonprofit workers to talk about their working conditions and advocate for themselves. 
2. The drive of nonprofit employers to deliver on decent work in their organizations. 
3. The rest of the decent work movement energized to act:
   • Workers Action Centre organizing the $15 and fairness campaign.
   • ’s funding and thought leadership.
   • United Way Greater Toronto (United Way Toronto & York Region at the time) and McMaster University’s project research on precarious work.
   • (St. Stephen’s at the time) first piloting the Decent Work Charter and Checklist created by .
   • It is this collective movement that fought long and hard for paid sick days in 91��Ƶ during the pandemic, where we learned a tough lesson about advocacy. No matter how prepared and organized you may be, a public policy win is not guaranteed.

In the early stages I also remember a huge gap in our decent work movement. It lacked the acknowledgement of how most of our workers are from equity-deserving communities, analysis of how different intersecting identities shape working conditions, and proactive solutions to combat the same. Fast forward to 2023, Pathways to Decent Work, eight pathways, and numerous resources to help organizations advance decent work and equity for Black, Indigenous, and/or racialized people in our sector, was born through the hard work of our colleague Yami at that time.

10 years of decent work is a fraction of time it takes to change systems

Milestone anniversaries are important, as I learned recently when I attended . It’s a much needed moment to stop and reflect on systems change work because the work can be so incremental, non-linear, and imperfect. 

Over the past 10 years, I’m proud to say ONN has fundamentally shifted the conversation about work in the nonprofit sector through our decent work movement building, alongside nonprofits, funders, and other interested parties. It took 10 years to move decent work as a concept from the to a necessary way of being for nonprofits across 91��Ƶ and Canada. Regardless of public policy wins, that means something, especially as I think of the many stories like the one I shared above. 

What created conditions for this type of systemic change:

• Trust-based philanthropy that allowed us to be experimental.
• Unwavering commitment of our colleagues at ONN to drive the work forward with innovation and creativity. 
• Simply put, good, strong partners to champion decent work.
• Deep curiosity of nonprofits to go on this journey with us. 

But, even as we recognize that many in our sector see and believe in the value of decent work we are at a moment of inflection.

Decent work: what now?

The work isn’t always easy – it can involve difficult conversations, moments of change management, time for reflection – but, the opportunity to create a thriving sector, with fair, just employment is something that many nonprofits and workers continue to strive for. 

And yet, we know at this moment as we reflect on the last decade of the decent work movement, that systems and barriers are working against our goals. There was some hopefulness as we came out of the pandemic that decent work could revolutionize the nonprofit sector and how we support our workers. But, current backlash to equity, increasing racism and polarization, the rise in facism, austerity, and the economic downturn all affect decent work in negative ways.

A big daunting question remains: what is the future of decent work?

Don’t stop, don’t go backwards, keep building worker power

The answer is simple: don’t stop, and don’t go backwards, keep building worker power.  

We have come so far in building a foundation of decent work in the nonprofit sector. We might slow down in the face of new challenges, shift our tactics to tackle new frontiers of decent work, and embrace new allies to protect progressive gains. But, there is no option to stop.

Time and time again we have learned that it is building worker power – empowering, organizing, validating, and equipping individuals workers to collectively shift their working conditions – moves us closer to the systems change we seek. 

So, my call to action to you all is to join the decent work movement and, if you are already part of the movement, recommit to another 10 years of movement building with us. 

This is an excellent move to ensure companies keep their staff employed and their capacity intact through difficult times. Nonprofit and charitable organizations are eligible for this work sharing benefit as well if they experience a reduction in revenue from things such as reduced donations, grants, memberships or investment income as a direct or indirect result of the tariffs. At first glance, it appears as if it’ll provide some relief to the community care sector. However, the reality of nonprofits on the ground during such massive social and economic trends, requires a bold response. 

The nonprofit and charitable sector operates counter cyclically to the business sector. When businesses have difficult times, demand for nonprofit services increases dramatically. The COVID-19 pandemic, during and after the destructive forest fires in Fort McMurray and Jasper, and storm floods in British Columbia and Nova Scotia are all examples of when the nonprofit sector stepped up and government put in additional funds so nonprofit-driven services like food banks, temporary accommodations, homeless shelters, community health centers, and more could respond to increased community needs. 

The nonprofit sector’s workload will not decrease with tariffs, instead the demand for their services will swell as varying degrees of the worst-case scenarios for communities begin to take shape. The sector is trying to prepare for a surge in demand at a time when the sector is still recovering from pandemic burnout and losses and navigating the impact of tariffs on their own revenue and expenses.

So while the EI work-sharing adjustments are welcomed, they do not take into account the nonprofit sector’s realities in our current context. Nonprofits need supports that enable them to be nimble and agile in a rapidly shifting landscape. 

What can all levels of government do to support the sector in preparing for an economic downturn?

• Invest in a “tariff fighting” fund for nonprofits to cope with increasing demand for community services such as food banks, programs to keep families housed and provide shelter for those unhoused, services to help people find new employment opportunities, and with decreased incomes people and families will need support accessing community recreation and summer programs.
• Ensure nonprofits are part of, and prioritized in tariff stimulus packages and plans.��
• Identify solutions with nonprofits that know what needs to be done in challenging times by setting up roundtables between governments – whether federal, provincial, territorial, or municipal – and nonprofits to discuss how we can protect Canada together.

Canadians are in this fight together; investing into community supports during these hard times is vital for maintaining social cohesion, health and wellness, and morale. Supporting the sector means bringing people together, helping them to build stronger and more resilient communities.

I was nervous and worried as I initially felt a wave of imposter syndrome. How am I supposed to put this perfect document together that will essentially be ONN’s compass? Maybe it was imposter syndrome or the panic of my self-enforced deadline, but I immediately jumped into doing what I know how to do best, research. 

I looked for and reviewed policy agendas from around the world. Those put together by nonprofit associations and networks with the scope of supporting nonprofits themselves, and those put together by nonprofits engaging in broader community issues. It was so interesting to see the ways in which our global sector was engaging in public policy and advocacy work – from specific, local advocacy to international advocacy – and the variety of issues they were working on – from democracy and climate to charitable incentives and funding reform. 

Here are some organizing principles I noticed:

• Action-based: focused on outlining what the nonprofit is actively advocating on, including what they are monitoring, what they are supporting, and what they are leading.
• Time-based: outlined priorities for the year and/or legislative session or over a longer period of time.��
• Vision-based: the beginning point of the agenda was to share hopes for ultimate and intended impact and the values that the agenda was rooted in.��
• Audience-based: policy issues fell into one of the following categories or were a combination of them all – about the people the nonprofit serves and/or the community it is rooted in or about strengthening their organization/sector’s ability to serve people and communities.
• Government jurisdiction-based: the agenda was clearly for federal, provincial/territorial/state policy cycles or jurisdiction.
• Strictly issues-based agendas with no other content like a policy framework or policy positions.

Starting your journey of developing a public policy agenda

If I can do it, so can you. Building a public policy agenda for your organization is simply putting on paper the public policy and advocacy issues you want to engage on and how. While it may seem daunting that there isn’t a template to follow, the beauty is in the fact that you can make it whatever you want it to be. The agenda serves your organization.

In reviewing the many different agendas, here are a couple of starting points to think about:

• Developing a policy agenda is essentially a scoping exercise.
  • What do you work on and what do you not work on? 
  • Are the issues identified in your agenda about the people you serve and/or the community you are rooted in or about strengthening your nonprofits ability to serve people and communities? Or both?
• A policy framework is different from a policy agenda. The agenda is the whole document whereas the framework articulates your vision/mission and values/principles, and other critical pieces guiding how you do the work. Policy agendas include some sort of vision/mission/values statement that is directly connected to or a repeat of the organization’s.
  • What principles/values are guiding your work, stemming from the broader organizational vision/mission?
  • How are you going to do the public policy and advocacy work? 
  • How are you thinking about equity in the agenda?
  • Who or what is informing how you identify the issues you work on?
• Policy agendas can be as broad and general or narrow and specific as you want them to be.
  • Does your agenda simply highlight what you support and what you don’t support?
  • Does your agenda only outline the issue areas you work on and why or also your policy positions and the various policy initiatives within those areas you hope to advance?
• Policy agendas can be forward-thinking or based on the current policy cycle.
  • Does your agenda represent what you want to push forward over a 3-5 year horizon or is it based on the current policy cycle?

ONN’s new public policy agenda

I am so very pleased to share our new public policy agenda.��

This policy agenda plots a course with nine focus areas consisting of various policy files that we advance through either legislative, regulatory, budget, and/or implementation initiatives. And it aligns with ONN’s 2024-2026 strategic plan. 

It is a values-based, forward-thinking agenda with a three-year horizon. The nonprofit sector plays an essential role in building thriving communities where people are connected, well-resourced, and effecting change for the public good (ONN’s ultimate impact). To continue doing so, we require an enabling public policy environment. We are advancing a bold and comprehensive public policy agenda that reflects the needs and aspirations of 91��Ƶ’s nonprofit sector. 

It includes a robust policy framework which consists of:

• Vetting criteria: How we scope the issues we work on.
• Network approach: Who informs our agenda through what activities.
• Equity approach: How we are thinking about equity in our agenda and how it may show up.

There are nine focus areas identified, most of which are issues we have always worked on but are now more visible and present. Each focus area has a different and is at a different stage in the same. 

Some public policy areas might be more relevant right now, such as Social Purpose Real Estate (re: affordable housing, child care expansion) while other public policy issues are not because there is no window of opportunity and we have already completed the public policy work (re: Decent work and Volunteerism). Some policy issues require rejuvenation based on changing contexts (re: Nonprofit sustainability) and some are new areas that we are just beginning to explore to define the public policy work in (re: Active democracy).

ONN’s nine public policy focus areas are:

• Decent work
• Volunteerism
• Nonprofit sustainability
• Social purpose real estate
• Data and privacy frameworks
• Regulatory environment
• Community wealth building
• Anti-privatization of publicly-funded services
• Active democracy

I thought of the issues we work on in two ways. The first six issues are generally more about strengthening the sector’s ability to serve communities; they cross-cut and impact all subsectors in some shape or form. The last three issues are not only about strengthening our sector but also bringing to the forefront larger public policy issues facing our communities that we must play a role in advancing. 

You’ll notice a couple of changes to our policy approach

We moved away from “priorities” to “agenda” because I think it speaks more to the long-term nature of the public policy issues we want to advance (no one has solved anti-privatization in one year!) and how many and the variety of small and large activities, individually and collectively, are required for the changes we seek. 

We also moved away from an annual priorities document to a three-year guiding document so it is in line with the long-term work we want to do and coincides with the provincial election. The provincial election deeply shapes what public policy issues we work on because a change in government or the re-election will mean new government priorities that will impact our sector. It’s also a good enough time frame to think through what new issues need to be added, what needs to be taken out (hopefully because we made progress!), and sadly what just isn’t in our scope of work anymore or worth the time.

Another change you’ll notice is our approach to equity. Through the strategic thinking process the organization took the opportunity to formally outline its equity commitment which is now part of our strategic framework. Much of this was really writing down what we were already doing and combining and connecting the work across various equity issues. Even though we had an outlined approach to equity in our public policy and advocacy work, I struggled to put it on paper. I struggled to write down an approach because it felt “checklist-y” and “ad-hoc”. Moreover, while in my research I found beautiful equity statements opening up policy agendas, I rarely found something written on “how” the organization was doing the work, especially if they weren’t led-by, focused on, and/or serving equity-deserving communities.

I wanted to put down on paper an approach that was both authentic to ONN’s mission/role in our sector and meaningful. I was clear that I did not want to include nonprofits led-by, focused on, and/or serving equity-deserving communities in an ad-hoc manner but, rather, I wanted to highlight how the issues we were focusing on were also issues important to these organizations and communities. While the approach to equity may not be perfect, I think our Agenda points to a good start. 

Ways nonprofits can use ONN’s policy agenda

The future of our sector and the communities we serve requires thoughtful and strategic advocacy, not advocating is not an option. A public policy agenda – a guiding document of the issues you advocate on – is a good way to start the advocacy conversations on your teams, with senior leadership, and even the board.��

Nonprofits across the province are invited to use our public policy agenda to inform and expand their own public policy and advocacy work. Here are a few suggestions on how:

• Share our policy agenda and this blog with your team, senior leadership, Board of Directors, related working groups or committees, broader network, and/or communities you serve. You can highlight what you are supporting or working with ONN on and surface any desires to create your own agenda. .
• If your organization already has its own public policy agenda, incorporate some of our focus areas and initiatives in it, if there is alignment.
• Let us know how you are using our agenda by emailing me – pamela@theonn.ca.��

Let’s come together to activate advocacy in our sector and in a way that meets this moment. We are indeed, stronger together.

ONN has been thinking through how to support the sector through the HR crisis. What can help immediately and isn’t another toolkit? While the issues are not new, something feels different about this moment in time. Perhaps it’s the pandemic, the exponential increase in the cost of living, fatigue of serving communities with limited resources and increased demand, or that we might actually be at a point where parts of the sector might collapse. 

I keep circling back to the fact that the real solution to combat the HR crisis is also going to take a long time to achieve. We need to address the devaluation of nonprofit work, which is rooted in gendered and racialized notions of which work is valuable. It results in low wages and benefits, no wage parity for the same jobs across sectors, antiquated funding agreements, lack of long-term labour force strategy and workforce development, and constraining employment standards and regulations. Bill 124 is at the crux of all these issues. 

Bill 124 is one of the root causes of the nonprofit HR crisis

Aside from the broader public sector, like hospitals, schools, universities, applies to community-governed nonprofits that received $1 million or more in funding from the 91��Ƶ government in fiscal 2018/2019. The Bill came into effect for union employees with any collective bargaining negotiated after June 5, 2019 and for non-union employees on January 1, 2022. Both groups are subject to wage controls for three years. Alongside health care workers, nonprofit workers in shelters, food banks, mental health and addictions, employment and training, and immigrant services are also impacted by the bill’s wage restraints. While the legislation mainly applies to larger nonprofits, and mostly in social services, it affects a large percentage of the nonprofit workforce. The reality is that Ontarians and the economy rely on many of the workers that fall under Bill 124.

With legislation like this on the books, how do we recruit and retain folks in stressful and high-risk jobs that are already low-paid and devalued? It’s not just workers in health care that are leaving in droves because wages are not keeping pace with the 2022 world, but also community-based nonprofit workers whose organizations fall under Bill 124. 

Here are the five ways Bill 124 acts as a barrier for nonprofits to recruit and retain staff: 

1. Uses overall budgets for wage controls: Bill 124 extends beyond provincially funded programs to cover an entire organization’s workforce, even when provincial funding may constitute a small fraction of an organization’s revenue. It interferes with the ability of community nonprofits to manage their own budgets and recruit and retain workers as best as they can within their organizational budgets. 
2. Enforces wage restraint on top of eroding funding levels: Bill 124 restrains compensation in provincially funded nonprofits that in many cases have already been subject to funding flatlines in the last five to ten years, despite growing demand for services. These flat-lined budgets mean nonprofit workers have already been subject to indirect wage restraint of up to 1.5 per cent per year over the past decade – a desperate game of catch-up. Inflation this year has started off at 4.7 per cent and so a 1 per cent wage freeze will mean a drop in real salaries for front-line workers. 
3. Creates an unfair playing field for talent recruitment: Many nonprofits compete for talent with for-profit service providers, who are explicitly exempt from Bill 124 wage restraint measures, despite operating in many of the same industries as nonprofits and getting funding from the exact same government program (long-term care, home care, child care, employment and training services, etc.). As such, Bill 124 sets up an unfair playing field for recruitment and retention in these areas.
4. Does not example wage increases required by other legislation: Nonprofits have existing obligations to comply with other laws. Nothing in the Act explicitly exempts increases that are required for compliance with the Human Rights Code, the Employment Standards Act, or the Pay Equity Act. Being compliant with Bill 124 can mean not being compliant with other legislation that is set up to reduce labour inequities. 
5. Freezes wages for low-wage workers in a women-majority sector: Bill 124 essentially freezes the wages of front-line care workers – of whom almost 80 per cent are women. The lowest-paid workers in the nonprofit sector should not be subject to arbitrary wage controls, most of whom are women performing valuable care work, newcomers, Indigenous, Black, other racialized women, and women with disabilities.

Bill 124 hurts Ontarians

Just as Ontarians across the province rely on health care workers, they also rely on workers in home care agencies, long-term care homes, child care centers, shelters, addictions and mental health programs, employment and training supports, youth programming, and immigrant services. These nonprofits in turn rely on a strong and robust labour force. But the labour force is crumbling and Bill 124 is one of the reasons why. 

There is a concrete solution: the 91��Ƶ government must repeal Bill 124. Communities can’t wait.

Advocate with us

• Join and support cross-sectoral calls to repeal Bill 124
• Amplify the impact of Bill 124 on Ontarians in your sectors, communities, and on social media
• Talk to your local