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Antiwork

I Believe My Workplace is Operating… Basically Illegally (Canada)

Let me start by saying: I do not want for this place to be shut down or anything, I simply just want things to be done properly. I very much understand that I can just up and leave, find another job blah blah but there's more to it than that and I'm a bit more invested than any other job… However ​ My employer could not care any less about their employees. They took the company over from their parents years ago to keep the family business alive and somewhere between then and now (maybe even earlier who knows) all of the government laws that an employer has to follow seem to have gone out the window at this place. Quite a large portion of my work involves me being inside an enclosed space and hauling metal carts that are roughly 7ft high by 5ft long by 3ft wide. This…


Let me start by saying:

  1. I do not want for this place to be shut down or anything, I simply just want things to be done properly.
  2. I very much understand that I can just up and leave, find another job blah blah but there's more to it than that and I'm a bit more invested than any other job… However

My employer could not care any less about their employees.

They took the company over from their parents years ago to keep the family business alive and somewhere between then and now (maybe even earlier who knows) all of the government laws that an employer has to follow seem to have gone out the window at this place.

Quite a large portion of my work involves me being inside an enclosed space and hauling metal carts that are roughly 7ft high by 5ft long by 3ft wide. This enclosed space is often times being pumped with some sort of mist (that I'm constantly inhaling and exposed to) that I learned this week was full of pesticide–one that you need a permit in order to purchase. Now, one would think that working with carts of that size and weight which are prone to injury we would be required to wear steel toed boots… Nope, as long as you're working fast enough Boss doesn't care. One may also think that working in (in, not with… Basically swimming in the shit) what my coworker told me was a schedule 3 pesticide that maybe we would at least be told what the name of the pesticide is?? Nope, WHMIS (Chemical labelling/safety & all that jazz) does not exist here, regardless of the fact that we work with numerous pesticides. I have yet to see a warning label anywhere around this place.

This is literally only the beginning, I haven't even started getting into it yet… The shit pay, the things I was never told in an interview, the safety orientation I never received, the harassment we get for taking our breaks which we're entitled to, etc. etc….But I'm already miserable from just this so I think I'm done for at least now.

If you have any idea of what I can do / where I can go to get somebody to take a look at this place or how to get some changes made, please be my guest I'm all ears! Thanks.

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