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Q& A’s with Patricia Hajdu, Minister of Employment,

Workforce Development and Labour

The Honourable Patricia Hajdu, Minister of Employment, Workforce wonder if anyone's read that?" And so I asked the question in the
Development and Labour has been a true friend to the Building class, and I said, "Does anyone ever heard of a Fight for a 10-
Trades. She’s a dynamic, down-to-earth, empathetic leader who hour Work Day?" And of course none of the students had. And
understands what matters to workers. Having been the first in her then I told them that this thing that we take for granted that we
family to graduate from university, raising two sons as a single work eight hours or so and that if we work over X number of hours
parent, and having run the largest homeless shelter in per week were counted for overtime, that wasn't standard. And
Northwestern Ontario, she has a unique experience that creates employers could work you as hard as they wanted for as long as
a better understanding of the real struggles Canadians from all they wanted without any extra compensation and their jaws
dropped to the floor.
different backgrounds face. At the Building Trades last Legislative
Conference, Director Arlene Dunn introduced Minister Hajdu, And I thought, Wow, we have some work to do.
saying “She’s not afraid to say that the way to build the middle
class is through union membership.” The Building Trades Question:
Over the next decade, the skilled trades are facing a shortage.
Magazine with Chairman of the Canadian Executive Board, Robert
Many steps have been taken by the Federal Government to
Kucheran, recently sat down with Minister Hajdu and asked just
address the growing shortage and the lack of understanding about
what that statement meant to her:
the opportunities that exist in the skilled trades. In the times
Minister Hajdu has addressed the Building Trades, and discussed
Minister Hajdu:
the importance of apprenticeships, she speaks from experience,
The history of unionization is such that, without unions advocating
sharing the story of her son’s discovery of the skilled trades and
for basic rights in the workplace all those years ago, a hundred
his journey into a career with the Operating Engineers.
years ago or more, in some cases, we would not have the middle
class that we have today. The rights that employees take for Minister Hajdu:
granted, even in non-unionized settings that are protected, I think this is one of the travesties of our time, actually, is that we
whether it's provincial labour code or federal labour code, that was have all these young men and women, people from all different
done by hardworking unions and union activists who oftentimes backgrounds who might be really good in the skilled trades who
put their own posterity, and in some cases, safety at risk because have been dissuaded or discouraged from pursuing a career in
they were fighting for a collective good for workers across the the skilled trades from a variety of different voices, and part of
country. that is historical. I remember this even when I was a kid, we
actually had a skilled trade high school and the kids that went to
When we think about economic gain, when we think about labour
that high school was stigmatized as a result of their choices
standards, when we think about the prosperity of communities,
because it was around that time or just before it that parents and
when we think about family integrity, it's actually unions at the
teachers and the whole education sort of fields started streaming
base of it that created those standards that actually many people people towards university instead of college or the skilled trades
take for granted. and demeaning the choices that people chose a career in the
skilled trade, and the tragedy about that was two-fold.
I really understood that when I visited a local pre-apprenticeship
training course at one of our local unions here and they were young One, that those are incredibly great-paying jobs that are highly
and sort of middle-aged people sometimes going back for a skilled, that require a high degree of expertise in a number of
second career. I've told this story before, but I passed this little different ways. But secondly, that some people are not well suited
newspaper article that the union had framed on the wall and it for a life of academia and are really well suited for the trade, and
was called the Fight For a 10-hour Work Day. And I thought, "I my son was one of those people. In fact, at grade nine, he was

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