WorkRights.ca - Educating Canadian Workers about their Rights
VANCOUVER November 27, 2002
Simon Fraser University's 7th Floor Media has produced WorkRights.ca, a site designed to help workers understand their rights and help them work towards better rights, protection, wages and benefits. For the first time, workers from across Canada, including the territories and federal jurisdiction, have easy access to information about laws and regulations pertaining to a variety of topics from work hours and vacation entitlement to unsafe working conditions and complaint procedures.
7th Floor Media at Simon Fraser University is Canada's leading educational and cultural new media group. Workrights.ca was designed and produced by 7th Floor Media on behalf of Vancouver-based Working Enterprises Group, with content created by the Canadian Labour Congress. The Canadian Labour Congress is the national voice of the labour movement, representing 2.5 million Canadian workers.
The site presents information on workers rights and legislation in a straightforward format. "We wanted to create a one stop solution for Canadian workers;" said John Kay, Executive Assistant to the president for Working Enterprises and Executive Producer for WorkRights.ca, "a place where they can go to get answers to their questions without having to wade through multiple layers of navigation on government web sites laden with legal jargon."
The easy to navigate site gives visitors access to information in a number of ways: they can search by topic, index, site search, or via an "Answer Wizard," which provides answers to questions. As well, the site design allows for quick comparisons from region to region, making it an ideal research tool. For instance, comparing vacation time across regions reveals that in British Columbia workers are entitled to two weeks paid vacation after working full time for one year with the same employer, while Saskatchewan workers are entitled to three weeks after one year. In Newfoundland, a worker must work for fifteen years with the same employer before they are entitled to three weeks paid vacation.
"7th Floor Media is in the business of creating relevant educational applications, so we welcomed the opportunity to develop WorkRights.ca" said Blair Rosser, project manager for the site. "Because legislation is constantly changing, we recognized the need to create a web site that would be easy to update. WorkRights.ca has a state-of-the-art content management system, which allows the client to update content within minutes, without requiring specialized knowledge of web development and publishing." \n\nThe site is being promoted in a series of advertisements that will be displayed on movie theatre screens across the country starting next week. "We want to get the word out to as wide an audience as possible," said John Kay, Executive Producer for the project. "To this end, the advertisements will be posing the question 'how much money do you make compared to the average movie star?' "