September 24, 2018
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CANADALAND
#245 The Last Labour Reporter
Sara Mojtehedzadeh may very well be Canada's only full-time labour reporter.

This past fall, as the Toronto Star’s ‘work and wealth’ reporter, Mojtehedzadeh went undercover for a month at Fiera Foods—a factory in Toronto where a temp agency worker was recently killed.

Her month-long stint led to Undercover in Temp Nation, an explosive year-long investigation into the company. Her and Brendan Kennedy‘s reporting is exemplary, but its kind is nearly extinct. In a time when robust coverage of unions and ‘workplace issues’ is scarce, and sporadic-at-best labour stories are relegated to the business section, investigations like Mojtehedzadeh’s are rare.

Guest Host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with Mojtehedzadeh and the Globe and Mail’s (Vancouver) longtime former labour reporter Rod Mickleburgh about how the labour beat has changed over the years, and what less coverage means for working Canadians in a time when precarious employment rules and the gig (economy) is definitely not up.

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