September 24, 2018
SHARE
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.

More from this series
The army of hidden workers who fool you into thinking AI is magic.
January 13, 2025
This is one shitty story. Is Canada’s sewage infrastructure ready to be flushed?
January 6, 2025
Since the blockbuster success of his musical “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda has been busy: acting, directing, and composing for Disney projects, including the upcoming movie “Mufasa: The Lion King.” 
December 30, 2024
“…you have this attempt to actually change the Aurora Borealis. to affect it physically. This was called Project Waterhole. So they sent up a rocket with 100 kilograms of explosives, and exploded it in the Aurora Borealis band. Within two seconds, they had created a 40 kilometer wide hole in the Aurora Borealis.” - from The Forgotten Need to Probe the Sky
December 23, 2024
“Here's something that not many people know about the baby business.  There are ‘leg-men.’ We call them ‘leg-men’ though some of them are women, who make it their business to find pregnant women who are not married. The leg-men look for them in a million and one places. They meet them in bars and parks and cafes and all over. They hear things.”  - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrester, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
December 16, 2024
“The people who want to play morality police and decide who does or doesn't get to speak, they're not qualified arbiters of anything.” - Caryma Sa’d
December 9, 2024
Are dentists defrauding the Canadian government?
December 2, 2024
The Millenium Bug was supposed to bring the world to a halt, but governments claimed they squashed the problem. Was it all a panic over nothing?
November 28, 2024
all podcasts arrow All Podcasts
CANADALAND