Economy

Ending Precarious Employment – A Game-Changer Strategy

Precarious Employment is the jargon people like me use to describe the employment conditions and experiences of a growing number of workers in our country. Here is what that jargon means:

Precarious employment is in effect sub-standard employment that offers low wages that typically are not enough to live on, and that does not offer basic benefits like sick leave, vacation leave, or even unpaid bereavement leave. Health and dental benefits are too often absent as a benefit to low-wage workers.

In Ontario, according to the Wellesley Institute, one in three workers do not have health and dental benefits. And the lower your income the more likely you will not have these benefits. In fact, the Institute reports that only one in five persons making $10,000 or less receive health and dental benefits from their employer. As well, the Institute reports that it is not until workers are earning $60,000 per  year that the majority have employer provided health and dental benefits (90%). See this link from Benefits Canada’s website.

Such employment also lacks in any form of job security. Workers can be sent home on a slow day, laid off for seasonal reasons, or simply let go if they are seen to be a “problem.” By “problem” I mean when a worker has to stay home to take care of her child in a work environment where such leave is not allowed. It might be allowed on the books (unpaid sick leave) but not so in practice. Precarious employment can also include work situations where worker safety is ignored, side-stepped, and seen as an unnecessary drain on revenues.

Most employers are likely decent employers, but precarious employment is not rare. Living Wage Canada reports that one-quarter of workers are low-income, the highest rate in the world. Precarious employment is estimated to affect 50% of Ontario workers, according to the Fight for 15 and Fairness collaboration.

A livable income is a game-changer for people. Sufficient income means better access to health services, to good food, to accessing services for our children, for planning for the future, and participating in the economy. A good job offering sufficient income reduces mental health problems, helps reduce stress in family relationships and can avoid the embarrassment, not to mention lack of opportunity, that children face at school when their parents cannot afford the extra fees required for participation in a sport or other school activity. People who earn a livable income can turn their attention from survival to contributing to their community and the lives of those they love and care about.

Imagine if there were more groups, more community leaders, more businesses, more citizens focused on stopping precarious employment and increasing the number of jobs that compensate people fairly.

Systems would change, new and effective policies would surface, employers would treat workers with dignity and people’s human rights would be met.

For more information:

• Fight for $15 and Fairness (Ontario)
• Fight for $15 (British Columbia)
• Fight for $15 (Nova Scotia)
• Fight for $15 (United States)

 

Precarious Work

When an employer won’t allow a worker more than 25 hours a week but requires that worker to be available for work 7 days a week, people become little more than commodities on the open market of Precarious Employment.

Lately I have made an effort to talk with folks that work at places like Shopper’s Drug Mart, Home Depot, and Save-on Foods and none of the workers I have talked to get an eight hour shift. My partner’s son just landed a job at 30 hours per week, no benefits of any kind.

Efforts like the Living Wage movement are gaining traction but large corporations seem slower on the uptake than do small business owners. When will the incessant desire to keep wages low by major businesses end up hurting the economy on which these low wage employers depend? There is a tipping point somewhere down the road – for everyone.

The Living Wage movement is a welcome Pan-Canadian effort to ensure that people have a “livable” income. We also need to collectively address the commodification of human beings who are put to work without any consideration for what happens when a worker or her child is sick, for the need to have a day off to rest and revitalize, not to mention deal with life’s practicalities.

Imagine being fired for being sick and missing a couple of days of work. Imagine working for $12.00 per hour in unsafe conditions and suffering from a workplace injury that could have been avoided. Imagine no health and dental care, no vacation time, nada.

Imagine being a part-time worker and not being able to seek other part-time work because your employer wants access to your entire work week to schedule you.

For too many Canadian workers there is no need to imagine. This is their reality.

In Ontario, there is a movement to get the minimum wage to $15 per hour and to bring in legislation and regulations that would address the unsavory trend of precarious work. Led by Fight for 15 and Fairness, the good folks there launched A Better Way Alliance and features videos of business leaders who also believe in the importance of decent work. Click here watch the videos.

Take a look at some great employers who do care and who do value their employers. They tend to be small employers and I have to wonder if they can treat their employees like human beings that matter, why can’t large businesses?

better alliance

Mandatory Winter Tires and Poverty

Yes, perhaps an odd title for a posting, but bear with me. I was on my way back home from meeting downtown with Alberta Government colleagues who also work in the poverty reduction arena and I heard this call-in show about winter tires and more to the point about whether or not winter tires should be mandatory.

They are in Quebec now but even in some provinces without a mandatory requirement more than 80% of drivers have winter tires. Not so in Alberta where the percentage is just over 50%. Not sure about other low percentage provinces, but here is what went through my mind.

The folks that called in didn’t all agree, but I got the impression that most were for making it a legal requirement to have winter tires and my impression of the radio interviewer and guest was that they were biased toward mandatory winter tires. I get that. It makes sense, right, that all of us would require one another to do this. It’s safer. Winter tires stop a car better than all season tires.

I have never owned winter tires but could afford them if I chose to buy them or was required to, though being forced to dole out $1,000 for a new set of tires and then pay more for rims and the ongoing costs of changing and balancing each season – well, the “Albertan” in me just doesn’t want to be forced to do that.

But all of the above is not really why I wrote this post.

While I was listening to the radio show, it hit me that this radio engagement of citizens around winter tires was one more example of how a certain segment of the population is marginalized, not really considered, and in a sense relegated once again to second-class citizen. Continue reading →

Trends Leaders Cannot Ignore

In September I am doing six workshops at Tamarack’s Community Change Institute. One of the workshops is: Ten Trends Leaders Cannot Ignore. I am gathering data right now, investigating trends identified by others; there are so many trends we have to pay attention to that I am not yet certain of the ten I will showcase.  But here are a few trends I am tracking right now that I believe qualify for some substantive, authentic attention by our political, economic, and community leaders.

All the charts below are all based on data from Statistics Canada. Ask yourself what the implications are of these trends and what options we have to address them. While you might take issue with my commentary, the data is the data. Do you think these trends and patterns suggest good news for our society going forward?

wealth
I have written before about Wealth and Income Inequality. While the gap in Canada is not yet as severe as the worldwide trend, the gap is significant and it’s getting wider, as the chart below indicates. Continue reading →

Signals of Coming Disruption

Big change doesn’t just click on. It occurs over time, starting out often as weak signals of the change to come. Sometimes it’s like the old frog in the boiling water story. Put the frog in when the water is cool and turn up the flame and eventually the frog realizes its plight, just too late to adjust, to escape.

For years, donor giving has been changing. Charities have become increasingly dependent on larger gifts from fewer donors. As the economy has served to increase the income and wealth gap between the small numbers of wealthy and the rest of everyone else, we have seen food bank use escalate and a growing number of workers living pay check to pay check. Job security is no longer a reasonable expectation for a growing number of people, much less the chance for advancement. Employee supported pensions are no longer the norm and health and dental benefits are harder to come by for low income workers and many who do not yet qualify as “low income” workforce members.

imagenoise_signalmlab2The adaptations charities have taken have been focused on how to grow revenues through different sources of revenues. Funders are looking at alternatives too, given their inability to fund all the good things that come their way. Crowdfunding, social enterprise, impact investing, social purpose businesses are among the more recent options in financing social good.

GDP growth has been slowing, 80% of Canadian incomes are not increasing or if they are, at far less a rate, the restructuring of the job market is creating more insecure and benefit-less employment. the ratio of workers to seniors is dramatically decreasing. Key drivers like oil prices are in turmoil. Consumer debt keeps increasing. The numbers of people making $15 or less are growing as businesses work harder to cut back on expenses in order to feed more profits to investors. Continue reading →