Good morning. First, I thank you for inviting us, and I must say that unfortunately, we did not bring a brief. We were invited to participate only at the end of last week. If necessary, we would have no problem sending in a document.
Au bas de l'échelle is an organization that defends the rights of non-unionized workers. We have two main areas of interest. The first is providing information to individuals who have problems at work. We offer various information services over the telephone and also offer information sessions on the Quebec Labour Standards Act to individuals who have filed psychological harassment complaints. We also provide information to people who are in the middle of a mediation process. Our second area of interest is getting involved politically and participating in public consultations. We have published a number of legal analyses, and also educational materials on labour laws.
As part of these consultations, we would like to draw your attention to two important issues that could be factors in poverty: nonstandard employment and minimum wage. First, I will talk about labour casualization as a cause of poverty. By labour casualization, I mean the increased number of types and statuses of jobs, or people who work part time, on call, who have contract or temporary jobs, people who work from home or for a temporary help agency—any job that is not stable, generally full time, and indeterminate.
In 2008, 37% of jobs in Quebec and in Canada were nonstandard. Why do we call these jobs nonstandard? First, they generally offer lower wages. Second, they also offer less stability and job security, they offer limited or non-existent access to benefits and training, and, to a degree, they complicate the right of association and the right to collective bargaining. There is a difference in the way regular, permanent employees of a company are treated, and the way the others, who have unstable employment, are treated.
I would like to throw out a few figures to give you some examples. For non-unionized employees, the average hourly wage for a permanent employee is $17.51, while the average hourly wage for a short-term employee is $13.32. That is a difference of 24%. In the business sector, there is a wage gap of 40% between full-time and part-time workers. In public administration, there is a difference of 35%, and in the manufacturing sector, a difference of 33%. For workers hired through temporary help agencies, the gap is even wider. People who are hired through temporary help agencies earn 40% less than permanent employees. That is why we are calling for the necessary changes to the Quebec Labour Standards Act to ensure that everyone is treated equally, and to restrict the increase in numbers of casual jobs and to limit the advantages that companies gain by offering these types of jobs.
We called for the same thing during consultations in October 2005, on the reform of Part III of the Canada Labour Code, and we will soon be making similar recommendations in the discussion paper on the Canada Labour Code labour standards review.
So that we can ensure that everyone is treated equally, the Quebec Labour Standards Act and the Canada Labour Code need to establish that an employer cannot provide working conditions to an employee that are inferior to those provided to workers doing a comparable job for the same company, for the following reasons: if this person usually works fewer hours per week; if this person was hired through an employability program or measure covered by legislation; if this person is a temporary, casual or on-call employee; if this person was hired through a temporary help agency; or if this person works outside the work building. We are also calling for companies to pay wage compensation that is proportional to the loss in benefits to which other employees of the company are entitled.
Recently in Quebec—and it is similar in the other Canadian provinces—we have seen some employers that try to reduce costs and increase flexibility, and end up creating inequalities based on the type or status of the job, which can make it difficult for people to access decent jobs, and explains part of the problem with poverty among workers.
Another important part of access to decent work is the minimum wage to which a worker is entitled in exchange for work done. I will be talking about minimum wage.
Now, the minimum wage—