Thank you very much, Chair.
Good morning, committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on this important subject.
The Canadian Labour Congress speaks on national issues on behalf of three million unionized workers in Canada. It brings together over 50 national and international unions, 12 provincial and territorial federations of labour, and over 100 labour councils from coast to coast to coast.
The issue of precarious work is of vital importance to Canadian unions and to working people in Canada. We commend the member for Sault Ste. Marie for his motion and for his role in initiating this important study.
On Tuesday, the committee heard the eloquent testimony of Allyson Schmidt, who recounted not only the personal stress and hardship of precarious employment, but the economic inefficiency and sheer waste that results when someone with such talent and potential cannot secure stable, rewarding employment that makes full use of her capacities.
This sort of labour market failure is widespread in Canada. Employment precarity affects far more workers and is far more prevalent than many understand or are willing to admit. Low pay, employment instability and income volatility, limited access to labour standards protections and other manifestations of labour market insecurity affect millions of workers in this country.
The Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario research project, known as PEPSO, an initiative of the United Way and McMaster University, found that in 2011 20% of those working in the greater Toronto area were in precarious forms of employment. Another 20% were in employment relationships that bore at least some of the characteristics of precarious employment.
Ontario's 2017 Changing Workplaces Review found that vulnerable workers in precarious employment made up nearly one-third of Ontario workers in 2014. Non-standard employment alone made up more than one-quarter of Ontario's workforce. This type of employment includes temporary employees, such as term, contract, seasonal and casual workers; the unincorporated self-employed without paid help; involuntary part-time employees; and multiple job holders where the main job pays less than the median wage.
However, in our view, precarious employment should not be reduced to a question of non-standard work or temporary employment. While there is a high degree of overlap between non-standard and precarious employment, not all contingent or non-standard employment can be viewed as precarious. There are some individuals in non-standard employment, for instance, very highly paid professionals with specialized skills working on contract, who are not in precarious circumstances.
On the flip side, there are workers in standard employment whose work is characterized by aspects of precariousness, so precarious employment should be understood to include not just workers whose employment is uncertain or temporary, but also full-time workers in low-paid jobs, without pensions, benefits or adequate employment standards protections.
For this reason, the Changing Workplaces Review emphasized the need to focus on vulnerable workers in precarious employment as a conceptual way forward. It pointed out that vulnerability, powerlessness at work and in the labour market, and increased physical and financial risks are important dimensions of precarious employment.
Importantly, this approach focuses attention on the ways in which employment-related risks and costs have been progressively shifted to individual workers; how shrinking pension coverage and falling access to post-retirement benefits have transferred retirement risk to individual workers; how declining access to employment insurance benefits has weakened protections against unemployment and raised the cost of job loss. It focuses attention on how employers' declining investment in vocational and on-the-job training has raised individual risks of skill obsolescence and technological unemployment; how changes to workers' compensation have increased risks faced by workers when becoming injured or ill at work, and so on.
Our recommendations to the committee, then, consist of the following.
The committee should recommend, in our view, that the Government of Canada work in conjunction with academics, unions, employers and other stakeholders toward a definition of precarious employment and better data-gathering in the interests of reducing precarity.
In particular, the government should generate better labour market information on the differential impact of precarious employment on women, indigenous people, racialized workers and newcomers to Canada, youth and individuals with disabilities.
The government should develop measures of precariousness that can be tracked over time, and against which government efforts to reduce precarity can be evaluated.
As an employer, and through legislation and regulation, the federal government can take immediate steps to reduce precarious employment and promote good jobs in both the federal public sector and the private sector.
lt can continue to strengthen labour standards for workers in federally regulated industries.
lt can reduce the degree of outsourcing and reliance on temporary agency employment in the federal public service.
lt can address the particular vulnerability of migrant workers in Canada, especially migrant workers in agricultural and low-wage streams of the temporary foreign worker program. lt can also move to regularize undocumented workers in Canada, who live and work in particularly precarious circumstances.
lt can improve access to employment insurance benefits and raise the replacement rate, among other needed improvements.
lt can work to remove obstacles to unionization and improve workers' access to collective bargaining.
Finally, fiscal and monetary policy-makers can devote greater priority to pursuing genuinely full employment in Canada.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to questions from committee members.