Human Resources Committee on Sept. 19th, 2024

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)), Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I call the meeting to order.

The clerk has advised me that nobody requires sound testing because all the witnesses are with us in the room. As well, all committee members are appearing in person.

Welcome to meeting number 123 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, but everybody is appearing in the room.

I would like to advise committee members as well as witnesses on a couple of points.

Please follow the instructions on keeping your earpiece away from the mic when it's plugged in and you're not using it. If it's not plugged in, it's fine. This can create popping, which can damage the hearing of the translators. As well, please refrain from tapping the boom of the mic. Again, it can cause popping on the sound system, which is harmful to the translators.

You can choose the official language of your choice. In the room, interpretation services are available through your earpiece. For those appearing virtually, click on the globe icon at the bottom of your surface. If there is an interruption in translation services, please get my attention. We'll suspend while it is being corrected.

For those in the room, please wait until I call you by name before you speak. If you need to get my attention, raise your hand and I will recognize you. Wait until I recognize you.

Today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, February 26, 2024, the committee commences its study of compensation disparities between unionized and non-unionized workers in Canada.

In this hour, we have two witnesses from Statistics Canada: Isabelle Marchand, director of the centre for labour market information, and Josée Bégin, assistant chief statistician, social, health and labour statistics field.

Welcome. I believe both of you are giving an opening statement of up to five—

No, it's just one. Whoever is giving the opening statement, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Josée Bégin, Assistant Chief Statistician, Social, Health and Labour Statistics Field, Statistics Canada]

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for inviting us to this meeting, which is part of a study on the compensation disparities between unionized and non-unionized workers in Canada.

Statistics Canada has a number of data sources at its disposal, providing a comprehensive picture of the Canadian labour market. Most of the indicators I'm going to mention today are taken from the Labour Force Survey. This monthly survey of some 68,000 households is used to gather information on the characteristics of Canada's labour force, which includes both unionized and non-unionized workers.

According to the latest available data for August 2024, three out of ten employees in Canada were members of a union or covered by a collective agreement. This proportion has remained relatively stable in recent years, but was down slightly compared to 1997, when the question on unionization was introduced in this survey. At that time, 34% of employees in Canada were members of a union or covered by a collective agreement.

Employees who were part of a union in August 2024 earned $37.26 per hour on average, which is higher than the average of $34.30 per hour for employees who were not part of a union. In other words, the union wage premium was about $3 higher, according to the latest data, or 9% higher, on average, per hour.

The difference between union and non-union wages has decreased over the years. In 1997, unionized employees earned 31% more on average than employees who were not in a union. This difference had fallen to 20% by 2017 and was 10% in 2023.

This is in part because wages of non-unionized workers have grown faster than those of unionized workers in recent years. For example, from January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, to August 2024, wages rose 15% for employees who were part of a union but rose 25% for non-unionized employees.

This recent wage growth among non-unionized employees was most notable in a number of high-paying industries, like professional, scientific and technical services. The average hourly wage in this industry was just under $48.00 in August 2024, 9% higher than a year earlier and 32% higher than in January 2020. This industry has one of the lowest rates of unionization at 4%.

Overall, union employees were less likely to have wages in the bottom or top of the wage distribution; rather, they have wages closer to the middle. For example, compared with union workers, non-unionized employees were more likely to be in the top 10% of the wage distribution—11% compared to 8% of union workers—but also more likely to be in the bottom 25% of the wage distribution at 31% versus 11%.

Union workers are also more likely to have a registered pension plan. According to the latest data from Statistics Canada’s survey of financial security, 80% of union workers had a registered pension plan, compared with 23% of non-unionized employees.

Union workers were also more likely than non-unionized employees to have disability insurance—77% versus 48%—in 2023, and access to other workplace benefits, such as maternity and parental benefits, supplementary medical and dental care benefits, sick leave and vacation leave.

The higher wages and the greater workplace benefits for unionized workers can, in part, reflect differences in individual, job, workplace and industry characteristics. For example, union jobs are more typically held by core-age workers with full-time positions, which tend to pay more regardless of union status. On the other hand, youth and those working part time in jobs with low wages in industries such as food services or the retail trade are less likely to be unionized.

Indicators related to job quality point to other potential benefits of being in a union. For example, according to the latest data available, union workers were less likely to report that they might lose their job in the near future—6% versus 9%—and more likely to report having been offered the possibility of taking training through their employer, at 35% versus 27%.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening statement. My colleague Isabelle and I would be happy to answer any of your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Bégin.

Before we begin, I would like to welcome Mr. Zimmer and Madame Gill to the committee.

We will begin with Mr. Seeback for six minutes.

Mr. Seeback, you have the floor.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for your information and data. I love data, so I'm really excited to ask some questions, to see if I can parse some more numbers or if you've done some more number-parsing on this.

I firmly believe that unions make good jobs great. I watched it happen when my son worked in a non-unionized environment in the construction industry, and then he moved to being in a union, and his wages, treatment and safety on the job went up—everything a father could ask for.

My concern is that in certain parts of Canada, we have seen significant declines in unionization rates, so I wonder if we can try to peel the onion a bit on that.

For example, in British Columbia—and I have a chart—in 1981 the unionization rate was 43%, and in 2022 it was 28%. Since 2018 there have been 9,000 job losses in the forestry sector in B.C.; virtually all of those would be unionized jobs, all of it as a result of the government's failure to get the softwood lumber dispute resolved.

Do you have any data to track, by sector, the loss of union jobs? To me, when I look at British Columbia, it looks like a huge number of these job losses and unionization losses are as a result of the loss of jobs in that industry.

[Isabelle Marchand, Director, Centre for Labour Market Information, Statistics Canada]

Thank you for your question.

Concerning the sources of information available to us, as we mentioned earlier, the main source of data is the Labour Force Survey, which collects data on a monthly basis from 68,000 households. It provides information on unionized and non-unionized employees. It can also provide a detailed portrait of the workforce according to certain characteristics, such as sector, industry and occupation, as well as demographic characteristics such as age and gender. Data is collected for different population groups, such as racialized groups, immigrants or people with disabilities. It is therefore possible to provide a variety of statistics in this respect. It is also possible to provide statistics on the number of employees at provincial and sub-provincial levels, as well as various labour market statistics. It is also possible to make comparisons over time.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Can you provide to the committee how many unionized jobs were lost in British Columbia over the last 10 years in the forestry sector? Is it possible, if you go through all the layers of the data you collect, for you to provide that to the committee, or could you try to do it?

[Josée Bégin]

For sure, Mr. Chair, we can provide detailed information, a table with some of the elements that Isabelle mentioned. It will be in terms of the jobs. Every month we're counting jobs—not necessarily a comparison of job losses, but of employment levels each month.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

The other sector I'm really interested in is the coal sector. There was supposed to be a just transition for coal workers as a result of the phase-out of the use of coal. We know that the Auditor General provided a report that showed there was absolutely no just transition for coal workers.

Do you have any, or can you provide us with, some data on what happened to coal workers? According to the government's own report from the Auditor General, there was no similar alternative employment that was offered, so the coal workers went from a good-paying union job with a pension and benefits to, often, working at Walmart, for example, which to me is an absolute tragedy.

Would you be able to parse the numbers on coal workers, for example, in the loss of good-paying unionized jobs and where they went?

[Josée Bégin]

We'd have to do some kind of longitudinal analysis. What I propose is that we come back with an answer to your question as whether or not we are able to do that. We'll have to be able to identify those sectors in that industry and then see, through our sources of information, whether we can find them later and in which industry they've been associated.

I'm not sure we have the capacity to do that, but we can look into it, for sure, and come back to you with an answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have about 20 seconds.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I'm fine, thanks

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

Mr. Long, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning to my colleagues.

Thank you to the witnesses this morning.

It's great to hear MP Seeback's support for unions. I think that's very encouraging and refreshing.

The purpose of the study for me when I put it forward was.... To go back, when I grew up, my dad worked for a company. It was called Murray and Gregory in Saint John. It was a lumber and woodworking company. My mom and dad had three kids—my brother, my sister and me. We grew up, I would probably say, lower middle class, in west Saint John.

As I got older and older, I realized that my dad never had a health plan. He never had a pension plan. He didn't have anything compared to a lot of his friends who were in similar industries. In fact, he made well below what they made. I kind of grew up in a non-union environment, but recognizing the value that union jobs had, the value they could bring to families and how they could kind of set the bar for wages.

Mr. Seeback talked about the union per cent drop across the country and what that would do to wages, but I want to change it to access to paid sick leave. I know that there was a study in 2023 in which the University of Regina found that workers with union coverage were more likely to have paid sick leave—80% compared to 55% for workers without union coverage—which, sadly, I don't think is a surprise to many of us. For workplace pensions, it was 82% compared to 37%, which is just stunning to me.

Ms. Bégin, thanks for your testimony. Can you talk about to what extent Stats Canada data on unionization and benefits is publicly available? Are there plans to release further data in this area?

[Isabelle Marchand]

Thank you for your question.

As far as benefits are concerned, the Labour Force Survey allows us to collect data from employees to find out what benefits they have access to, such as maternity benefits, parental leave, disability insurance, paid vacation and paid sick leave. Certain details are thus accessible.

The statistics we have on access to benefits show that, generally speaking, the rate of access to these benefits is higher among unionized employees than among non-unionized employees. What's more, as Ms. Bégin mentioned in her opening address, the proportion of unionized employees with access to disability insurance is 77%, compared with 48% among non-unionized employees.

As the Labour Force Survey collects data for different industries and geographic regions, and for different population groups, it is possible to provide these statistics in numerical form.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

Can either of you expand on the impact of unionization on benefits across different industries?

[Isabelle Marchand]

If we look at the latest data for industry and at the union coverage rate, we find the lowest union coverage rate in agriculture, professional, scientific and technical services, as well as accommodation and food services. If we look at the highest union coverage rates, we'll find them in industry, namely public administration, educational services, health care and social assistance. There is the ability to provide information about the union coverage rate as well as the union wage premium. It's data that has been collected since 1997, so depending on the request, it looks possible.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

I have another question.

Ms. Bégin, in your presentation you talked about the discrepancy in hourly wages between unionized workers and non-union workers.

Can you expand on that again, just for the record? I didn't get all of what you said.

I mean the difference and how it has evolved over time, etc.

[Josée Bégin]

Mr. Chair, would you like me to repeat some of the paragraphs from my opening statement, so it's clear or is there a specific question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

That's not for me to determine. You can choose to answer, and if the questioner does not like your answer, they will question you again and clarify.

[Josée Bégin]

Thank you for your guidance.

Maybe I can add a little bit and go back to what we said earlier.

We know that employees who were part of a union in August 2024—this is the latest data we have available—earned, on average, $37.26 per hour. This is higher than the average of $34.30 per hour for employees who were not part of a union.

It's about $3 more in terms of a wage premium.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Long.

Ms. Gill, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Marchand and Ms. Bégin, I also thank you for attending the committee.

First of all, the disparity in treatment between unionized and non-unionized workers is well established. We know that unionization is a decisive advantage. You illustrated this many times in your introductory speech.

Two of my colleagues talked about the significant drop in the unionization rate. According to the information I have, this varies between the private and public sectors, but generally speaking, it is relatively stable. Can you tell me what the situation is, so that there's no longer any doubt as to what's going on, and to be useful to the committee? Obviously, it depends on the time scale used, since we can base ourselves on a period of five, ten, twenty or thirty years.

[Isabelle Marchand]

Thank you for the question. You referred to the unionization rate and how it differs between the private and public sectors.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

I'd rather know if there's a transfer from one to the other. We agree that it can't be stable in both sectors, but I'd like to know if the proportion of unionized workers remains the same in both sectors.

[Isabelle Marchand]

I'll share some statistics with you, and we'll see if that answers your question satisfactorily.

We currently observe a higher rate of union coverage for public sector employees. It stands at 76%, compared with 15% in the private sector. In general, public sector employees have higher salaries. As for the stability of the unionization rate, I don't have that data to hand today, but it's something we can study, depending on the reference period, and we can also disaggregate data.