The number of vacancies in the trucking industry is the problem we’ve been talking about the longest. As I said, a labour shortage was predicted as far back as 2013, when the report by the Conference Board of Canada came out. That was before the pandemic and the supply chain crisis. There was a lot of talk in that report about making the trade more attractive.
However, as I noted earlier, there are a lot of pressures in the rail sector as well. The data is approximate, since we don’t have statistics on it, but what I’ve learned is that a company will hire 100 people, but often only 20 will be left two years later.
When it comes to working conditions, I mentioned rail workers being monitored on camera, but companies want to enforce other very arbitrary regulations. For example, employees are not allowed to use mobile phones, even when it is safe. So, the employee is going to find themselves…