Labour policies have dramatic influence on wage gap
Vancouver Sun
May 22, 2008
The results of the 2006 census on income were recently published and produced screaming headlines about the enormous wage decline in Canada over the past 25 years. The income gap between rich and poor is widening, immigrant incomes are plummeting and young people entering the labour market are earning less than their parents a generation ago.
In British Columbia, the median real wage dropped 11.3 per cent from 1980, the steepest slide for any province. Statistics Canada officials were at a loss to explain why B.C. had such a huge drop in income, although various analysts said it was a result of a shift away from industrial employment towards service-sector jobs, an increase in new immigrants in the workforce and rising inter-provincial migration.
Something else needs to be considered: Deliberate government changes in labour policy. Soon after the current government was elected in 2001, it proceeded with initiatives to improve “flexibility” in the labour market. The most dramatic event was the mass firing of hospital support staff (8,000 laundry, cleaning and food service workers) who were disproportionately women of colour, older and immigrants.
This was the first time in Canada that a government had completely overturned a properly negotiated collective agreement. “Flexibility” in this case meant reversing all of the equal pay gains that health support workers had won through the collective bargaining process over 20 years. These workers initially made $17 per hour. Those who remained in the public sector had their wages reduced by 15 per cent, and those whose work was privatized worked for as little as $10 per hour. Too many lost work altogether.
Changes in the Employment Standards Act since 2002 are responsible for the deterioration of working conditions. Employment standards are important because they provide minimum levels for wages and working conditions. The main changes in the act related to decreased enforcement of the law, removal of whole groups of workers from the law’s protection, and specific regulatory changes affecting all workers.
Enforcement was affected by budget cuts to the Employment Standards Branch that resulted in a one-third reduction in staff, a cut in branch offices throughout the province from 17 to nine, and the elimination of routine workplace inspections. But most significant was the shift from having a complaint dealt with by a person to the introduction of a “self-help kit.” The result was stunning: Complaints dropped 46 per cent the first year and 61 per cent over the following three years. This is not because employers began behaving better, but because it is so much harder for workers to file complaints.
Whole groups of workers have been excluded altogether from most of the protections of employment standards. This includes all workers in trade unions, or about 34 per cent of all workers in the province. Other workers excluded from major protections are long-haul truck drivers, oil and gas field workers, foster parents and farm workers.
Most seriously affected by the changes in standards are young workers and immigrants. B.C. was the first jurisdiction in the industrialized world to deregulate child labour and allow children as young as 12 to be employed for up to four hours on a school day to a maximum of 20 hours a week, and during non-school periods for up to 35 hours a week. There are no longer prohibitions on work that is inappropriate for children (such as using power tools and selling door-to-door). B.C. also pioneered the “first job” minimum wage of $6 an hour for the first 500 hours of work, giving the province the lowest wage for new workers in Canada. But many in this category are immigrant women with considerable work experience who find themselves confined to $6 an hour and too often do not leave this wage category when the qualifying period is up. The experience of young workers can be dismal as well since many appear to lose their jobs when the 500 hours are over.
OTHER CHANGES AFFECTING ALL WORKERS INCLUDE:
Complicated “overtime averaging” rules that allow people to work 12 hour days for seven straight days;
Changes to the Labour Code making it harder to obtain union representation;
An ability for “voluntary” agreements to forgo legal rights to overtime pay;
The ability to be called-out for work for as little as two hours a shift.
With a high demand for workers, low unemployment and an economy that has been rapidly expanding in this century, B.C. should be a good place to work. It has a poor record for workers’ wages and working conditions mainly because the government has deliberately lowered the working standards.
Marjorie Griffin Cohen is professor of political science and women’s studies at Simon Fraser University.