Since, I've posted & blogged these kinds of news stories quite a few times (Aug, Sept), I don't have much to say here.
When people tell me that take a temporary / contract job & it will turn into a permanent job later (I don't know how they know that), my answer is that there's a high chance that the job won't turn into a permanent one. After all, what incentive the company has to hire a worker, on a permanent basis, & pay for his/her health insurance & pension expenses, when the same worker can be kept on a temporary basis, indefinitely, & still get the job done, without any pension & benefits expenses for the company.
Another question I have for people who advocate "networking" is why are there 340,000 temp workers & there is a 33% increase in temporary workers, in the past decade (2004 - 2014), when all these people could've done "networking" to get a permanent job. Are all these people stupid, too timid, or unsocial to not know how to network? Networking is useless if you don't have influential family members or close friends in your circle, who are willing to bat for you.
I do see that there is an explosion in the Employment agencies in Ontario, & all over Canada, & the amount of money in this industry is obscene. With the commissions these employment agencies pay out to their workers, 6-figure salaries are common. People who are earning these 6-figure salaries have neither worked for years in the industry or have multiple relevant degrees & designations. That's why, I also see CAs & MBAs working in employment agencies now, because there's far more money in this industry than they will ever earn anywhere else.
But all this money is being earned by trampling on the workers' & human rights of thousands of other individuals. Many people choose the path of employment agencies only when they don't have any other option of getting a job. They all hope to get a permanent job one day. But, the way the contracts are structured, companies are also discouraged to hire temp & contract workers on a permanent basis. For instance, the one-time fees a company has to pay to hire a worker from a temp agency on a permanent basis are hefty.
All in all, everyone is making money & earning huge benefits at the expense of the small guy who has no rights. I thought that only happened in developing countries where rich control everything & the poor, small guy is pushed around.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more than 5 years, 61-year-old Angel Reyes has woken up 5 days a week at 3 a.m. & braced himself for 8 hours of hauling garbage at a Toronto recycling plant.
The university-educated refugee is the longest-serving worker on the floor, hired through a temp agency more than half a decade ago.
Half a decade &, technically, still a temp.
Half a decade earning minimum wage, never having seen a raise.
Half a decade, & still paid less per hour than his permanent colleagues for doing the same job.
Half a decade, & still no benefits.
Half a decade, & still no obligation for his employer to hire him permanently.
“If hell exists, that is hell,” says Reyes, a father of 3 who came to Canada in 1993 after he was kidnapped & imprisoned in El Salvador for — ironically — lobbying for workers’ rights.
Under Ontario’s antiquated Employment Standards Act, which is currently under review, there is no limit on how long a company can employ a worker as temporary before giving him or her a permanent job.
There is nothing to stop employers from paying temp workers less than their permanent counterparts, nothing to prevent them from hiring their entire workforce on a “temporary” basis if they so choose.
“If the employer knows that they can hire you & they don’t have to give you benefits, they don’t have to give you a pension, they can hire you for a lot less, there’s no incentive for them to hire permanently. Why would they?” says Deena Ladd, who heads the Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.
“The biggest issue is the lack of respect & dignity in (temporary) work. Nobody is seeing them for who they are & the work that they’re doing. They are completely invisible.”
In Toronto, their ranks are growing, with temporary workers outpacing permanent ones at twice the rate, their wages significantly lower.
Over the past decade, there has been a 33% increase in the number of temporary workers in Toronto, to more than 340,000 in 2014 from 256,000 in 2004, according to Statistics Canada. Industries such as food manufacturing, transportation & health care saw some of the biggest jumps.
By contrast, the number of permanent employees increased by just 12% over the same period.
Not all temporary workers are hired through agencies; many are hired directly on fixed-term contracts. Statistics Canada figures don’t differentiate between temp agency workers & direct hires.
Still, Ontario’s temp agency industry is flourishing. The province’s employment services sector earned $5.7 billion in revenue in 2012, a near 72% jump from 2002. Temporary agencies account for an estimated 60% of that industry’s total revenue.
Temp agencies are responsible for paying a worker their wages, which they bill the company for, & also take care of statutory entitlements such as Canada Pension Plan, injury pay & vacation pay. The agencies charge their client companies a fee for each assignment to cover all of these costs.
The hourly rate paid to the temp agency for an assignment can be as much as double the worker’s wage. Temp agencies are not required under the Employment Standards Act to tell workers how much they are charging the company per hour to employ them.
Toronto resident Antoinette Schokman-De Zilva, 66, a retired former executive assistant who worked numerous placements through temp agencies, says she was shocked to discover on one assignment that the company was paying the temp agency almost double her hourly wage.
“If I’m paid $20 an hour, they’re charging $45 from the company,” she says.
For some employers, temp agencies help match them with high-level, specialized workers.
But for many others, using temp agencies is part of what the action centre’s Ladd calls a “cheap wage strategy” to keep costs low & responsibilities, such as health benefits & pensions, to a minimum.
Figures provided to the Star by Statistics Canada show that the median wage of a temporary worker in Toronto is just $15 an hour, while permanent employees make $22.40 — a pay gap of 33%.
The gap is even wider for male temps in non-unionized workplaces, who make a median hourly wage of just $13.50. Their permanent counterparts make 40% more, at $22.50 an hour.
Ontario has made some recent strides toward reform, such as giving workers the right to receive public holiday pay & one weeks’ termination notice. But other countries have done more to protect temporary workers from unequal pay & long-term temp work.
In the U.K., temp workers are entitled to receive the same pay as permanent workers in equivalent positions after 3 months on the job.
In Italy, temporary positions automatically become permanent after 36 months in the same assignment.
And in Australia, employers who hire temps must pay them a 15% to 25% premium on their hourly wage in recognition that such workers rarely receive benefits.
But while Ontario’s Employment Standards Act mandates pay equity between men & women, there are no provisions to protect workers from pay discrimination based on their temporary employment status.
Reyes, for example, says permanent employees at his plant make more than him when they start, plus receive benefits, while he still earns minimum wage after more than 5 years on the job as a temp. The only time his salary increased was when the government raised the minimum wage to $11 an hour.
...
The repercussions of endless temp agency work for some of the province’s most vulnerable workers are more than financial.
A 2013 study by the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health, which conducted interviews with more than 60 low-wage temp agency workers, industry experts & employers in Ontario, concluded that poor oversight & intense competition between agencies put temporary workers at greater risk of work injury than their permanent counterparts.
Ellen MacEachen, the report’s lead author, says workers told her they felt powerless to complain about poor work conditions because they knew they were replaceable & feared losing even poorly-paid jobs.
“Workers who have job insecurity will take care to protect their jobs, & that can often mean trying not to complain about anything,” she says.
Since the Workplace Safety & Insurance Act recognizes temp agencies as the sole employer of their workers, companies can also keep a clean WSIB record if temp agency workers are injured on the job.
“No one is looking out for them,” says the action centre’s Ladd. “You have a perfect environment for a complete deterioration of health & safety, wages, & working conditions.”
Mary McIninch, director of government relations at the Association of Canadian Search, Employment & Staffing Services, which represents more than 1,000 employment agencies including temps, says her members actively maintain a voluntary code of ethics. She describes them as “the most reputable, credible firms in the industry.”
The association has supported some government measures to give temp workers rights, McIninch says, but adds it would oppose reforms like pay parity.
She says “a strong majority” of her members place workers in highly paid positions, & that workers are compensated according to skill & experience.
“We have so many positive testimonials from new Canadians & students,” she told the Star, calling the example of Angel Reyes “not representative of the majority of workers in the industry.”
“I think if that were representative of even a strong minority, I doubt very much that as many individuals that we see — over 300,000 across the country — would continue to use our members’ services,” she adds.
But former temp worker Schokman-De Zilva, who immigrated to Toronto from Sri Lanka in 1989, says she only turned to agency jobs when permanent ones were not available, hoping they would lead to stable employment.
They never did.
“They just threw the contract in my face when I protested,” she says. “And that was it.”
Despite the recent government reforms, people like Reyes are still falling through the cracks.
For him, life at a drafty, dust-filled recycling plant may not be glamorous, but a job is a job.
...
Proposed solutions
A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to tackle the widening disparity between permanent employees & temporary agency workers. These include:
• Requiring companies to pay temps the same wages & benefits as permanent staff in equivalent positions.
• Requiring temporary agencies to tell workers how much they are charging a company per hour for an assignment.
• Instituting a six-month limit on temporary assignments, after which temps must be directly hired by the company.
• Scrapping a provision that allows temp agencies to charge companies a fee if they give temps permanent jobs in the first 6 months of work.
• Limiting how many workers in a single company can be temporary agency employees (no more than 20%).
When people tell me that take a temporary / contract job & it will turn into a permanent job later (I don't know how they know that), my answer is that there's a high chance that the job won't turn into a permanent one. After all, what incentive the company has to hire a worker, on a permanent basis, & pay for his/her health insurance & pension expenses, when the same worker can be kept on a temporary basis, indefinitely, & still get the job done, without any pension & benefits expenses for the company.
Another question I have for people who advocate "networking" is why are there 340,000 temp workers & there is a 33% increase in temporary workers, in the past decade (2004 - 2014), when all these people could've done "networking" to get a permanent job. Are all these people stupid, too timid, or unsocial to not know how to network? Networking is useless if you don't have influential family members or close friends in your circle, who are willing to bat for you.
I do see that there is an explosion in the Employment agencies in Ontario, & all over Canada, & the amount of money in this industry is obscene. With the commissions these employment agencies pay out to their workers, 6-figure salaries are common. People who are earning these 6-figure salaries have neither worked for years in the industry or have multiple relevant degrees & designations. That's why, I also see CAs & MBAs working in employment agencies now, because there's far more money in this industry than they will ever earn anywhere else.
But all this money is being earned by trampling on the workers' & human rights of thousands of other individuals. Many people choose the path of employment agencies only when they don't have any other option of getting a job. They all hope to get a permanent job one day. But, the way the contracts are structured, companies are also discouraged to hire temp & contract workers on a permanent basis. For instance, the one-time fees a company has to pay to hire a worker from a temp agency on a permanent basis are hefty.
All in all, everyone is making money & earning huge benefits at the expense of the small guy who has no rights. I thought that only happened in developing countries where rich control everything & the poor, small guy is pushed around.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more than 5 years, 61-year-old Angel Reyes has woken up 5 days a week at 3 a.m. & braced himself for 8 hours of hauling garbage at a Toronto recycling plant.
The university-educated refugee is the longest-serving worker on the floor, hired through a temp agency more than half a decade ago.
Half a decade &, technically, still a temp.
Half a decade earning minimum wage, never having seen a raise.
Half a decade, & still paid less per hour than his permanent colleagues for doing the same job.
Half a decade, & still no benefits.
Half a decade, & still no obligation for his employer to hire him permanently.
“If hell exists, that is hell,” says Reyes, a father of 3 who came to Canada in 1993 after he was kidnapped & imprisoned in El Salvador for — ironically — lobbying for workers’ rights.
Under Ontario’s antiquated Employment Standards Act, which is currently under review, there is no limit on how long a company can employ a worker as temporary before giving him or her a permanent job.
There is nothing to stop employers from paying temp workers less than their permanent counterparts, nothing to prevent them from hiring their entire workforce on a “temporary” basis if they so choose.
“If the employer knows that they can hire you & they don’t have to give you benefits, they don’t have to give you a pension, they can hire you for a lot less, there’s no incentive for them to hire permanently. Why would they?” says Deena Ladd, who heads the Toronto-based labour rights group the Workers’ Action Centre.
“The biggest issue is the lack of respect & dignity in (temporary) work. Nobody is seeing them for who they are & the work that they’re doing. They are completely invisible.”
In Toronto, their ranks are growing, with temporary workers outpacing permanent ones at twice the rate, their wages significantly lower.
Over the past decade, there has been a 33% increase in the number of temporary workers in Toronto, to more than 340,000 in 2014 from 256,000 in 2004, according to Statistics Canada. Industries such as food manufacturing, transportation & health care saw some of the biggest jumps.
By contrast, the number of permanent employees increased by just 12% over the same period.
Not all temporary workers are hired through agencies; many are hired directly on fixed-term contracts. Statistics Canada figures don’t differentiate between temp agency workers & direct hires.
Still, Ontario’s temp agency industry is flourishing. The province’s employment services sector earned $5.7 billion in revenue in 2012, a near 72% jump from 2002. Temporary agencies account for an estimated 60% of that industry’s total revenue.
Temp agencies are responsible for paying a worker their wages, which they bill the company for, & also take care of statutory entitlements such as Canada Pension Plan, injury pay & vacation pay. The agencies charge their client companies a fee for each assignment to cover all of these costs.
The hourly rate paid to the temp agency for an assignment can be as much as double the worker’s wage. Temp agencies are not required under the Employment Standards Act to tell workers how much they are charging the company per hour to employ them.
Toronto resident Antoinette Schokman-De Zilva, 66, a retired former executive assistant who worked numerous placements through temp agencies, says she was shocked to discover on one assignment that the company was paying the temp agency almost double her hourly wage.
“If I’m paid $20 an hour, they’re charging $45 from the company,” she says.
For some employers, temp agencies help match them with high-level, specialized workers.
But for many others, using temp agencies is part of what the action centre’s Ladd calls a “cheap wage strategy” to keep costs low & responsibilities, such as health benefits & pensions, to a minimum.
Figures provided to the Star by Statistics Canada show that the median wage of a temporary worker in Toronto is just $15 an hour, while permanent employees make $22.40 — a pay gap of 33%.
The gap is even wider for male temps in non-unionized workplaces, who make a median hourly wage of just $13.50. Their permanent counterparts make 40% more, at $22.50 an hour.
Ontario has made some recent strides toward reform, such as giving workers the right to receive public holiday pay & one weeks’ termination notice. But other countries have done more to protect temporary workers from unequal pay & long-term temp work.
In the U.K., temp workers are entitled to receive the same pay as permanent workers in equivalent positions after 3 months on the job.
In Italy, temporary positions automatically become permanent after 36 months in the same assignment.
And in Australia, employers who hire temps must pay them a 15% to 25% premium on their hourly wage in recognition that such workers rarely receive benefits.
But while Ontario’s Employment Standards Act mandates pay equity between men & women, there are no provisions to protect workers from pay discrimination based on their temporary employment status.
Reyes, for example, says permanent employees at his plant make more than him when they start, plus receive benefits, while he still earns minimum wage after more than 5 years on the job as a temp. The only time his salary increased was when the government raised the minimum wage to $11 an hour.
...
The repercussions of endless temp agency work for some of the province’s most vulnerable workers are more than financial.
A 2013 study by the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health, which conducted interviews with more than 60 low-wage temp agency workers, industry experts & employers in Ontario, concluded that poor oversight & intense competition between agencies put temporary workers at greater risk of work injury than their permanent counterparts.
Ellen MacEachen, the report’s lead author, says workers told her they felt powerless to complain about poor work conditions because they knew they were replaceable & feared losing even poorly-paid jobs.
“Workers who have job insecurity will take care to protect their jobs, & that can often mean trying not to complain about anything,” she says.
Since the Workplace Safety & Insurance Act recognizes temp agencies as the sole employer of their workers, companies can also keep a clean WSIB record if temp agency workers are injured on the job.
“No one is looking out for them,” says the action centre’s Ladd. “You have a perfect environment for a complete deterioration of health & safety, wages, & working conditions.”
Mary McIninch, director of government relations at the Association of Canadian Search, Employment & Staffing Services, which represents more than 1,000 employment agencies including temps, says her members actively maintain a voluntary code of ethics. She describes them as “the most reputable, credible firms in the industry.”
The association has supported some government measures to give temp workers rights, McIninch says, but adds it would oppose reforms like pay parity.
She says “a strong majority” of her members place workers in highly paid positions, & that workers are compensated according to skill & experience.
“We have so many positive testimonials from new Canadians & students,” she told the Star, calling the example of Angel Reyes “not representative of the majority of workers in the industry.”
“I think if that were representative of even a strong minority, I doubt very much that as many individuals that we see — over 300,000 across the country — would continue to use our members’ services,” she adds.
But former temp worker Schokman-De Zilva, who immigrated to Toronto from Sri Lanka in 1989, says she only turned to agency jobs when permanent ones were not available, hoping they would lead to stable employment.
They never did.
“They just threw the contract in my face when I protested,” she says. “And that was it.”
Despite the recent government reforms, people like Reyes are still falling through the cracks.
For him, life at a drafty, dust-filled recycling plant may not be glamorous, but a job is a job.
...
Proposed solutions
A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to tackle the widening disparity between permanent employees & temporary agency workers. These include:
• Requiring companies to pay temps the same wages & benefits as permanent staff in equivalent positions.
• Requiring temporary agencies to tell workers how much they are charging a company per hour for an assignment.
• Instituting a six-month limit on temporary assignments, after which temps must be directly hired by the company.
• Scrapping a provision that allows temp agencies to charge companies a fee if they give temps permanent jobs in the first 6 months of work.
• Limiting how many workers in a single company can be temporary agency employees (no more than 20%).
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