Showing posts with label employee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employee. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Ontario employers cashing in on temporary workers
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%).
Monday, May 4, 2015
Job market quality in decline with lower wages & higher self-employment
This article is one in many, saying the same thing that the quality of jobs keeps decreasing all over Canada, & in fact, all over North America & Europe. When the recession started back in 2008, nobody was expecting that the recession will continue on for 7 years & still continuing on. That recession structurally changed the mindset of employers & their hiring practices.
In the meanwhile, the general public kept & still keep upgrading their skills, especially their educational skills, to the point that now the Canadian public has a surplus of designated accountants, MBAs, Masters, engineers, & other professionals. Technology is also doing its fair bit in removing those jobs which require the repetitive kind of work or even easier work, e.g. bookkeeping (quite a few cloud-based services are available for self-employed people to do their own bookkeeping, & hence, bookkeeping profession is going into oblivion).
So, as Benjamin Tal says, a section of the public, especially the "employer" section now has choices in hiring for whatever position they want to fill. Since, they are receiving hundreds of resumes for every position, they are making the criteria harder or just relying on networking, which creates its own set of hurdles for job seekers.
One of these criteria are now employers requiring years of related work experience & university-level education even for an entry-level job. Since, the employers have choices, they are also "bullying" their employees by giving far more work to one employee & making employees feel that they better do what they are given, at the measly salary they are getting, because they are replaceable & there will always be someone who is willing to do their work for the same amount of money.
On top of that, as per one of the reports shown on CBC's National in April 2015, that Canada is creating a lot of positions, but they are mostly part-time & contracts (as this article also says). Why? Because, employers save on paying for benefits, & they still get their work done.
So, the whole lifestyle of the public is on a downhill slope. Incomes are falling. Benefits are decreasing. Hours of work are increasing. Productivity is rising. Competition for a fewer & fewer office jobs are decreasing. Thanks to free trade deals, like NAFTA & TPP, manufacturing will keep flowing out of labour-expensive, developed countries to cheaper-labour developing countries. Not all people can become MBAs & become managers in a decreasing number of companies or not all people can become entrepreneurs, either.
Result: Immigrants who are skilled & mobile will move out of the country (Canada, US, UK, Europe) to wherever they find better opportunities in terms of salary, career advancement, raising a family etc ... essentially, brain drain. People who are not mobile or not skilled have no choice but to stay put & endure whatever conditions they are given. But that has a limit. Eventually, those people will rebel & then, there will be chaos & destruction, as we can see, what's been happening in Greece.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Canadian economy continues to create jobs at a fairly steady pace, but questions are mounting over the quality of those new positions.
Several reports have concluded that the country’s job market is not as strong as it looks & now a study from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce paints an even worse picture. According to the bank’s analysis, job quality has fallen to its lowest level in more than 2 decades. A CIBC index that measures 25 years worth of data on part-time versus full-time work, paid versus self-employment & compensation trends, has fallen to its lowest level on record.
The Bank of Canada’s new measure of labour market indicators also showed “slack” in the jobs market & it has noted “ongoing labour market challenges” such as a low participation rate among core-aged Canadians. Another report from the Toronto-Dominion Bank last month pointed to more weakness than the unemployment rate suggests.
The trend has implications for the broader economy. A lack of hours along with a prevalence of lower-wage jobs & self-employment underscore why many households are having difficulty shoring up savings & why consumer spending may taper off this year.
As household finances get squeezed, the risk is that debt – already near record levels – could grow further, leaving people more vulnerable to any type of economic shock. “After every recession, [job quality] goes down, but it doesn’t fully catch up. So there is almost a permanent loss every time that there is a shock,” said Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist. This is why the decline in employment quality “is more structural than cyclical.”
One notable shift is that a smaller portion of the labour market now has higher bargaining power, or high-paying jobs, while a larger segment has lower bargaining power, he said. “This is the main reason why the income gap is rising, which I believe is the number one economic, social issue facing the country in this decade.”
The CIBC index tracks 3 components, all of which are showing a deterioration. The first indicated that the number of part-time positions has risen “much faster” than that of full-time jobs since the 1980s. (Over the past year, though, some of this has reversed as full-time jobs rose faster). Self-employment is another measure, as economists tend to view it as less stable &, on average, lower paying than salaried employment. The number of self-employed workers has been on a “steeper incline” over the past 25 years, & in the past year grew 4 times faster than the number of paid employees, the CIBC report said.
On compensation, the bank said low-paying full-time jobs have risen faster than mid-paying jobs over much of the past 2 decades, which in turn have risen more quickly than high-paying jobs. And in the past year “the job-creation gap between low- & high-paying jobs has widened,” with low-wage full-time paid positions rising at twice the pace of high-paying jobs.
The retail sector, which tends to be much lower-paying, is the largest source of employment by sector in Canada. It’s also a industry that may soon start to see job losses as Target ... & other retailers such as Sony, Smart Set & Mexx close shop amid fierce competition.
Definitions of job quality – & what constitutes “precarious” work – vary. Wilfred Laurier University economics professor Tammy Schirle cautioned against relying too heavily on assumptions that part-time work is necessarily of poorer quality than full-time employment.
Dr. Schirle noted that employers who offer flexible work schedules are often praised for accommodating work-life balance for families.
“We rally behind startups, innovators & the ambitious small-business owner, & then say the work they’ve created for themselves is substandard?” she said in an interview Thursday. “Part-time & self-employment often reflect poor-quality jobs, as does much of full-time employment, but that is not always the case. They are certainly important indicators of what is happening in our labour market, but I’m reluctant to use these as key indicators of job quality.”
It has been a difficult stretch for some job seekers. Going from laid off, to underemployed, to contract work, Richard Vanderbeek, 24, is now looking for a job – again. It’s something he has done 4 times in less than 3 years. He wants to start a career in customer service, but can’t seem to get his foot in the door.
“I’ve found that even customer-service jobs, some of them would require university programs & they’re still only offering minimum wage to start,” said Mr. Vanderbeek, who lives in Toronto. “Even with the amount of schooling you have to have to get it, there’s still no real incentive through pay.”
While finding work has been difficult, finding work that pays enough, offers enough hours to offset the cost of living & provides advancement opportunities has been next to impossible. After leaving culinary school unfinished, Mr. Vanderbeek worked at a delicatessen & then a butcher. The deli downsized & eliminated his position, & after 6 months with the butcher, he knew he had to make a change.
“I realized that my max earnings I could make was essentially $14 an hour,” Mr. Vanderbeek said. “I had to move on in order to find something that could pay me a little more down the line.”
Federal Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre responded to the CIBC report’s findings with a statement that said Canada’s job creation record is one of the strongest in the Group of Seven.
“Given the ongoing uncertainty in the global economy, it is important that our government continue to keep taxes low for families & job creators,” he said.
Mr. Tal, at CIBC, says the situation shows a mismatch in the labour market, where “we have many educated people are compromising on contract jobs, on self-employment jobs, low-paying jobs because they don’t have the skill-set that those high-paying jobs need. And that’s why their bargaining power isn’t as powerful.”
“We do need the young people to be a bit more practical about what they do, in terms of field of studies.”
In the meanwhile, the general public kept & still keep upgrading their skills, especially their educational skills, to the point that now the Canadian public has a surplus of designated accountants, MBAs, Masters, engineers, & other professionals. Technology is also doing its fair bit in removing those jobs which require the repetitive kind of work or even easier work, e.g. bookkeeping (quite a few cloud-based services are available for self-employed people to do their own bookkeeping, & hence, bookkeeping profession is going into oblivion).
So, as Benjamin Tal says, a section of the public, especially the "employer" section now has choices in hiring for whatever position they want to fill. Since, they are receiving hundreds of resumes for every position, they are making the criteria harder or just relying on networking, which creates its own set of hurdles for job seekers.
One of these criteria are now employers requiring years of related work experience & university-level education even for an entry-level job. Since, the employers have choices, they are also "bullying" their employees by giving far more work to one employee & making employees feel that they better do what they are given, at the measly salary they are getting, because they are replaceable & there will always be someone who is willing to do their work for the same amount of money.
On top of that, as per one of the reports shown on CBC's National in April 2015, that Canada is creating a lot of positions, but they are mostly part-time & contracts (as this article also says). Why? Because, employers save on paying for benefits, & they still get their work done.
So, the whole lifestyle of the public is on a downhill slope. Incomes are falling. Benefits are decreasing. Hours of work are increasing. Productivity is rising. Competition for a fewer & fewer office jobs are decreasing. Thanks to free trade deals, like NAFTA & TPP, manufacturing will keep flowing out of labour-expensive, developed countries to cheaper-labour developing countries. Not all people can become MBAs & become managers in a decreasing number of companies or not all people can become entrepreneurs, either.
Result: Immigrants who are skilled & mobile will move out of the country (Canada, US, UK, Europe) to wherever they find better opportunities in terms of salary, career advancement, raising a family etc ... essentially, brain drain. People who are not mobile or not skilled have no choice but to stay put & endure whatever conditions they are given. But that has a limit. Eventually, those people will rebel & then, there will be chaos & destruction, as we can see, what's been happening in Greece.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Canadian economy continues to create jobs at a fairly steady pace, but questions are mounting over the quality of those new positions.
Several reports have concluded that the country’s job market is not as strong as it looks & now a study from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce paints an even worse picture. According to the bank’s analysis, job quality has fallen to its lowest level in more than 2 decades. A CIBC index that measures 25 years worth of data on part-time versus full-time work, paid versus self-employment & compensation trends, has fallen to its lowest level on record.
The Bank of Canada’s new measure of labour market indicators also showed “slack” in the jobs market & it has noted “ongoing labour market challenges” such as a low participation rate among core-aged Canadians. Another report from the Toronto-Dominion Bank last month pointed to more weakness than the unemployment rate suggests.
The trend has implications for the broader economy. A lack of hours along with a prevalence of lower-wage jobs & self-employment underscore why many households are having difficulty shoring up savings & why consumer spending may taper off this year.
As household finances get squeezed, the risk is that debt – already near record levels – could grow further, leaving people more vulnerable to any type of economic shock. “After every recession, [job quality] goes down, but it doesn’t fully catch up. So there is almost a permanent loss every time that there is a shock,” said Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist. This is why the decline in employment quality “is more structural than cyclical.”
One notable shift is that a smaller portion of the labour market now has higher bargaining power, or high-paying jobs, while a larger segment has lower bargaining power, he said. “This is the main reason why the income gap is rising, which I believe is the number one economic, social issue facing the country in this decade.”
The CIBC index tracks 3 components, all of which are showing a deterioration. The first indicated that the number of part-time positions has risen “much faster” than that of full-time jobs since the 1980s. (Over the past year, though, some of this has reversed as full-time jobs rose faster). Self-employment is another measure, as economists tend to view it as less stable &, on average, lower paying than salaried employment. The number of self-employed workers has been on a “steeper incline” over the past 25 years, & in the past year grew 4 times faster than the number of paid employees, the CIBC report said.
On compensation, the bank said low-paying full-time jobs have risen faster than mid-paying jobs over much of the past 2 decades, which in turn have risen more quickly than high-paying jobs. And in the past year “the job-creation gap between low- & high-paying jobs has widened,” with low-wage full-time paid positions rising at twice the pace of high-paying jobs.
The retail sector, which tends to be much lower-paying, is the largest source of employment by sector in Canada. It’s also a industry that may soon start to see job losses as Target ... & other retailers such as Sony, Smart Set & Mexx close shop amid fierce competition.
Definitions of job quality – & what constitutes “precarious” work – vary. Wilfred Laurier University economics professor Tammy Schirle cautioned against relying too heavily on assumptions that part-time work is necessarily of poorer quality than full-time employment.
Dr. Schirle noted that employers who offer flexible work schedules are often praised for accommodating work-life balance for families.
“We rally behind startups, innovators & the ambitious small-business owner, & then say the work they’ve created for themselves is substandard?” she said in an interview Thursday. “Part-time & self-employment often reflect poor-quality jobs, as does much of full-time employment, but that is not always the case. They are certainly important indicators of what is happening in our labour market, but I’m reluctant to use these as key indicators of job quality.”
It has been a difficult stretch for some job seekers. Going from laid off, to underemployed, to contract work, Richard Vanderbeek, 24, is now looking for a job – again. It’s something he has done 4 times in less than 3 years. He wants to start a career in customer service, but can’t seem to get his foot in the door.
“I’ve found that even customer-service jobs, some of them would require university programs & they’re still only offering minimum wage to start,” said Mr. Vanderbeek, who lives in Toronto. “Even with the amount of schooling you have to have to get it, there’s still no real incentive through pay.”
While finding work has been difficult, finding work that pays enough, offers enough hours to offset the cost of living & provides advancement opportunities has been next to impossible. After leaving culinary school unfinished, Mr. Vanderbeek worked at a delicatessen & then a butcher. The deli downsized & eliminated his position, & after 6 months with the butcher, he knew he had to make a change.
“I realized that my max earnings I could make was essentially $14 an hour,” Mr. Vanderbeek said. “I had to move on in order to find something that could pay me a little more down the line.”
Federal Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre responded to the CIBC report’s findings with a statement that said Canada’s job creation record is one of the strongest in the Group of Seven.
“Given the ongoing uncertainty in the global economy, it is important that our government continue to keep taxes low for families & job creators,” he said.
Mr. Tal, at CIBC, says the situation shows a mismatch in the labour market, where “we have many educated people are compromising on contract jobs, on self-employment jobs, low-paying jobs because they don’t have the skill-set that those high-paying jobs need. And that’s why their bargaining power isn’t as powerful.”
“We do need the young people to be a bit more practical about what they do, in terms of field of studies.”
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