Study exposes myths of the 'free' market
By Blair Dowell
The Canadian economy is booming, according to the business press. But for thousands, it doesn't feel like a boom. A recent study by the Ryerson Social Reporting Network documents just why we don't have that boom time good time feeling.
The study exposes the contradiction of the current economic recovery, which the authors refer to as "The Job-Poor Recovery".
The gap between rich and poor is growing by leaps and bounds.
While the highest-paid 100 CEO's received an incredible 56% pay increase in 1998, the Ryerson study notes that 52% of Canadian workers still earn less than $15 per hour.
A boom in corporate pay
Profits, dividends, and CEO compensation may be up, but most workers are being left out of the new found prosperity.
The authors of the report, John Shields and Mike Burke, call this the "hour-glass labour market." The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle is getting squeezed hard.
The most recent Canadian census reveals that, between 1989 and 1996, there was a five percent decline in after-tax income.
The report's authors quite accurately blame this on the deteriorating quality of employment in Canada.
Fully 45 percent of workers between 25 and 59 lack stable employment and the study's "Exclusion Index" reveals that 20.3 percent of Canadians were excluded from the labour market -- a figure that is two and a half times higher than official unemployment.
Yet there are no plans at all for government job creation, in spite of the Liberals' "red-book" promises of "jobs, jobs, jobs" in 1993.
Instead of jobs, we are getting the mantra of "tax cuts."
But the Ontario Government has already implemented tax cuts which affected only those in the higher tax brackets -- leaving the lower paid to face ever increasing user fees, tuition fees, transit fares, rent, and child care costs.
Tax cuts make the rich richer, and increase pressure on the poor and the working class.
A boom in bad jobs
Hidden behind the statistics on job creation, is the growing rate of employment in bad jobs.
Shields and Burke maintain that Canada should implement a Vulnerability Index, as well as an unemployment figure. The Vulnerability Index would show that 53.6% of Canadian workers were employed in flexible and unstable employment in May 1998 -- receiving on average $5 an hour less than those in full-time employment -- with little room for promotion.
Premier of Ontario Mike Harris may occasionally state that he is "on target" for the job creation numbers his party promised in 1995, but little is said about the quality of those jobs.
Across Canada, of the more than 1.3 million jobs created since 1993, the bulk were part-time and self-employment. In fact, between 1989 and 1997, 80 percent of all job growth was in self-employment -- leading to an increased number of Canadians employed in unstable jobs.
The study points the finger squarely at the so-called "free" market system -- a system, they argue that is today incapable of producing a sufficient quantity of good jobs.
We are told, again and again, that high-skill technological jobs are the wave of the future. But the majority of Canadian workers continue to be employed in menial dead-end tasks.
The top three jobs performed by men are truck drivers, retail sales, and janitors -- while the top three jobs performed by women are retail sales, secretaries and cashiers.
Of all groups studied, the report notes that single mothers experienced the highest vulnerability on the labour market.
Thirty-seven percent of single mothers earn less than $10 per hour, compared to 26 percent for the labour force as a whole.
And this number has continued to increase as public child care has been eroded and eliminated across Canada and public allowance cheques have been slashed. The result is that only 16.3 percent of single mothers earn over $20 per hour -- whereas 26.4 percent of the total labour force earns over $20 per hour.
It's time to organize
As ways of improving the situation, the authors note that "trade union membership and public sector employment protect workers from the worst inequality found in flexible and vulnerable forms of work."
The benefits of unionization are clearly spelled out. Full-time or part-time workers covered by a collective agreements earn $3 to $5 an hour more than their non-union counterparts. Those $3 to $5 differences are seen again between public-sector and non-public sector workers, where fully 78.4 percent of public workers are covered by a collective agreement as opposed to 26.6 percent of the private sector labour market.
But with more and more jobs part-time, there has been a slow decline in the number of workers covered by collective agreements. While 42.7 percent of tenured full-time workers were covered by a collective agreement in May 1998, only 29.1 percent of part-time workers and only 16.5 percent of untenured (working less than two years) were covered by a collective agreement.
What we need to go along with the gains obtained by Ford, GM, and some civic workers is a larger drive to improve job quality and unionize the part time employment that already exists.
The study exposes the bitter truth that even in a period of economic expansion, the capitalist system in Canada cannot even sustain the same standard of living for workers let alone increase.
It shows clearly that the first line of defence against this market madness is building up fighting, union organizations.
We must continue to fight for more full-time jobs, not simply more part-time and low paying work.
We need more day-care spaces and affordable housing for those who have fallen through the gaping holes in the economic recovery.
We must end the Government's move toward privatization of resources and tax cuts for those who are benefiting most from the recovery.
If we need this in the recovery, we will need it ten times more when we enter a new recession.
The grim statistics of this report make a powerful case against capitalism, and show the need to build a fighting socialist alternative.