Last night, the House of Commons defeated Bill C-257, “An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (replacement workers),” by a vote of 177 to 122. All NDP and Bloc MPs, about forty Liberals, and one brave Conservative voted in favour. Although the Bill did not pass, the labour movement’s efforts on this issue have achieved at least three important […]
Read moreThe Budget (see pp. 214-215) promises $500 million per year for a new Labour Market Training Transfer to the provinces, starting next year (2008-09) and lasting for at least six years. The money will be divided between the provinces on an equal per person basis, and transferred under the terms of bilateral framework agreements which are to be negotiated with […]
Read more“Balkanization of our national economic space . . . thicket of provincial barriers.” – Conference Board of Canada, Mission Possible, 2007 “Our federation has been a ‘mini global economy’ for decades. There are virtually no internal barriers to labour and capital mobility, and no tariff-like distortions on interprovincial trade.” – Robin Boadway, “National Tax Policy for an International Economy: Comments,” […]
Read moreSome notes by yours truly on the BC economy, based on a presentation I gave this past weekend: As a provincial economy, BC is relatively small and resource-dependent. Over past decades, there has been a growing divide between the “two economies†of Greater Vancouver (plus the provincial capitol in Victoria), with a more diversified and service-oriented economy, and the rest […]
Read moreOpponents of Bill C-257 need to identify a purpose served by replacement workers other than strengthening the bargaining position of employers in relation to their employees. Hence the misleading claim that replacement workers are needed to provide essential services during labour disputes. Matthew Coon Come, a former aboriginal political leader who became a corporate CEO, has lent his support to […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada released its Labour Force Survey figures for February. My analysis, which was included in the CLC’s press release, follows: Manufacturing Crisis Deepens Canada lost 35,000 manufacturing jobs between January and February. This staggering one-month decline pushes the cumulative loss to 250,000 since Canadian manufacturing peaked in November 2002. Most of February’s devastating decline took place in […]
Read moreI hope that enough Liberals and Conservatives will vote for Bill C-257 to pass it on March 21. However, Stephan Dion and his labour critic have announced that they will not support it because the Speaker ruled their essential-service amendments inadmissable. The Canada Labour Code already protects essential services during labour disputes. Workers in federally regulated industries are permitted to […]
Read moreThe CCPA released a study today, part of a mega-project on inequality in Canada, looking at changes in income and work hours for Canadian families with children. The report, by Armine Yalnizyan, finds that the top 10% are pulling away. While the report looks at distribution by deciles, it would be interesting to pull a Saez and Veall, to see […]
Read moreWomen face what has been called “statistical discrimination” in getting employment. That is, an assumption exists that a woman is more likely to leave the job in order to have children, and thus women are less likely to be hired. A new study from Statistics Canada finds evidence that this is not the case, at least after 1994. Gender differences […]
Read moreYesterday and the day before, several newspapers posted the following story about TILMA. Although it is disappointing to read uncritical reporting of the Conference Board’s $4.8-billion figure, it is good to see the Canadian Press report that “The NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have said they’re not interested in signing on.” While opponents of TILMA should remain vigilant in Saskatchewan […]
Read moreIn setting monetary policy, the Bank of Canada emphasizes “Core CPI,” which excludes the most volatile components of the Consumer Price Index to provide a clearer measure of underlying trends. My last post noted that average Canadian wage increases exceeded inflation by only 1% during the past year. However, inflation was held down by a dip in energy prices. Therefore, […]
Read moreDespite Alberta’s booming economy, Albertans are making about the same amount per hour as they were a year ago. Specifically, the resource boom has increased prices as much as wages. Statistics Canada released January’s inflation numbers today. It is interesting to compare them with January’s wage numbers. Nationwide, average hourly wages increased by 2.2% and consumer prices rose by 1.2% […]
Read moreThe Canadian Labour Congress is one of several institutions that comments on Statistics Canada’s monthly Labour Force Survey. As the Ottawa Sun reported last week, a striking fact in the latest release was the net loss of 10,000 full-time positions in Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland in January.   February 10, 2007 Job numbers game Rising employment figures don’t tell true story of […]
Read moreI was at a forum on labour shortages in Canada yesterday, organized by the Canadian Association of Sector Councils. (These consist of industry plus some labour representatives who undertake labour force planning activities, sometimes including sponsorship and promotion of training.) There was an interesting clash of economic and employer perspectives on the labour shortages issue. Mike McCracken from Informetrica kicked-off […]
Read more Posted below – An attack on expected linkage between trade and labour standards by the new US Congress by Bhagwati et al in the Financial Post, and a response by Global Unions. Fast-track renewal could lead to tougher demands on the poor By Jagdish Bhagwati, Alan Deardorff, Koichi Hamada, Parvin Krishna and Arvind Panagariya Published: February 2 2007 02:00 […]
Read moreThe minimum wage debate is heating up once again, with the NDP and labour strongly pushing for a minimum wage of at least $10 per hour in Ontario and at the federal level (as recently recommended by the Arthurs Report.) Anti poverty groups and the Toronto Star now strongly endorse a decent minimum wage as part of an anti poverty […]
Read morehttp://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070116/d070116a.htm One thing we don’t know about the current round of manufacturing job losses is what is happening to laid-off workers – though employment rates are slipping for older male workers in Ontario and Quebec, and even a supposedly “tight” job market is generating little if any real wage growth for most workers. This suggests that many affected by layoffs […]
Read morehttp://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/index.html#anchor4105 Global: From Globalization to Localization Stephen Roach | New York On one level, there seems to be no stopping the powerful forces of globalization. Not only has the world just completed four years of the strongest global growth since the early 1970s, but in 2006, cross-border trade as a share of world GDP pierced the 30% threshold for the […]
Read moreGiven some recent discourse on unions in our comments area, I decided to reach back to a fairly comprehensive literature survey on the empirical evidence about unions. The report comes not from the CCPA, CAW or CLC, nor does it come from the ILO, but from the World Bank. It is a rather weighty tome, published in 2002, and can […]
Read more(This note was prepared for a meeting of trade union economists with Paul Jenkins, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, to be held on Monday, December 11, 2006.) Introduction The Bank of Canada believes that the Canadian economy is currently operating “just above†capacity, justifying this week’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged despite a noticeable slowdown in economic […]
Read moreBilateral and multilateral trade negotiations often go hand in hand, with bilaterals able to achieve results that are more liberalizing than could be achieved on a multilateral basis. If the bilateral agreement is among two major players, however, it can be used to pressure others into signing on. The US is using this as its strategy for global trade talks, […]
Read moreJim Stanford and Stephen Gordon are keeping me busy today. Another missive from Jim Stanford in the Globe prompted this post from Stephen that leads to some interesting points of comparison between the Nordic model and the Canadian status quo: Welfare states can be competitive Jim Stanford sets aside our shared scepticism about the WEF competitiveness rankings to make two […]
Read more“Canada’s New Government†says that it wants to focus on “the productivity agenda.†But they seem unable to look beyond partisan considerations to make the rather obvious link between investment in skills, and building a more productive economy. The previous Liberal government had just begun to slowly re-invest in worker training and adult learning after years of federal cuts, devolution […]
Read moreThe Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom looks at the choices we make that keep the poor, um, poor. Walkom looks only at the working poor, not the welfare poor. If we add to the pile the numerous regressive reforms to provincial welfare programs the picture is even uglier. There’s much we can do to combat poverty Enforcing current laws would help […]
Read moreThe Economist (September 21 Print Edition) runs an article “The Limits of Solidarity” which attacks US Democrats for favouring union-friendly legislation. It concludes as follows: “After all, trade unions have obvious drawbacks as well as modest attractions. Whenever they win their members higher wage rises than in non-unionised firms, this money has to come from somewhere. If it comes from […]
Read moreI wrote a recent column for the Globe and Mail on the issue of working hours. It was a repsonse to a report from the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity that bemoaned that Ontarians worked significantly less hours than Americans (about 130 hours less per year, on average). In the Institute’s view, this makes Ontarians $3700 less “prosperous” per year […]
Read moreA short missive from Dean Baker: Old Europe Goes to Work Remember the days when the European welfare state led to economic stagnation and high unemployment? Well, like hula hoops and bobby socks, this story may be a relic of the past. The latest data from the OECD show that employment to population (EPOP) ratios for prime age workers (ages […]
Read moreThe last federal Liberal Budget promised to introduce a tax credit to supplement the incomes of the working poor, and this commitment was re-iterated in the first Conservative Budget. The recent Toronto-based task force on Modernizing Income Security for Working Age Adults advocated such a supplement, and this widely-publicized proposal has been taken up by several of the leading federal […]
Read moreMany progressive Canadian economists have noted recently that the share of GDP going to wages and salaries has dropped perilously low, as low as recorded statistics take us back in any event. This article from the Economist, via Mark Thoma’s Economist’s View, points out that this trend is not particular to Canada. They suggest that this is globalization at work, […]
Read moreAn excellent article on issues facing the working poor in today’s Toronto Star cites a recent study by Human Resources and Social Development Canada in support of the employer counter-point that raising minimum wages would do little to help working poor families. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1158531020220 Indeed, precisely this point is made in an August, 2006 HRSDC Working Paper “When Working is not […]
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