Blog Editor's Note---The following Op Ed Piece reprinted from the NY Times recounts this historical problem. When technology replaced workers during the industrial revolution, workers shared in the productivity gains from technology improvements through reduced work hours at growing salaries as the work week reduced from 100 hours per week to the present 37.5 hours. Is it time to further reduce the work week to 20-25 hours to allow for fuller employment for workers whose wages provide for consumption of our productivity? If not, a reduced workforce will result in reduced consumption and an ever-downward spiral of job losses and company failures to further devastate the economy. At present, the trend seems to be for the pocketing of all productivity gains to the corporate elite, burgeoning corporate bank accounts, and record investor returns. This concentration of wealth in the hands of a few on the backs of the workforce is a recipe for disaster!
In 1786, the cloth workers of Leeds, a wool-industry center in northern
England, issued a protest against the growing use of “scribbling”
machines, which were taking over a task formerly performed by skilled
labor. “How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for
their families?” asked the petitioners. “And what are they to put their children apprentice to?”
Those weren’t foolish questions. Mechanization eventually — that is,
after a couple of generations — led to a broad rise in British living
standards. But it’s far from clear whether typical workers reaped any
benefits during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; many
workers were clearly hurt. And often the workers hurt most were those
who had, with effort, acquired valuable skills — only to find those
skills suddenly devalued.
So are we living in another such era? And, if we are, what are we going to do about it?
Until recently, the conventional wisdom about the effects of technology
on workers was, in a way, comforting. Clearly, many workers weren’t
sharing fully — or, in many cases, at all — in the benefits of rising
productivity; instead, the bulk of the gains were going to a minority of
the work force. But this, the story went, was because modern technology
was raising the demand for highly educated workers while reducing the
demand for less educated workers. And the solution was more education.
Now, there were always problems with this story. Notably, while it could
account for a rising gap in wages between those with college degrees
and those without, it couldn’t explain why a small group — the famous
“one percent” — was experiencing much bigger gains than highly educated
workers in general. Still, there may have been something to this story a
decade ago.
Today, however, a much darker picture of the effects of technology on
labor is emerging. In this picture, highly educated workers are as
likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and
devalued, and pushing for more education may create as many problems as
it solves.
I’ve noted before
that the nature of rising inequality in America changed around 2000.
Until then, it was all about worker versus worker; the distribution of
income between labor and capital — between wages and profits, if you
like — had been stable for decades. Since then, however, labor’s share
of the pie has fallen sharply. As it turns out, this is not a uniquely
American phenomenon. A new report from the International Labor Organization
points out that the same thing has been happening in many other
countries, which is what you’d expect to see if global technological
trends were turning against workers.
And some of those turns may well be sudden. The McKinsey Global Institute recently released a report
on a dozen major new technologies that it considers likely to be
“disruptive,” upsetting existing market and social arrangements. Even a
quick scan of the report’s list suggests that some of the victims of
disruption will be workers who are currently considered highly skilled,
and who invested a lot of time and money in acquiring those skills. For
example, the report suggests that we’re going to be seeing a lot of
“automation of knowledge work,” with software doing things that used to
require college graduates. Advanced robotics could further diminish
employment in manufacturing, but it could also replace some medical
professionals.
So should workers simply be prepared to acquire new skills? The
woolworkers of 18th-century Leeds addressed this issue back in 1786:
“Who will maintain our families, whilst we undertake the arduous task”
of learning a new trade? Also, they asked, what will happen if the new
trade, in turn, gets devalued by further technological advance?
And the modern counterparts of those woolworkers might well ask further,
what will happen to us if, like so many students, we go deep into debt
to acquire the skills we’re told we need, only to learn that the economy
no longer wants those skills?
Education, then, is no longer the answer to rising inequality, if it ever was (which I doubt).
So what is the answer? If the picture I’ve drawn is at all right, the
only way we could have anything resembling a middle-class society — a
society in which ordinary citizens have a reasonable assurance of
maintaining a decent life as long as they work hard and play by the
rules — would be by having a strong social safety net, one that
guarantees not just health care but a minimum income, too. And with an
ever-rising share of income going to capital rather than labor, that
safety net would have to be paid for to an important extent via taxes on
profits and/or investment income.
I can already hear conservatives shouting about the evils of
“redistribution.” But what, exactly, would they propose instead?
The post-war bargain between labour and capital is unravelling, and Ontario teachers are the test case says Toronto Star National Affairs Columnist, Thomas Walkom, in his Fri. March 15, 2013 column
ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE / TORONTO STAR file photo
At its heart, the fight between Ontario teachers and the Liberal government is about work, writes Thomas Walkom. It is about the implicit deal struck between governments, employers and employees more than 50 years ago to make the workplace a fairer place.
The festering Ontario teachers’ dispute is not about wages and extracurricular activities, although these are the current flashpoints.
It is not about whether teachers should be forced by law to coach soccer in their off hours as Tim Hudak’s Conservatives demand.
Nor is it about eliminating the province’s deficit as Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne suggests.
It is not much about teachers at all.
At its heart, this fight is about work. It is about the implicit deal struck between governments, employers and employees more than 50 years ago to make the workplace a fairer place.
It is about the unravelling of that deal.
When the teachers’ unions say this dispute is about collective bargaining rights, that’s what they mean.
Yet the anodyne phrase “collective bargaining rights” does no justice to a complex system born literally out of bloody strikes and cracked heads — a system devised to adjudicate disputes between labour and capital that, until recently, worked tolerably well.
Modern labour relations did not come to Ontario until World War II. For industries under federal jurisdiction, like railways, trade unions had been legal since the 1870s.
But in Ontario, matters were fuzzier. Until 1943, any union attempting to organize a workplace could arguably be liable to conspiracy charges under the common law.
The system set up in 1943 was a compromise based largely on the Wagner Act, a path-breaking U.S. labour relations law enacted under president Franklin Roosevelt’s administration eight years earlier.
Ontario’s law established criteria under which unions could organize a workplace. Employers, in turn were required to at least talk to a union that had met this threshold.
Each side was allowed to use the ultimate sanction, a work stoppage. A union could strike. An employer could, by locking out its employees, bar them from working.
But there were rules to this game. Bargaining had to be conducted in good faith. Strikes and lock-outs could take place only when a collective agreement had lapsed. A government board was established to act as umpire.
Employees deemed essential, such as nurses and police officers, were barred from striking. In return, decisions on their wages and working conditions were set by neutral arbitrators.
Throughout, the legislature always retained the right to end, through back-to-work laws, any labour dispute it deemed harmful. In virtually all such cases, though, those ordered back to work received wages and benefits decided by a neutral arbitrator.
Which is why so many teachers have resorted to withdrawing their volunteer labour instead.
Many Ontarians, including many trade unionists, do not sympathize with teachers. Teachers are a well-paid lot who can’t decide whether they are professionals like lawyers or workers like miners. They get summers off. Their grammar can be irritatingly correct.
But the attack on teachers is significant. It is part of a trend.
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are whittling away union rights at the federal level. Hudak’s Conservatives have declared war on unions provincially. The New Democrats at all levels are subtly distancing themselves from their erstwhile labour allies.
Most important, the inability of unions to organize the growing and precarious workforce of contract, part-time and casual employees leaves organized labour with fewer friends.
The great workplace compromise is coming apart. Who knows what, if anything, will replace it?
This column from the New York Times outlines how employers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of computer scheduling software to allocate short shifts to part time employees to match staffing needs to periods of increased customer traffic. Using the technology, part time workers may be scheduled to work for short shifts of an hour or two over a lunch hour in a restaurant, for example, and their hours may be reduced if they are unable to work these short shifts at the beck and call of the employer.
With the increasing use of technology, employers are gaining all of the benefits without sharing these benefits with workers through a decrease in the work week.
Technology innovations and employer greed in defining work as part time to avoid benefits costs are the greatest cause of job loss and not the export of jobs to cheaper labour markets, as critics of the practice would have us believe.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the work week was close to 100 hours per week for every men, woman, and child. The full work week decreased to the today's standard 37.5 or 40 hour week as workers were able to reap some of the benefits of productivity improvements.
Today's work environment has enslaved many workers to poverty level pay with no benefits while many employers are reaping record profits.
It's just not fair, and the government must assume fuller responsibility for ensuring fair job practices.
In the end, the economy will collapse with the shrinkage of the middle class leaving this tranditional bank of consumers with little disposable income.
Wake up governments! Don't allow greed of a few to jeopardize our entire economic system by depriving people of good paying jobs.
**My letter, following, appeared as the "lead" letter to the editor in the Star on April 15, 2009. The same letter was submitted to all newspapers across the country
In point of fact, those full time jobs redefined as part-time will never come back even with an economic turnaround without government action.
The nature of work in Canada is changing. The incidence of part-time work has been a growing trend even in boom times and has been adapted by even the largest employers like Microsoft, IBM, and General Motors, not to mention employers like McDonalds, grocery chains, and retailers and is endemic in professions like nursing and university teaching. Recent Stats-Can figures, compiled before the present downslide, identifies 23% of the Nation’s (and Ontario’s) workers as part-time, contract, or casual non-permanent employees.
This short-sighted employer greed to enhance their bottom lines on the backs of workers, and lack of social consciousness, has produced two classes of workers--permanent employees with their benefits packages and those classified as part-time, contract, or casual employees who may be working side by side with their full time peers doing exactly the same work but with different compensation packages. This, in itself, is discriminatory and the different treatments would not at all be allowed if the differences were defined as racial, religious, or gender. In fact, this “classification” discrimination has led to giant compensatory settlements in America.
An equally serious national problem, though, is the heightened insecurity of part time, contract, and casual work which effectively blocks 23% of the workforce from the purchase of "big ticket" items thus reducing this 23% of the workforce from consumption beyond their basic needs, thereby hurting the national economy.
In the past, when governments found serious and unfair inequities in the workplace, they introduced "equal opportunity" and "pay equity" legislation to correct the inequities. It is time for governments to act once again to correct this problem to stem the changing nature of work in Canada before all employment becomes part time, casual, or contract employment with its resulting devastating impact on the Canadian economy.
From: bill_longworth@hotmail.com To: ignatieff.m@parl.gc.ca; brison.s@parl.gc.ca; mccallum.j@parl.gc.ca Subject: Suggestion for upcoming budget Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:24:31 -0500
Hon. Michael Ignatieff, Leader of the Opposition
Hon. Scott Brison Opposition Finance Critic
Hon. John McCallum Chair, Liberal Economic Committee
Dear Sirs:
Re Permatemp Employment
I want to propose a serious budgetary matter that I encourage you to bring up with Finance Minister Flaherty as he seeks your input on the upcoming Conservative Budget.
A most important factor in getting the economy back on track is getting money and security in the hands of Canada's workforce.
At the present time in Ontario, 23% of Ontario workers are employed in part time, contract, and casual employment without the benefits and security provided to their fellow full time workers often doing exactly the same job in the same workplace. Stats Canada would indicate that the same pattern is demonstrated across the country. It is discriminatory to have two classes of workers working side by side with different compensation packages. A more serious problem though, is the hightened insecurity of part time, contract, and casual work which effectively blocks 23% of the workforce from the purchase of "big ticket" items thus reducing this 23% of the workforce from consumption beyond their basic needs, and thereby hurting the national economy.
When governments found serious inequities in the workplace in the past, they introduced "equal opportunity" and "pay equity" legislation to correct the inequity.
In order to provide fairness in the workplace and to increase job security to stimulate consumption by the 23% of the workforce employed in part time, contract, and casual employment, might I suggest that the government introduce a "Fairness and Ethics in Employment Practices Commission” which would act as an oversight body with authority to monitor employment trends for large employers and in the extreme implement measures to ensure compliance with the stated objectives to:
(a)Revert long-term part time and contract workers to full time status after 3 years with the exception of part time work necessitated by school/college/university attendance,
(b) Insure that an ethical percentage of a company’s work force is indeed classified as permanent with equal salary and benefits to peers with the same employer,
(c)Insure that part time and contract workers could not be discharged because they were approaching full time status by virtue of reaching the 3 year term,
(d)Ensure that any staff reductions of part time, contract, and casual employees were terminated for just cause or if terminated by reason of overstaffing were not replaced for a reasonable time to insure legitimacy for the dismissal,
(e) Insure that government hiring set a model of permanence for private business to duplicate,
(f) Insure that contract workers were formally offered positions as permanent employees once they had successfully served a three year tenure and insure that they could not be released because they were reaching that period of permanence,
(g)Monitor part time/contract employees for large employers (over 300) to insure that the proportion of non-permanent employees continued to shrink over subsequent reporting periods.
(h)Insure that all part time and contract workers in Canada were provided benefits equivalent to those offered full time employees with the same employer.
As stated in point 5 above, I also believe that governments should be a role model for enlightened employment practices and inform all departments that part time, contract, casual, or permatemp positions are no longer to be offered and should be replaced with permanent positions effective after a pre-defined and reasonable probationary period.
I believe that the above policy initiative areas would resonate with Canadians both as socially responsible to improve our "Canadian Way of Life" and would provide significant stimulous to the Canadian Economy.
I am continuing to monitor and report on this problem on my site www.fairjobs.ca.
Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Québécois Leadership and Selected MP's Selected National Press
Let me commend the opposition parties for working to form a coalition government to get Canada's economy back on track.
As you work toward a common platform, let me make a suggestion which I believe is one key to Canada’s long term economic health. Any effective plan must 1) retain and produce jobs, 2) increase consumer spending to drive production, and, 3) increase worker’s confidence in their job security which would work to increase their consumption. My suggestions following work to improve all three fronts.
The nature of work is changing so that the bulk of new employment is temporary, part time, contract, permatemp or casual employment. According to recent Stats Can reports, 23% of Ontario workers were employed in positions defined as part time in October, 2008, while the figure stood at 21.9% nationally. The insecurity inherent in part time work, contract, and casual employment undermines our economy by effectively blocking over 20% of the workforce from the purchase of big ticket items like houses, automobiles, and appliances, and all of the spinoff jobs associated with increased consumption of these items.
The growing trend to casual employment will exacerbate the problem in the future as more and more employers hire part time and contract workers to improve their bottom line by denying workers the salary, benefits packages and security provided to their full time peers. The Federal and Provincial Governments are as guilty of this abuse as private employers.
On another level, this trend toward part time, contract, and casual employment works against our national ideal of eliminating discrimination in our society. It sets up a system of workforce discrimination whereby different workers doing the same job in the same workplace are benefiting inequitably from their efforts. Courts in America have increasingly found this illegal costing governments and companies like IBM and Microsoft exorbitant court settlements. I believe the Federal Government has a moral responsibility to pass legislation to eliminate this workplace discrimination. The suggestions I give below also accomplish this goal.
Some may believe that it is not the government’s role to regulate or interfere in the workplace but in fact government did intervene in the workplace with Employment Equity and Equal Opportunity Legislation to correct serious inequities and I believe it is in the national economic and social interest for governments to intervene once again.
The European Union has recently adopted some such protections and reports indicate the Obama Administration will implement harsh penalties on employers who would “misclassify” employees.
As part of your economic recovery program, I urge that your coalition develop a legislative framework for a "Fairness and Ethics in Employment Practices Commission” which would be an important long term stimulus to the economy by adding job security to the 23% of the Canadian workforce presently in some form of casual employment. This would stimulate our National Economy with their increased “big ticket” consumption.
Such a Commission would have authority to monitor employment trends for employers of over 300 workers and in the extreme implement measures to ensure compliance with the stated objectives to:
a) Revert long-term part time and contract workers to full time status after 3 years with the exception of part time work necessitated by school/college/university attendance,
b) Insure that an ethical percentage of a company’s work force is indeed classified as permanent with equal salary and benefits to peers with the same employer,
c) Insure that part time and contract workers could not be discharged because they were approaching full time status by virtue of reaching the 3 year term,
d) Ensure that any staff reductions of part time, contract, and casual employees were terminated for just cause or if terminated by reason of overstaffing were not replaced for a reasonable time to insure legitimacy for the dismissal,
e) Insure that government hiring set a model of permanence for private business to duplicate,
f) Insure that contract workers were formally offered positions as permanent employees once they had successfully served a three year tenure and insure that they could not be released because they were reaching that period of permanence,
g) Monitor part time/contract employees for large employers (over 300) to insure that the proportion of non-permanent employees continued to shrink over subsequent reporting periods.
h) Insure that all part time and contract workers in Canada were provided benefits equivalent to those offered full time employees with the same employer.
As stated in point (e) above, I also believe that governments should be a role model for enlightened employment practices and inform all departments that part time, contract, casual, or permatemp positions are no longer to be offered and should be replaced with permanent positions effective after a pre-defined probationary period.
I believe that the above policy initiative areas would resonate with Canadians both as socially responsible to improve our "Canadian Way of Life" and to make a positive growth impact on the Canadian Economy.
I am continuing to monitor and report on this problem on my site www.fairjobs.ca.
BILL LONGWORTH is a graduate of both Queen's University and the University of Toronto and has been a resident of Oshawa for the last 40 years.
He has been a long time political observor and activist in Oshawa and was Oshawa's Federal Conservative Candidate in the 1990 Federal By-election.
He was founder and chairman of Ward System Now, the activist organization that brought the ward system to Oshawa. He personally presented the winning case to the Ontario Municipal Board in 1985 in a 21 day hearing, the longest of it's type in Ontario History.
In his spare time, Bill likes to cottage, paint and sketch, write stories, and play his guitar.
Bill writes a weekly political news column in the Oshawa Central Newspaper and reprints his published columns at www.eyeoncityhall.ca...and he hosts a weekly political radio program on The WAVE radio...which you can hear every Monday from 6-9 pm EST at www.ocentral.com
In Bill's spare time he enjoys painting, writing, jamming and singing to his guitar accompaniment, cottaging, antiquing, and travel, and sunny drives in the country in his 2000 BMW M3 Roadster.
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