By Dave McKee

November 1, 2024  People’s Voice (Canada)

 

Canada has a serious problem with work – specifically with work distribution. According to the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, the official unemployment rate for September was 6.5 percent or just over 1.4 million people. However, StatsCan calculates unemployment eight different ways – while the agency’s official “R4” rate is 6.5 percent, adding in discouraged searchers, people waiting for recall or future jobs starts, and a portion of involuntary part-timers produces a much higher “R8” figure of 7.9 percent. This more comprehensive (and more honest) calculation shows that over 1.7 million people in Canada are unemployed, over 21 percent more than the official figure.

But even this isn’t the complete picture. According to data from Maytree, nearly 1.3 million households in Canada received social assistance in 2023. The vast majority of these were single-adult households. Some are counted in unemployment figures – if they are looking for work and therefore considered part of the labour force – but most are not.

So, at a minimum, we’re easily talking about 2 million unemployed workers in Canada.

But beyond this number, there’s the fact that unemployment figures don’t capture the real problem of underemployment. The Canadian Labour Congress has noted this inadequacy and how it distorts our understanding of the distribution of work:

“Monthly unemployment rates move up and down, making headlines but revealing little. As work patterns change, with greater use of part-time employees and other forms of precarious labour, the headline unemployment rate becomes less and less useful on its own. The labour force is comprised of far more than simply employed and unemployed workers.

“Underemployment is larger than unemployment. Underemployment can be thought of as the unmet need for paid employment. For example, a person may beunable to find full-time work, but manages to find part-time work. There is still an unmet need for more hours of work, even
though this person is no longer counted as unemployed. A person may want a job, and be actively seeking work, but they are not immediately available. Alternatively, a person may wish to work, but has given up searching, and possibly even engaged in unpaid activities such as care work. In each of these cases, there is still an unmet need for paid employment.”

This is a trend which is getting worse. In Canada, and typical of the capitalist world, unemployment and underemployment have been increasing over the long term, both in terms of absolute numbers and as a percentage of the working class. In the decades following World War 2 until roughly the 1970s, unemployment in Canada commonly hovered between 3 and 5 percent; since then, however, workers have become increasingly accustomed to rates in 7 to 9 percent range.

Unemployment weakens the labour movement
This growth in structural unemployment hits the labour movement in different ways.

The most obvious effect is that unions lose members. This not only diminishes a particular union’s strength – through reduced dues revenue and fewer people – but it also tends to weaken union penetration into specific industries and sectors. The result is a balance of forces that tilts more in favour of the bosses, with labour wielding less clout both at the bargaining table and in the social-political arena.

Related to this is a second effect, that of widening income disparity between the working class and the very wealthy. One of the starkest examples of this is the United States. In 1955, about 33 percent of US workers were unionized, and the wealthiest 10 percent of the population received about 32 percent of the country’s overall income. From that point, though, unionization levels steadily dropped and income disparity widened until, in 2012, just 11 percent of US workers were organized and the wealthiest 10 percent pocketed nearly 48 percent of overall income.

But perhaps the biggest effect of high structural unemployment, from a systemic perspective, is that it generates a huge group of what Marx called “the industrial reserve army” – masses of unemployed workers – including highly skilled ones – which capital uses to drive down wages, benefits and working conditions for all workers. That this is such an important factor for corporations and their capitalist governments is
shown by the frantic scramble to recruit huge numbers of immigrant workers immediately following the COVID pandemic, with the explicit aim of “softening the labour market” and weakening workers’ capacity to fight for higher wages, better pensions and improved job security.

These different effects of structural unemployment – and there are others – interact with one another in a dynamic way which empowers capital (“big business”) at the expense of labour. While specific government policies have worsened the situation for working people – cuts to employment insurance and other income supports, for instance – this process is built into capitalism’s DNA.

Workers (with work) are working harder
Alongside high unemployment is the intensification of work. The media is churning with stories about workers facing burnout relating to long hours, understaffing (“lean production”) and additional work duties. A StatsCan report from September 2023 indicated that about one million workers held multiple jobs and that one-third of them – over 300,000 people – did so to pay for essential needs. The figures were highest among women, low-income, young workers and immigrant and racialized workers.

The reasons behind this are quite clear – living costs are soaring because of corporate profiteering and government monetary policies, employers are reducing labour forces and squeezing wages in a drive to increase productivity and profits, and workers are stuck in the middle.

The results are also clear – increased overtime and multiple jobs, more weekend and night work, high rates of workplace injuries and growing work stress, work exhaustion, depression and alienation among working people.

A proud history of fighting for a shorter work week
The labour movement has a proud history of fighting for reduced work time. In the 1870s, workers in many cities in Canada formed Nine Hour Leagues to fight for – including through political strikes – a nine-hour working day which would be reduction of two to three hours for most. International Workers’ Day, May 1, has its origins in the 1886 Haymarket massacre against workers striking for an eight-hour day. In 1919, thousands of workers in Toronto erupted in strike, shutting down over 230 factories under the demand for an eight-hour day.

This history is well known among labour activists. The stories are written about, the songs are sung, and the photographs adorn union halls. But it’s an incomplete history, and a struggle which needs to be rebuilt.

This is especially true in the current context of “green transition.” Climate change is real, and the need to decarbonize the economy is urgent, but corporations and governments are using this transition as cover to ramp up profits through increased productivity (fewer workers who
produce more), and to shift the burden of paying for the transition onto working people. This is the case in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario where Algoma Steel is using $420 million in public funds to upgrade its furnaces to produce “green steel” and, in the process, chop almost half its workers while increasing their profits through the roof.

So, there’s a very real risk of a green transition that produces even higher corpo￾rate profits while condemning even moreworkers to the misery and insecurity of unemployment and underemployment.

Against this, labour needs to bring back the shorter work week as a key demand.

Shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay
The fight for good jobs and a full employment strategy needs to be the top priority. Reducing unemployment (and therefore, shrinking the industrial reserve army) and improving the position of the poorest and most precarious workers will reduce exploitative pressures on all workers and tilt the balance of power in favour of the working class.

The crisis of work distribution (or mal-distribution) – reflected in the perverse combination of growing structural unemployment and increased overwork – can be challenged through a fight for a shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay. In the simplest terms, moving 100 workers from a five-day work week to a four-day week (or, conversely, from a typical 40-hour week to a 32-hour one) opens up jobs for 25 additional workers. It also provides increased time for family, leisure, culture, etc.

So, if a shorter work week has the potential to massively reduce unemployment while maintaining current income levels, who wouldn’t agree to it?

Well, the bosses sure won’t like it. Employers are often in favour of trimming hours, but only if it is at their discretion and if it saves them from paying wages. Making a 4-day work week the new standard, and then guaranteeing that workers won’t see a loss in take-home pay, is another matter entirely.

While unions and workers in some industries could win a reduced work week through collective bargaining, achieving this for the working class as a whole requires state action won through political struggle. It means a sustained, united and escalating fight. But labour shouldn’t back down from this – historically, all major changes affecting the working day and working week have been won through labour’s independent political action.

The processes of accumulation (for capitalists) and impoverishment (for workers) are aspect of capitalism which will continue until we achieve systemic change. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing labour can do about it. In the current context, fighting for more equitable distribution of work through a campaign to win a shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay is a key task that labour needs to take up.

 

-Dave McKee is a member of the CP Canada’s Central Executive Committee and is editor of People’s Voice.