{"id":1661,"date":"2024-06-07T21:50:11","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T21:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2024-06-08T14:34:08","modified_gmt":"2024-06-08T14:34:08","slug":"black-canadians-and-the-labour-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/black-canadians-and-the-labour-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Canadians and the “labour shortage”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My April 10 post on high food prices<\/a> said one of the many reasons given for the high prices was COVID-related \u201clabour shortages\u201d. From fall 2021 headlines like \u201cLabour shortages to become the new norm in future<\/a>\u201d to the Government of Canada saying in November 2022 that it was, \u201cSolving labour shortages in key sectors like health care, construction, and transportation<\/a>\u201d to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business stating in Nov. 2023 that Labour shortages cost Canadian small businesses over $38 billion in lost revenue opportunities<\/a>, certain groups have been sounding the labour shortage alarm for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, panelists on the May edition of rabble\u2019s Off the Hill<\/a> political panel, which I co-host with former NDP member of Parliament Libby Davies, challenged the labour shortage idea. The panelists – NDP MP Matthew Green, economist Jim Stanford, Ontario Federation of Labour president Laura Walton and researcher and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives policy analyst V\u00e9ronique Sioufi – all challenged the assumption that Canada has faced and continues to face a \u201clabour shortage\u201d. They said what Canada has is a shortage of bosses who want to pay fair wages and provide good working conditions. Stanford added that it\u2019s employers who have  been complaining of a labour shortage – especially in low wage industries like retail and hospitality – and suggesting \u201csolutions\u201d like delaying the retirement age, reducing employment insurance and other income security benefits (saying they\u2019re a disincentive to work) and bringing in more temporary foreign workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referring to Ontario\u2019s education sector Laura Walton said there was a \u201clabour shortage\u201d  because education workers aren\u2019t paid enough. \u201cIt\u2019s not a lack of people wanting to work. It\u2019s a lack of bosses wanting to respect workers for the labour they provide\u201d, she said. People saying no to low wages is, \u201cworkers using their collective power to say we will not be disrespected as workers\u201d. But she added that a real<\/em> labour shortage is being created as people are more reluctant to go into the education field because<\/em> of low wages and poor working conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e9ronique Sioufi said the impacts of the labour shortage myth are felt disproportionately by Black, Indigenous and women of color, particularly by recent immigrants and temporary migrants who are over-represented in sectors like retail, accommodation and food services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A January 2024 Calgary Herald opinion piece<\/a> said \u201can increasing proportion of TFWs [temporary foreign workers] are working at fast food counters and in hotel lobbies. Perhaps the most well-known instance of this is our national coffee icon Tim Hortons, which has been at the centre of a number of controversies surrounding its extensive use of the TWF program.\u201d The article cites a story highlighting a link between the fabricated labour shortage with the real<\/em> housing shortage. \u201cMost recently, D.P. Murphy Inc, which operates Tim Hortons restaurants across Prince Edward Island, found itself in hot water when it bought an apartment building in the small seaside town of Souris \u2013 and promptly evicted the tenants to make way for TFWs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sioufi says that if there was an actual labour shortage in these low wage sectors dominated by women we\u2019d see wages going up to attract more women to the sector or maybe they\u2019d be investing in training women to upskill them – but that\u2019s not happening. Instead, she says what we\u2019re seeing is job vacancies supposedly increasing while wages stagnate or even erode. And she says wages are below the living wage. In Vancouver, where she lives, the living wage is $25\/hr – not what Tim Horton workers are making.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Calgary Herald article said that, according to Statistics Canada, there were 111,000 temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in Canada in the year 2000 and that this number had ballooned to 777,000 by 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal government tried to address the \u201clabour shortage\u201d in Oct. 2022, announcing the temporary lifting of the 20-hour-per-week cap on the number of hours that eligible post-secondary international students are allowed to work off-campus while class is in session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was before people starting blaming international students for Canada\u2019s housing and health care crises. Professors Leah Hamilton and Yvonne Su pushed back against this blame game in their Jan. 2024 article International students cap falsely blames them for Canada\u2019s housing and health-care woes<\/a>. Their article was in response to the federal government announcing its plan to decrease the number of new international student permits issued to approximately 360,000 for 2024, a decrease of 35% from 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar to real crises, the largely fabricated labour shortage has had a disproportionate impact on Black workers as detailed in the July 2023 Toronto Star article Labour shortage narrows the pay gap between white and racialized workers \u2014 but for Black workers, things are worse<\/a>. The article speaks for itself:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLower unemployment rates and higher wages in 2022 helped to narrow the employment gap between racialized workers and workers who identify as white, but not for Black workers, according to a new report released [July 5, 2023] by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The report found that the benefits of the pandemic recovery, such as wage increases, have been unevenly distributed for racialized workers, as the wage and employment gap widened between Black workers and their white counterparts. The data indicates that anti-Black racism is a dominant force in the labour market, the report\u2019s authors told the Star. \u201cDespite some progress for racialized workers as a whole, Black workers continue to bear a disproportionate burden of employment inequality,\u201d said Grace-Edward Galabuzi, a professor in the department of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University and report co-author\u2026The research found that racialized workers are overall more likely to be working in industries with high employment growth and faster wage growth than Black workers. In lower-wage occupations there is an overrepresentation of Black workers. Fifty-two per cent of racialized workers are in occupations in the bottom half of the wage distribution compared with 48 percent of white workers and 60 percent of Black workers\u2026And though wages increased during the pandemic, racialized and Black men still earn less than their white counterparts, and Black and racialized women face even greater hurdles. Black workers are overrepresented in retail; accommodation and food; and arts and entertainment, which were the hardest-hit industries during the pandemic, said Galabuzi, and are experiencing the most gradual recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Black and racialized workers, many of them women, are working disproportionately in low-paid, non unionized work – including in the gig economy like food and parcel delivery and companies in these sectors continue to complain about \u201clabour shortages\u201d. So it appears that some companies have adopted low paid, high turnover workforces as their business model supported by large numbers of largely racialized temporary workers. The 2024 federal budget included measures to address \u201clabour shortages” in health care and construction. I couldn\u2019t find anything explicit in the Budget that appeared to be responding to the \u201csolutions\u201d Jim Stanford says businesses recommend to address \u201clabour shortages\u201d: delaying the retirement age, reducing employment insurance or bringing in more temporary foreign workers. So perhaps, the government isn\u2019t buying the hype.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Budget doesn\u2019t mention the Temporary Foreign Worker Program or the International Mobility Program, or IMP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the IMP, the Calgary Herald article cited before says companies looking for cheap labour \u201care aided by an underreported TFW stream: the International Mobility Program (IMP). The government website Canada.ca advertises the IMP succinctly<\/a>: \u201cHire a worker without a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA)\u201d. Whereas for the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), employers need to at least go through the motions of trying to hire a Canadian, the IMP temporary worker stream bypasses this requirement entirely. IMP work permits have doubled from 2017<\/a> to more than 470,000 last year, which does not include the 200,000 international students who hold IMP permits. This program is a big contributor to the astronomic growth in temporary foreign worker numbers, and the shift in the proportion of foreign workers towards jobs in food, accommodations, retail, and administrative support.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Budget\u2019s silence on the TFWP and the IMP is telling as you can\u2019t solve a problem without acknowledging it. The Budget also doesn\u2019t explicitly mention \u201cracialized women\u201d or \u201cBlack women\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura Walton\u2019s assertion that people saying no to low wages is, \u201cworkers using their collective power to say we will not be disrespected as workers\u201d applies mostly, and perhaps only, to unionized workers. And recent strikes have been inspiring examples of unionized worker solidarity. But Black and other racialized people working in the gig economy for companies like Uber and Amazon are almost entirely non-unionized and so have far less power to say no to low wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the stories of low wages and poor working conditions get drowned out by the \u201clabour shortage\u201d story being pushed by companies. This is similar to how, during the January\/Febuary 2022 Freedom Convoy which occupied Parliament Hill for three weeks, there was no mention of how low wages and poor working conditions have created a \u201clabour shortage\u201d in the trucking industry. Convoy protestors had lots of \u201cF$%^ Trudeau!\u201d signs but there wasn\u2019t one \u201cPAY US MORE!\u201d sign to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might be related to the fact that many, if not most, of the Convoy protestors weren\u2019t truckers and the ones that were likely weren\u2019t unionized as only 35% of Canadian truckers are according to Canada\u2019s largest private sector union Unifor<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Laura Walton\u2019s final points in the Off the Hill \u201clabour shortage\u201d panel was that we need governments that will remove the barriers to unionization by passing things like anti-scab legislation. More unionization means more workers able to collectively demand better wages and working conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also need governments to explicitly acknowledge – and address – the problems with the temporary foreign worker programs, especially easing the path to permanent residency for temporary workers. V\u00e9ronique Sioufi said the best way to address the so-called \u201clabour shortage\u201d is giving folks permanent status. \u201cWe must stop this accepted racism of \u201cwe\u2019ll take your labour but not your person\u201d\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Washington Post\u2019s slogan is \u201cDemocracy Dies in Darkness\u201d. Corporate bad behaviour thrives in darkness so we must keep shining the light on it – and telling our members of Parliament to not believe the “labour shortage” hype.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My April 10 post on high food prices said one of the many reasons given for the high prices was COVID-related \u201clabour shortages\u201d. From fall 2021 headlines like \u201cLabour shortages to become the new norm in future\u201d to the Government of Canada saying in November 2022 that it was, \u201cSolving labour shortages in key sectors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[208],"tags":[209],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-labour-shortage","tag-labour-shortage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}