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C.1 Changing World of Work: Some Statistical and Trend DataC.1.1 The Changing World of Work (CWW)As Canada approaches a new millennium, it is clear that the Canada Labour Code is being challenged in ways which could not be thought of only two decades ago. The basic raison d'être of the Code is still admirable. The primary objective of the Code is "to establish and protect employees' right to fair and equitable conditions of employment consistent with prevailing social and economic conditions." But the key elements in the above statement are being challenged. The key phrases are:
This report suggests that despite all of the benefits associated with the CWW, it has become more difficult for the Code to protect employees' basic rights, that the evolution of the economy in the 1990s makes it more difficult to provide equitable distribution of employment opportunities, and that social and economic conditions and attitudes have changed significantly in Canada in the 1990s. What follows is a discussion of how the labour market has changed in Canada in the 1990s, including a brief sketch of some of the forces behind these changes. The main point is that these changes have in effect shifted some employees or individuals out from under the protection of the Code. A Myriad of Forces Are Changing Canada's Workplace: Labour markets in the industrial countries have been experiencing monumental changes over the past 10 years. These changes are so dramatic that one can quite accurately describe them as a new industrial revolution. We are seeing this new industrial revolution play itself out in the workplace as firms and governments are more determined than at any other time over the past half century to achieve higher levels of production with fewer workers. Competitive pressures and new technologies are also displacing labour in a manner not seen since the first industrial revolution. This new industrial revolution, combined with increased global competitive pressures and the legacy of recent hard times, makes it more difficult for employers to think of expanding their work forces as they might have in the past. The corporate sector has been at the forefront of downsizing and restructuring, stemming from increased competitive pressures, as well as the introduction of new technologies. At the nation-state level, a number of forces are at work, including the erosion of the Keynesian welfare state and a sense that government intervention in markets has to be reversed. Virtually all governments have been facing major fiscal constraints and have been curbing spending in order to either lower taxes or pay down their outstanding debt. The counterpart to the fiscal squeeze has been a shift in non-budgetary delivery mechanisms — public-sector intervention in markets is less acceptable today than in the past, and many of the changed policy directions of the past 10 years have been moves to extricate the public sector from markets and to deregulate the markets as much as is feasible. The deregulation-of-markets trend of course has important meaning for all government policies, including labour standards. While economists have comfortably argued for generations that mass unemployment is not possible as long as the economy is growing quickly enough, this proposition has less validity today. Even if Canada was lucky enough to replicate a 1980s style economic boom in the emerging new era, the number of regular, full-time new jobs created this time around would be considerably smaller. In this new, less interventionist government era, it is very common for the governments and the central bank to set targets for inflation and budget deficits, but rarely does one discuss establishing targets for job creation. Moreover, the 1950s-1960s concept of full employment has been completely displaced (and discredited) by the concept of the NAIRU (the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment), as a desired public-policy priority. This concept in effect means that society is faced with much higher unemployment than in the past. This new industrial revolution and the observed trend of slow growth in quality jobs have immense implications for the stability of our society and the regulatory structure which governs the labour market. For some individuals, the opportunities associated with this new industrial revolution, along with the corresponding CWW, provides opportunities for greater personal growth, improved personal flexibility in terms of balancing work and leisure, and opportunities for more stable and higher incomes. For some others, however, there is a reversal of these elements. The opportunities for these persons translate into major economic and family problems. The bottom line is that portions of the public feel far more insecure and will continue to look to governments to play a role in alleviating their insecurities. C.1.2 The Job-Market Dynamics in the 1990s: Some of the Features of the CWWStatistics Canada Labour Force Survey data suggest that the likelihood of being self-employed has increased sharply over the last 20 years. Indeed, between 1989 and 1996, self-employment accounted for over three-quarters of total jobs created in Canada. Over that same period of time, the number of paid employees increased by only 1 percent. Self-employment accounted for 18 percent of employment in 1996, up from 14 percent in 1989 and 12 percent in 1976.
And as Statistics Canada indicates in its November 7, 1997 INFOMAT publication, "although this increase in self-employment has been considerable for both sexes, it has been more pronounced for women. In 1976, women represented just over one-quarter (26 percent) of the self-employed, but by 1996, they made up about one-third (33 percent) of this group. The incidence of self-employment is not uniform across all sectors. More than two-thirds of self-employed persons worked in the service sector in 1996. In 1996, only 12 percent of the self-employed were pushed into business ownership because there was no other work available. Even though the average earnings of the self-employed are below that of paid workers, the self-employed are more likely to make either small or large amounts of money." The job-market figures presented in the table above highlight many of the important labour-market developments which have some bearing on the CWW issue and the role of labour-market standards. For example, the 1990-91 recession cut private sector employment heavily — 305,000 jobs were lost in 1991 and a further 136,000 in 1992. Employment in the private sector only expanded strongly in 1994, 1995, and 1997. The other developments which stand out in this table are that the new jobs created are primarily in self-employment, and part-time jobs account for a disproportionate amount of recent job creation in Canada. Note as well that self-employment contributes strongly to job creation in the 1990s and most of the private-sector jobs in 1997. C.1.3 Important Changes Which Describe the CWW (Based on Our Initial Literature Review, Empirical Data, and Other Social Trends)A number of prominent empirical features of the CWW have bearing on the goals and operations of labour standards regulations. Our survey information sheds specific light on the importance of these changes to stakeholders, including employees, self-employed individuals, and employer groups. Key changes are noted under headings (a) to (k). a) Rapid Growth in Self-Employment Compared to Regular, Full-time Employment: As already indicated, over the past decade the bulk of new jobs created were classified by Statistics Canada as self-employment. Indeed, Statistics Canada data indicate that self-employment has grown particularly rapidly among older workers, as approximately 4 in 10 are 45 years of age or older. We know that there can be an unusual dependency relationship at work in self-employment. While a person can be described as legally "self-employed," nevertheless in practice he or she may work continuously for a single client (in effect, an employer). As a self-employed person, this individual has only limited (perhaps no) protection under labour standards and of course is not entitled to non-wage fringe benefits paid to regular employees. A highly visible case in point (though not in the federal sector) is dependent contractors, such as home-based garment workers. Many, we are told, earn below the statutory minimum wage for time actually worked. The problem of the work relationship and lack of "protection" may be widespread in other sectors as well, though hard information relating to dependent contractors is lacking. b) Contingent Work/Non-standard Work Becomes More Prominent: The Report of the Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work (1994, Chapter 3) noted that the non-standard workforce is growing faster than standard, full-time employment. This has important implications for employment standards. Contingent and non-standard work (NSW) includes part-time work, temporary or contract jobs, moonlighting jobs, and self-employment, as well as (as conceptualized below) work outside the more traditional daytime Monday-to-Friday schedule. We also know that this rapidly growing new type of work is less prone to be unionized and more likely to rely on contracting out of services and that many of the employees experience significant wage, benefit, and security penalties, as a result of their non-traditional employment status. It is important to underscore the fact that not all non-standard jobs are necessarily bad. While the empirical data are poor, we do know that many non-standard workers are consultants, professionals, and trades people who have left regular jobs to increase their incomes or to achieve more independence. Non-standard employment may also be preferred by many women with young children or may be seen as entry-level jobs for those in school or universities. Some temporary workers also gain valuable experience that leads to a permanent job. Nonetheless, in its 1990 report, the Economic Council of Canada expressed serious concern about the rapid growth of non-standard jobs, which, it said, "is undermining the economic security of a significant and growing portion of the work force (which) may have negative consequences for the fabric of Canadian society." This concern has been reported continuously in many other reports and studies. c) The Newer Emphasis on Flexible Working Schedules: The trend towards NSW and new flextime work arrangements seemed to emerge together. As Ernest B. Akyeampong has observed ("Flexitime Work Arrangements," in Perspectives, Statistics Canada, Autumn 1993, pp.17-22), a flextime schedule allows an employee to vary the beginning and end of a workday, with certain limits (i.e., "core hours" must be respected). The Statistics Canada report notes that in November of 1991, some 1.7 million employees, accounting for 16 percent of the paid workforce aged 15 to 64, reported being on a flextime arrangement in their main job. Three forces at work suggested to the author that flextime would increase in importance — an increase in the incidence of flextime, the growing prevalence of flextime in the service sector, and recent public discussions and forums dealing with balancing conflicting family and work responsibilities. d) Rapid Growth in Part-time Employment: There has been considerable attention paid to this phenomenon in the business and academic literature. The Report of the Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work (1994, Chapter 3) and Statistics Canada data (Canadian Economic Observer, Table 8, Labour Force Statistics, August 1998, p. 15) also indicate that part-time and temporary jobs have grown faster than full-time, permanent jobs in the 1990s. Similar developments are noted regarding full-time/part-time employment growth in other industrial countries. Quantifying all of the causal factors and their relative importance in the evolving CWW is impossible. Key factors behind the trend towards part-time rather than full-time employment are:
In plain words, the structure of the labour market today in Canada is very different from that of even 10 years ago. Part-time and temporary jobs have grown faster than full-time employment in Canada, partly because of such temporary factors but also because of major structural changes in the way labour markets can now operate. It is quite possible that the non-standard job of today will become the "standard" job of tomorrow. Certainly, governments in Canada acknowledge that young people entering the labour force are having major difficulties in finding full-time, permanent jobs. In Canada, part-time employment is usually thought of as describing those who work less than 30 hours per week. Part-time employees can also be regularly employed or temporary employees. Part-time employment is a flexible, cost-effective way of hiring from an employer perspective. Part-time employment provides companies with a way to screen new recruits prior to providing permanent positions. Part-time employment also provides individuals with the flexibility to balance off their work and other activities (schooling, etc.). The plus to this is that part-time work permits individuals to become entrepreneurs and create areas of specialization. The downside of part-time work is that non-wage benefits (extra medical coverage, dental plans, etc.) are poor, since such benefits tend mostly to be offered by large, unionized employers. Once again, it is important to stress that not all part-time jobs are bad jobs. Some part-time work provides good pay and benefits, as well as stable employment and prospects for advancement. It is preferred by many working people, particularly women with young children. Or a part-time, entry-level position may suit the person attending school, college, or university and seeking valuable work experience. On this subject, Dave Broad observes that improving the working and social welfare conditions of part-time and other casual workers was the intent of recent amendments (Bill 32) to the Saskatchewan Labour Standards Act. (Broad, Dave. "The Casualization of the Labour Force," in Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: The Transformation of Work in the 21st Century, Harcourt Brace Canada, 1997, pp. 53-73). The original intent of the Saskatchewan legislation was to provide part-timers with more control over their work and family lives. The original plan was to provide the following: 1) a provision requiring one week's advance notice of work schedules and changes; 2) a provision stipulating that employers grant an unpaid meal break of at least 30 minutes within every six or more consecutive hours of work; 3) an "additional hours of work" provision, which would allow part-time workers with seniority to pick up extra hours when they become available; and 4) a provision requiring employers who give benefit packages to full-time workers to give the same benefits to part-time workers who work 15 or more hours per week, prorated according to hours worked, to prevent employers from replacing full-time workers with part-time workers to escape employee-benefit costs. All of the above provisions were enacted except that of extra hours of work, and the provisions were limited to workplaces with 10 or more full-time-equivalent employees and, in the case of employee benefits, limited to sites where benefits already exist. These adjustments meant that less than 10 percent of part-time workers in the province were affected by the new enactments. e) Temporary Workers: Temporary employment is clearly one of the characteristics of the CWW. Temporary workers include those hired for short-term assignments via temporary-help agencies and workers hired directly by firms on short-term contracts. According to the Canadian Council on Social Development (Insight No. 3, November 1995), there were more than half a million temporary workers in Canada in 1995, representing about 5 percent of the work force. As explained above, the current trend towards downsizing, contracting out of services, and flexibility results in the hiring of more temporary workers than in the past. Temporary work has a number of advantages and disadvantages for both workers and employers. Temporary employment provides flexibility to firms and individuals and allows firms to tailor their workforces to meet fluctuations in labour requirements in a cost-effective way. But temporary workers also earn a lower average wage and are less likely to receive non-wage benefits and protection. Temporary workers may in some cases be legally defined as self-employed contractors and, in that situation, do not have the rights and protections of regular employees. As the Council observes, temporary workers, who are for all intents and purposes employees of a firm because they are designated self-employed contractors, do not receive sickness pay, statutory holidays, bereavement or vacation leave, severance pay upon termination, and employers do not pay Employment Insurance, Canada Pension Plan, or Quebec Pension Plan premiums on their behalf. Few temporary and contract workers are covered by benefit plans, and, almost by definition, all have very insecure incomes. Aside from the relatively few consultants who can command high fees and move from client to client, the appeal of temporary work is probably that it offers an opportunity to earn while looking for a regular position. Some contract workers are able to do that, while many are left to move from temporary contract to temporary contract. Others may go from a temporary job to a period of unemployment. f) Telecommuting and Home (Office) Work: Telecommuting refers to the basic notion of individuals doing a conventional job from home, electronically, instead of at an employer's premises. Telecommuters may be contract employees or self-employed. Some experts believe that in the future over one-half of all work could become telework. Telework is tied to the information highway. The new technology suggests that such jobs/work will continue to be generated as the economy expands. Kay Stratton Devine, Laurel Taylor, and Kathy Haryatt ("The Impact of Teleworking on Canadian Employment," in Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: The Transformation of Work in the 21st Century, Harcourt Brace Canada, 1997, pp. 97-116), in a recent article, explored this trend of employees who work at home with a focus on telework by individual employees, co-workers, managers, organizations, and unions. The authors concluded that many unions oppose telework arrangements because of concerns over employee exploitation (poor working conditions), health and safety problems (stress, depression, lack of rest breaks, poor ergonomics), lack of social cohesion (isolating environment), and no representation from labour in making teleworking arrangements. From an employee perspective, one misconception, the authors point out, is that working at home will assist in child-care arrangements and will help unite families. Teleworking is not a solution to the child-care problem, especially for pre-schoolers. Anyone who needs child-care facilities to go to work will also need them to work at home. The telecommuting direction poses a significant challenge for labour standards enforcement. In practical terms, telecommuting results in the creation of additional small firms and/or entities. Further, the chances are that the incidence of new firm starts will increase because cheaper technologies have reduced the cost of starting up a small business. As discussed in the section on self-employment, firms become smaller and the boundaries between employers and employees may break down; that is,
In both of the previous descriptions, the individual is for legal and tax purposes the owner/operator of a small business; but in the former case, he/she has lost the protection of labour standards, whereas in the latter case labour standards protection may not be needed or desired by the owner/operator of a firm. g) Because of Continuous Restructuring, Job Insecurity Is Widespread, Even Among High-Earning Professions: This is clearly a manifestation of the CWW. Surveys suggest that job-market insecurity has become far more widespread in the current environment —both for the unemployed and the employed. This phenomenon affects managers and professionals, as well as hourly paid employees. For example, Paul Osterman ("The Transformation of Work in the United States: What the Evidence Shows," in Managing Human Resources in the 1990s and Beyond: Is the Workplace Being Transformed? IRC Press, Queen's University, 1995, pp. 71-92.) suggests that three interrelated forces have brought on a wave of restructuring and insecurity in corporate America. First, increased competition has led firms to cut costs; second, activist stockholders have put companies under pressure to maximize returns; and third, new ideas about how best to organize business have pushed many functions within firms in the direction of decentralization and reduction. With a shift in human-resource policies, performance-based compensation shifts risk from the employer to the workers, and in a sense can be interpreted as a degradation of employment conditions. On the other hand, it also gives workers and teams which have new powers the opportunity to reap rewards from their efforts. Note: The following four characteristics identified seem to be the by-product of the new industrial revolution and its effect on the workplace in the 1990s. Nevertheless, there is no strong empirical or theoretical reason to believe that the negative aspects of the CWW will continue to overwhelm the positive gains that it provides. h) Despite Higher Technology, There Has Been a Surprising Absence of High-Paying Jobs Created in the 1990s: Another major characteristic of this CWW (at least in this decade) is that the labour market is generating a higher mix of low-wage and salary jobs than in the past. This is adversely affecting the distribution of income and also setting up intergenerational conflicts. We see this phenomenon not only at home, but also in the US labour market; that is, even in the US economy, most of the new jobs created in the 1990s have been relatively low-paying jobs. i) An Increased Polarization of Working-Time Distribution: Since the mid-1970s, an increased polarization of working time has accompanied the general rising trend of unemployment in Canada. This is reflected in a significant increase in both long hours of work and in short hours of work and a very rapid growth of non-standard jobs (part-time workers, self-employed individuals, dependent and independent contractors, etc.). Some of these trends are cyclical; that is, they are related to recessions and/or weak economic growth, but deeper "structural" forces are also changing the distribution of working hours. Statistics Canada has documented this shift to NSW in the Canadian labour market. For example, Deborah Sunter, ("Working Shift," in Perspectives, Statistics Canada, Spring 1993, pp. 16-23.) notes that 3 out of 10 Canadians work outside of the normal 9 to 5 day. These types of work schedules affected 2 million full-time and 1 million part-time employees in 1991. The article assesses the prevalence of non-standard work schedules, selected demographic and socio-economic characteristics of shift workers, and their main reasons for working shifts. The article suggested that the growth and prevalence of NSW warrants close attention. Currently, 3 million shift workers are exposed to the physical and social problems associated with non-standard hours, such as irregular sleep and eating patterns (physical-health problems) and must adapt their personal and family schedules to suit the demands of irregular shifts. The report noted that shift work can be advantageous to students and parents and that the incidence of shift work is likely to increase in conjunction with demands for greater productivity and customer convenience and the growth in part-time and student employment. j) Disguised Unemployment: A significant number of part-time employees are truly underemployed. In 1993, for example, 760,000 people working part-time wanted full-time work.40 k) Technological Unemployment Seems to Have Become More Serious: Here we are referring to the fact that in the current labour market, many high-school graduates are simply too ill-equipped to win jobs which require computer, mathematics, or general literacy. This is reflected in high-school graduates (only) having significantly higher unemployment rates than university graduates, etc. As an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report noted, "41 percent of all new jobs in the USA to 2005 will be in the highest skill groups, which may lead to a skills mismatch."41 C.2 Survey Method and Technical NotesC.2.1 Notes on the Employer/Employee SurveysThe initial stage of the employer/employee surveys involved two major activities: (1) the validation of contact name and address information for employers (federally regulated and provincially regulated), and (2) the collection of sample lists of employees from the sampled federally regulated employers.42 Verification of employer addresses was highly successful, with verification completed by telephone and FAX, using existing databases. The employer sample was a stratified random sample of employers (stratified by industry sector and size as indicated by number of employees, thus allowing later weighting in the final survey analysis). Federally regulated employers were sampled from the 1997 survey database, and provincially regulated employers were sampled from published business directories. The objective was to identify somewhat over 800 employers for the survey (additional verifications were completed as a contingency, in case some employers needed to be replaced in the survey). The following breakdown indicates the result of the survey verification step:
Compilation of a Federal Sector Employee Sample: This component of the study was highly exploratory. A unique approach was required because no list of employees in federally regulated industries exists anywhere and because they are a rare population —about 1 in 20 of the Canadian workforce. Because they account for only about 5 percent of the total Canadian workforce, it was anticipated that any type of population survey to identify federally regulated employees (e.g., by telephoning randomly selected households) would not be feasible for cost reasons alone. Additionally, previous research has indicated that it is no simple matter to determine whether in fact a person or firm falls into the federally regulated sector. Complicated questions are needed within many industries/sectors to determine whether a firm is in a federally regulated sector.43 Generally, the evaluators were extremely confident that, since employers are often unclear themselves as to whether they are federally regulated, employees would have only very unclear ideas about whether or not their employers were federally regulated. Approach: Thus a direct path was chosen — to elicit the voluntary supply of sample lists of employees from federally regulated employers. The subsample of federally regulated employers contacted was randomly chosen from employers previously sampled for this evaluation's 1997 survey of federally regulated industries, and which were verified again in this 1998 survey. Obstacles: Contacting firms directly and requesting these lists faced a number of obstacles. Most importantly, this step required firms to do some work for the survey, compiling lists, often in a form not usual to their operations, doing sampling, etc. For many firms, this was made more difficult because the survey occurred at "year end," making administrative demands at a time when businesses are least able to respond, having committed administrative, human-resources, and accounting staff to extensive year-end "roll-ups." Additionally, privacy concerns were expressed by some employers, particularly larger firms which were unable, they indicated, to release personal employee information. Results: Generally, success was obtained in this sampling activity across all sectors (with allowance for alternative procedures for some larger employers to distribute the surveys internally to their own sample of employees [no names given out to the consultants]). Overall, a pool of about 3,500 employees was identified by employers and captured to our database, from which a subsample was selected for the actual survey. Additionally, a number of surveys were distributed through employers. Overall, over 250 employers provided names or participated in the employee survey by agreeing to distribute the survey packages to a random sample of employees. Overall, the results were:
A different approach was taken to the compilation of comparison samples of provincially regulated employers and employees. Provincially regulated firms were sampled from business directories, including the CD-Pro Canada Directory of Businesses. These sampled firms were contacted in the same way as federally regulated firms to verify names, addresses, sector (non-federal) and to identify the contact persons to receive the survey. Provincially regulated employees were sampled by telephoning a random sample of Canadian households to identify a national sample of employees, with after-the-fact deletion of those in federal sectors. Survey Process and Results: Each survey was a 10-page self-completion questionnaire (separate versions for employers and workers) mailed to each employer or worker at the address obtained in the initial screening. Most questions took the form of "check off the box" or circle the number (for attitude ratings). Non-respondents received up to two reminder mailings at intervals of approximately three weeks. The final survey-response rates were good, compared to typical mail surveys, after reminder mailings and follow-ups 44. The response overall was 78 percent for federally regulated workers, 74 percent for federally regulated employers, 72 percent for provincially regulated workers, and 67 percent for provincially regulated employers. The surveys elicited good response rates and a wide range of reactions and questions from both employers and workers. Workers expressed considerable interest in the survey in terms of its relevance to CWW issues of concern to individual workers. Many who telephoned us or wrote comments on the surveys expressed their concern about the CWW topics — that NSW issues were important to their lives, and that many issues emerged in their workplaces. Others had questions of a more mechanical nature — for example, some workers who received the survey from their employers (where employers were intermediaries for the survey distribution) asked us if the survey was completely confidential. Employers also expressed interest in the survey beyond completion of the questionnaire — many asking if results would be made available. Not all employers completed the survey without extensive reminders. Many indicated that being "very busy" was an obstacle to completing the survey — that it was challenging nowadays to deal with the variety of government surveys/forms.45 Even so, employer and worker surveys alike were well completed, with a low incidence of unanswered or poorly answered questions overall. C.2.2 Data Reliability/ValidityThe survey data exhibited good reliability, as tested with the statistical test Cronbach's alpha.46 This specific test of reliability examines interitem correlations of the members of a questionnaire scale to indicate if the scale is reliable. An alpha of 0.7 or higher indicates that there is a high degree of interitem correlation among scale items and that the scale would be expected to produce reliable statistical information. We tested reliability for several scales in the employer and worker surveys, with the following results. Specifically, these data-quality findings were: Employers:
Workers:
Validity of the survey data was indicated by a variety of factor analyses undertaken.47 These analyses showed that key indicators measured for employers and workers represented more theoretically useful underlying dimensions of workplace attitude. Specifically, for example, a factor analysis of worker responses to quality-of-work survey questions identified several underlying factors:
As is shown in Section C.2.5, the methodological robustness and usefulness of this type of data are further shown by analyses which illustrate how the data can be used to indicate the incidence of long hours of work by sector and by the ways in which the significance of CWW/NSW factors can be examined with regression analyses. C.2.3 Weighting of Survey ResultsIn the employer and worker survey statistics, all results have been weighted to be indicative of the respective populations of federal and provincial/territorial sector employers and workers. This procedure was particularly necessitated by the lack of a precise sampling list for the surveys. Such lists do not exist, even for employers, in a simple way, since no agency collects exhaustive information on which businesses in Canada are federally and which are provincially/territorially regulated. The closest approximation to such a list is that provided by the LOIS information system, which compiles lists of firms which are visited or inspected or for which complaints are registered under any part of the Code. That list was shown to have substantial gaps, as illustrated in the 1997 labour standards evaluation, in that many firms it lists have ceased to operate and many others are unlisted although locatable through surveys of specific industries, such as trucking. Nonetheless, LOIS allows an estimate of the number of firms operating in the federal sector when combined with a survey estimate of those missed, such as was obtained in the 1997 evaluation. These data allow us to broadly picture the population of employers in the federal sector and provide the sampling base for this study. Using these data, a procedure for weighting the sampled federal-sector employers was implemented following the 1997 study data and procedure. Numbers of employees in the federal sector can also be estimated, as is shown in reports such as Industries Under Federal Jurisdiction: Contributing to Canada's Competitive Edge (HRDC, December, 1997). There, for example, it can be noted that the banking subsector, while accounting for only 52 unique banks or employers, accounts for just over 200,000 of the some 700,000 plus workers in the federal sector (HRDC, 1997, pages 15-19) and that the transportation subsector (trucking, air, rail, water, pipelines) accounts for some 289,000 workers among many thousands of businesses, ranging in size from the large national carriers (Air Canada, Canadian Airlines, Canadian National, etc.) to very small independent trucking operations, many of which are owner operated (pp. 30-33), and so on. Unfortunately, as noted earlier, there is no existing list of federal-sector versus provincial/territorial-sector employees, such as exists in LOIS. The employer-based listing procedure developed for this study results in a sample which can over represent or under represent particular sectors. This is a not-surprising shortcoming in such an exploratory study but requires remedy, in this case an indicative weighting of the worker survey data. To remedy this shortcoming, in the initial sampling, federal workers sampled were weighted to be representative of the estimated population of workers in federal subsectors. Thus, the statistical tables for federal workers represent a sample which was weighted upon initial selection to reflect the known distribution across sectors. Provincial employers and workers data were similarly estimated when sampled, using an estimate of the provincial/territorial populations (national estimates [e.g., from Statistics Canada Business Registry], less estimated numbers of firms and workers previously estimated for the federal sectors). All statistical tables (percentages and means) in the report are weighted. However, future research should explore methods of better specifying the populations and sampling frames for federal and provincial sectors. This topic was also addressed by the provincial/territorial representatives the evaluators met with in Charlottetown in June 1998, as part of the meetings of the Labour Standards Working Group of the Canadian Association of Administrators of Labour Law, who indicated a strong need for improved databases for the identification of federal versus provincial/territorial enterprises. C.2.4 Hours of Work by Subsectors One question of interest in the study was whether the tendency towards long hours —clearly a significant CWW issue overall but particularly in the federally regulated sector — was concentrated in only a few sectors or in many sectors. The research anticipated that trucking would be a key sector with long hours, because of the long hours usually logged by truckers (noted as an issue in the 1997 evaluation). To examine this issue we considered eight sectors and the proportion of workers reporting working more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis. We grouped these into three subgroups, those where 60 percent or more of workers reported regularly working over 40 hours a week, those where 40-59 percent of workers reported regularly working over 40 hours a week, and those where 20-39 percent reported regularly working over 40 hours a week. The results were as follows:
Generally, these results suggested that while particular sectors may have a very high incidence of long hours, CWW work demands, in this case long hours for 20-60 percent or more of workers were to be found in a wide range of federally regulated sectors. In contrast, a parallel analysis of selected provincial sectors (manufacturing, human services, and retail) found that all of these fell into the lower group of overtime incidence, with 20-39 percent of workers reporting regular overtime. These results suggest that long hours are a relatively pervasive problem for the federally regulated sector. C.2.5 Indicators of Key CWW/NSW Impact FactorsA number of regression analyses were undertaken using the federal-sector worker survey data to see whether worker assessments of impacts on learning, family life, and other areas were independent of industrial sector or key demographics. To test this question, a number of regression analyses were undertaken, where independent variables were:
These analyses (see subsequent pages for detailed regression results) indicated that two main factors emerged as potential causal factors, when other variables were controlled. These main factors were:
Other relationships noted were association of employment in the banking sector with higher levels of security and association of at-home work with higher quality of work. These results were of interest in further supporting workers subjective assessments of impacts of NSW and CWW, and of interest in suggesting key factors as central for consideration in future discussions relating CWW to labour standards. Regression Summaries
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