Labour Day Report Card: Is your job working for you?
(Sunday September 5th, 2004)

An annual report, undertaken by the Canadian Labour Congress and released for Labor Day 2004, finds only a negligible improvement in the quality of life of working families over the past year. Canada's central labour body released its ‘Is Your Work Working for You?' Report Card 2004. The Report Card is based on objective data, gathered from a wide variety of sources.

Ken Georgetti, Canadian Labour Congress President, said ongoing union organizing and a low-interest-rate environment were the major contributors to the slight improvement in workers' quality of life.

The percentage of the overall workforce that is unionized kept pace with the continuing changes in the economy. However, while the labour movement is holding its own, it paints a sobering picture of the situation faced by all too many working families who lack the benefits of unionization:

1. More than one in ten full-time workers earns a poverty-level wage.
2. One in five Canadians is afraid of losing his or her job.
3. One in four Canadians between the ages of 25 and 64 has to settle for either temporary work, or part-time jobs or self-employment.
4. 14% of Canadians under the age of 25 are unemployed.
5. Barely one in three workers is now eligible for employment insurance. A decade ago, before the so-called ‘E.I. reform', three quarters of workers were covered.
6. While the wage gap between women and men narrowed slightly, other indicators of equality, such as the gap between rich and poor and younger and older workers, remained static.