Social Policy in Ontario

How to fix a broken labour market

Posted on October 15, 2014 in Delivery System

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Metcalf fellow Tom Zizys lays out his blueprint for a healthy, job-creating society
Oct 14 2014.   By: Carol Goar, Star Columnist

Canada holds the unhappy distinction of doing the worst job in the western world of capitalizing on its talent.

We have the most highly educated workforce in the 34-nation Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Yet we have the largest proportion of degree holders earning less than half of the median income.

We invest billions in post-secondary training. But employers won’t hire graduates, claiming they don’t have the right skills.

Ottawa and the provinces are at loggerheads. Businesses don’t train incoming employees. Policy-makers have systematically eliminated our bridge builders: local training boards, industry sector councils, unions, publicly-funded employment agencies.

How did we get so much wrong? And how can we fix our dysfunctional labour market?

For two years, these questions have consumed Tom Zizys, a fellow at the Metcalf Foundation. He has just released his response; a 76-page report entitled Better Work: The path to good jobs is through employers. It explains how we got to this juncture and what it will take to carve out a path that leads to good jobs and a robust middle class.

Predictably, he concludes there are no quick fixes or easy answers. “But we do have a choices,” he stressed in an interview. “We can keep muddling through or we can use our public policy levers to encourage good practices. We can start changing our attitudes toward what a job is.”

Turning back the clock to an era when people got jobs, kept them and climbed the career ladder is not an option, Zizys says. That model has been shattered by globalization, technological change, corporate downsizing and outsourcing. Today’s job-seekers face an hourglass labour market: well-paying knowledge jobs at the top, low-wage survival jobs at the bottom and no passageway in between.

Highly-trained graduates can’t get a foothold in the top tier because it’s cheaper for employers to go with self-employed contractors they can lay off at will. Lower-skilled workers are pushed out of the bottom tier by overqualified post-secondary applicants.

The challenge, Zizys says, is to create labour market that fits the current landscape. That will require a new network of relationships that allow business, workers, governments, educators and community leaders to identify the gaps and broken connections in the labour market and negotiate solutions that work for everyone. It will also require a re-thinking of our profits-trump-all attitude and an overhaul of our employment programs and agencies.

“Yes, it’s hard,” he acknowledges “People find it daunting to imagine moving on so many fronts. But I don’t see any other way.”

We can start with small steps, he says, and move faster as we develop the political will:

Governments can buy their goods and services only from suppliers who pay their workers fairly, invest in training and development and encourage community involvement. Such companies aren’t hard to find. There are plenty of lists of the best workplaces in Canada.

They can set performance requirements when they hand out funds. “If all we do is provide training incentives such as the Canada Job Grant (the centerpiece of the 2013 federal budget), some employers will jump, but it won’t lead to reform,” Zizys says. At minimum recipients should be required to train recruits and work with schools and universities in the region.

Statisticians can produce user-friendly local information for employers, showing how many skilled job-seekers are available in the vicinity and what type of work they’re qualified to do. That would disprove the notion that there is no one suitable to hire.

Opinion leaders — business icons, philanthropists, sports icons and media personalities — can salute employers who care about their people as much as their stock price.
Academics can encourage their students to challenge the status quo.

Voters can start asking the questions they’ve bottled up. Why do our leaders heap so many demands on young people — more education, more credentials, better resumés — without asking anything of employers? Why is it good business to drive up stock prices at the expense of healthy, sustainable workplaces? Why do corporate CEOs deserve multi-million dollar compensation packages?

Zizys senses a rare stirring in the populace. “I think the 2008 recession was one of those seminal economic moments that still hasn’t played itself out.”

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/10/14/how_to_fix_a_broken_labour_market_goar.html >

Tags: budget, economy, globalization, participation, rights, standard of living

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