Officers’ Corner

AFL Study Reveals the Decline of Albertans’ Rights

Losing Ground is the title of the Alberta Federation of Labour’s latest report on the economic and social conditions facing working men, women and their families in Alberta.

The report examines the conditions facing two different generations of Albertans by comparing economic and social conditions in 1975 with those of the present. The two periods lend themselves to comparison because they are both centered in economic booms produced by high energy prices.

The troubling conclusions drawn from the study are, quite simply, that working people are worse off today than they were twenty-five years ago in most areas of comparison. On the job, real wages are lower. The proportion of people working part-time is higher. The so-called self-employed make up more of the workforce.

For Albertans who are not employed, for any reason, the picture is even grimmer. Unemployment Insurance covered two-thirds of a persons insured income in 1975, now it is 55%. In 1975, well over 90 % of Alberta’s unemployed workers collected UI. Today only 52 % of unemployed Albertans even qualify for EI – and less than 30 % of our unemployed actually collect at any point in time.

And what happens for those who cannot work or cannot find work? They look for help from social assistance. But here again, the actual number of Albertans qualifying for social assistance was smaller in 2000 than in 1975 – despite the fact that our population is nearly double what it was then and that the unemployment rate was actually lower in 1975 than it is today. Predictably, the real dollar assistance provided to Albertans in need is lower today, too.

These are deeply troubling findings. The provincial economy both in gross totals and in economic production per person are higher today in real dollar terms – yet working people’s share of the pie is smaller. This may best be typified by what has happened to Alberta’s minimum wage over time. The $2.50 an hour minimum wage in 1975 translates into about $8.20 an hour in today’s money – almost enough to keep a full-time minimum wage worker in Edmonton or Calgary above the poverty line. But our minimum wage today is only $5.90 an hour – roughly a fourty per cent drop over twenty-five years in a healthy, growing economy.

But it doesn’t stop there. In virtually all of the public benefits that working people enjoy there has been a serious decline in quality. Health care and education indicators are worse than in 1975. Municipal funding levels are down – directly effecting our quality of urban life by undermining vital water, sewage and transportation infrastructures. In 1975, provincial parks were free to all Albertans. Today you have to pay to use them.

At the heart of it all is a sharp decline in the protection of workers’ rights. Alberta’s old labour laws were, quite justifiably, considered the worst in Canada. The current labour code is worse. It is harder to organize unions and harder to reach collective agreements than it used to be. Our unionization rate is down and wages and benefit levels are down as a consequence.

The inescapable conclusion of Losing Ground is that, unless we change things dramatically in Alberta, our children and their children will face bleaker futures with less possibilities than we did twenty-five years ago (or than we do today for that matter).

The upside is that now we know that workers’ rights are being eroded – through boom times and bust times. We can see what is happening and start to work out how to deal with the problem. This isn’t a temporary detour in the path of workers’ progress, it is the end of the road until we change the map.