Decline in Wages and Working Conditions

Canadians are working longer hours at less secure jobs and for less pay than a decade ago, a study released in April by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found. Entitled Falling Behind: The State of Working Canada 2000, the study examines how a combination of poor economic performance and government cutbacks during the 1990s affected the majority of Canadians.

The report found that there has been no increase for more than 20 years in the real annual earnings of Canadian men working full-time and that average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, grew just 2.8 per cent from 1989 to 1998. The report also found that the average after-tax and after transfer income of Canadians fell by 5.6 per cent over the 1990s, with poorer families experiencing a decline of 12 per cent.

According to Andrew Jackson, the senior economist with the Canadian Labour Congress and co-author of the report, "strong economic growth has not spilled over to working people in the form of income and wage gains."