It’s no surprise when someone, almost anyone, explains why they hate Mondays – it’s because of going to work. Specifically, going back to work. They have to return to working an eight-hour job again, for about three quarters of the week –again– two thirds of the month, and a roughly exhausting 1,700 hours a year. Again, and again.
It’s the same routine every week, every year. The more time passes, the less it seems like there’s any escape. Most people can’t afford to give up working, about half of Canadians already live paycheck to paycheck. And no matter how far technology’s come, this country, alongside others tied to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), are hellbent on human labour and wage slavery.
Still, in true fashion of this crumbling country, we aren’t putting this in order.
Our own country tells us this. From 1997 to 2021, both the collective bargaining coverage rate and the unionization rate declined among employees as a result of a fall in unionization in the private sector.
Coverage rate fell about three percentage points to 30.9 per cent, and the unionization rate fell about 2 percentage points to 29.0 per cent.
Aging away at their desk, Canadians will spend far too big a fraction of their lives working for someone else, only to live in an evermore isolating economy where they can’t afford retirement, a house or gas and now have to worry about a plausible recession on the way.
But there is hope. With only about one third of this country’s working population unionized, there’s always room to improve working conditions, unite, and break away from this isolating experience to get some collective bargaining power.
Nothing’s “broken” about this system. It, much like the Monday question, doesn’t come with a shocking answer. Canada’s socio-economic world has, in fact, a history of recessions, inflations, and other economic failures. These are by design and it won’t be the last time we see them, inflation is rife throughout the capitalist world.
Economic short-comings and financial barriers (wage and debt slavery to name a few) guarantee a remaining working class of poorer, disadvantaged Canadians. So, it’s not a safe bet to place your faith in someone else, or wait for the storm to pass; workers are going to need to do it themselves.
For too long, Canadians have relied on merit granting success. The belief that, so long as we work hard, do our homework, and play by the rules, we too could reach fame and fortune.
It’s as if, as John Steinbeck would say, Canadian workers think themselves “embarrassed millionaires,” only temporarily. It’s why they put up with subpar working conditions, as one day they’ll outgrow them. They won’t, and neither will the next generation if this doesn’t end.
Canadians, including myself, are also damn good consumers. So distracted by our shiny toys and modern-day carnivals, we lose sight of more growing and pressing issues. Who cares if not every worker gets paid a living wage, or about the hundreds of thousands of us that are homeless every year? I can’t wait to see the next MCU movie!
I’d be doing an injustice to not also mention the injustices within too. According to the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives in 2019, “both men and women who identified as Black had higher labour force participation rates than their non-racialized counterparts. However, they also had higher unemployment rates and bigger wage gaps than the average for all racialized workers.”
There’s no hope in treating an economy as some naturally occurring phenomenon. It’s not a storm that’s about to pass. It needs to change, and that change is going to come from labour organizing.
Unionize, so that when you demand for higher wages and workplace benefits like more time off, predictable hours and so on, you and your coworkers will have the strength to do it.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
