Working time and flexibility in Canada
| Autor | Eric Tucker - Leah F. Vosko |
| Cargo | Osgoode Hall Law School, York University - Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender and Work, York University |
| Páginas | 165-175 |
IUSLabor 1/2016
154
WORKING TIME AND FLEXIBILITY IN CANADA
Professor Eric Tucker
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Professor Leah F. Vosko
Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender and Work, York University
Introduction
Canada is a federal state and, under its constitution, legislative jurisdiction over labour
and employment is vested primarily in its provinces and territories. As a result, there is
no generally applicable national regime regulating hours of work, but rather a
patchwork of laws with limited reach. It is not possible to cover all these laws in a brief
overview and so we have chosen to focus on the laws of τntario, Canada’s most
populous province. However, it is also fair to say that while provincial laws vary, the
law of Ontario reflects the general pattern of hours of work laws in Canada. As will be
seen, while the development of the hours of work regime was initially driven by the
demand to protect employees from long hours, it has also accommodated the demand of
employers for flexibility and arguably, in recent years, flexibility for employers has
come at the expense of protection for employees.
In 2ί15, Canada’s
82 15.2 million employees83 aged 15 and over worked on average 35
hours per week. At the same time, this average hides hours-polarization: whereas 18%
of employees work fewer than 30 hours per week, 50% work 40 hours or more per
week. There is also a strong gender dimension to hours of work: women are more likely
to work fewer than 30 hours per week than men (25% of women (1,862,276) compared
to 12% of men (885,469)) and men are more likely to work 40 hours or more per week
than women (35% of women (2,605,516) compared to 65% of men (4,992,720)).
Furthermore, while only 4% of employees report working 50 or more hours per week,
excessively long hours are more common among men than among women. These trends
are not surprising since approximately 82% (or 2 million) employees work full-time,84
82 This brief statistical p rofile focuses on Canada for reasons of sa mple size and data a vailability and also
since, as Canada’s most populous province, the picture for τntario is analogous.
83 Employees are the group addressed herein because the self-employed are not covered by most labour
and employment laws, including those regulating hours of work. As a consequence, a sizeable segment of
the employed population is excluded as self -employment constituted 15% (2,759,830) of total
employment in Canada in 2015.
84 Statistics Canada, the source for these data, defines full-time employees as those who usually work 30
hours or more per week at the main or only job, although the ESA d oes not define full-time except insofar
as it sets 44 hours as the standard threshold for receipt of overtime pay as discussed in Q. 6.
Para continuar leyendo
Solicita tu prueba