by There was a recent article in the Hill Times about temporary workers in the federal public service, noting that this number is growing even under Trudeau’s sunny ways (that’s not entirely fair, the report only covered the first 5 months of the Liberal’s tenure). The numbers come from the Privy Council clerk’s annual report, which shows that the number of temporary and contract workers in the federal public service increased by 2,800 between March 2015 and March 2016, to 35,000 workers, or about 13% of the total federal public service. Because the recent Changing Workplaces Review from Ontario was on my mind, and the recent attention on the abuses of temporary employment agencies, I wondered if we even knew how many temporary agency workers there are in the federal public service, or the
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Angella MacEwen considers the following as important: employment standards, telecommunications, temporary workers
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There was a recent article in the Hill Times about temporary workers in the federal public service, noting that this number is growing even under Trudeau’s sunny ways (that’s not entirely fair, the report only covered the first 5 months of the Liberal’s tenure).
The numbers come from the Privy Council clerk’s annual report, which shows that the number of temporary and contract workers in the federal public service increased by 2,800 between March 2015 and March 2016, to 35,000 workers, or about 13% of the total federal public service.
Because the recent Changing Workplaces Review from Ontario was on my mind, and the recent attention on the abuses of temporary employment agencies, I wondered if we even knew how many temporary agency workers there are in the federal public service, or the federally regulated sector.
From the Annual Survey of Service Industries: Employment Services, we do know the size of the Employment Services Industry – $13.3 billion in 2015, and we know that over half of that was temporary staffing. Government and non-profits make up about 10% of sales – but there would also be temporary agency workers placed in transportation and telecommunications, for example, and that breakdown wasn’t available here.
I had better luck with the Federal Jurisdiction Workplace Survey (FJWS). This survey covers industrial companies under the federal jurisdiction (not workers directly employed in the federal service). In 2015 the FJWS asked about the number of temporary workers paid through an employment or personnel agency over the course of 2015. Employers reported 60,000 workers paid through temporary agencies, most of these workers were employed with large workplaces. The breakdown by company size and industry is shown below.
Distribution of temporary workers paid through an employment agency, 2015
| # of employees | ||
| Company size | ||
| 1 to 5 employees | 900 | |
| 6 to 19 employees | 800 | |
| 20 to 99 employees | 1,300 | |
| 100 employees and more | 57,100 | |
| Industry | ||
| Air transport | 800 | |
| Rail transport | x | |
| Road transport | 4,600 | |
| Maritime transport | x | |
| Postal & pipelines | 39,700 | |
| Banks | 8,100 | |
| Feed, flour, seed & grain | 300 | |
| Telecomm & broadcasting | 6,000 | |
| Miscellaneous industries | 300 | |
| Total | 60,000 | |
Source: FJWS (2015)
Note: The “x” indicates that the data has been suppressed due to confidentiality concerns as required by the Statistics Act.
This all tells me two things. First, it is totally reasonable to look at ways to protect precarious workers in the federal public service and the federally regulated sector (remember all that noise about the NDP federal minimum wage promise not helping anyone?), and second – we need better data to do it.
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