I agree with Tom Walker that the Statscan article contained "flagrant
distortions" by assuming an equivalence between overtime hours and jobs.
Nevertheless, I felt that it was quite effective in addressing some of the
myths and misconceptions around the possibility of job sharing. For
example: "Many of these new hypothetical jobs call for a well-qualified,
often highly educated labour force. Depending on the region, managerial,
administrative and professional positions represent nearly a quarter of the
overall potential, and those in construction, a tenth. One-third of
potential new jobs would also come from processing, machining and product
fabricating occupations, which may also require fairly specialized workers."
This suggests that about 65% of all paid jobs could not easily be shared, or
could be shared, in most cases, only after prolonged and expensive training.
The article further addresses the geographic discrepancy between where
overtime is most frequently worked and where the need for jobs is greatest.
Moving people without jobs to areas where there is substantial overtime
could, again, be very costly and disruptive.
The potential for job sharing would be at a maximum if we all lived in the
same place and were capable of doing the same thing in a single large
factory. However, the realities of specialization and location are
otherwise, and job sharing would therefore seem to offer very limited scope
for solving the unemployment problem.
But limited to whom? There is a potential for sharing among jobs which
require limited skills, such as grocery check-out clerks or workers in
fast-food outlets. However, these workers are already being paid minimum
wage or just a little more, and need every dollar they earn. If the total
wage-bill available for them were to be stretched even further to include
those currently unemployed, their earnings would fall substantially below
the minimum wage. The working poor would become the totally impoverished
working poor. Nothing would be solved.
Ed Weick
