09-02 Labour

I was an engineering student in 1955 and working in the family clothing business on Saturdays. It was so interesting watching my father interview a young Italian lady who was a skilled tailor. But with her were her two older brothers acting as chaperones. It was those highly skilled workers from southern Italy that made my father’s business possible. And they all looked after each other as they picked up our language and our way of life.
Now it is 1975, and my father is telling me with a deep sense of sorrow that his business has no future. No tailors were coming from Italy, and the children of his tailors did not want to apprentice in the business. And today his company is gone. Canadians do not want to work holding a needle. And a suit that is tailor-made that used to cost $500 now costs $3,000. And those skilled jobs hanging sleeves or making pockets are all done by machine.
Here is another story related to the problems faced by employers who cannot fill jobs.
We have spent four winters in California, and during our visits, we have enjoyed the quality of the vegetables that are available in their grocery stores. Yet we can never get a range of good ones in their restaurants. Not like Canada, where three to five vegetables are standard at all our quality "eateries". Well, apparently Americans do not like working in kitchens.
As the founder and former CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the issue of shortage of workers was always at the top of my list of topics to confront. And even today, under the new President, Dan Kelly, it is still a top concern of Canadian small and medium-sized businesses. Apparently, there are something like 400,000 unfilled jobs in Canada in 2018.
Certainly, you can understand a worker in Newfoundland moving out to Alberta to work in the oil sands for big bucks as an alternative to working in a local fish plant.
But regardless of pay, workers do not want to drive trucks or work in construction. And there is a shortage of workers in retail despite so many retail outlets closing their doors as their customers shop online.
Labour shortages are an issue associated with both skilled and unskilled jobs. So it is not surprising if the Canadian government brings in say, 300,000 immigrants, that half of them will be immigrants with needed skills.
Skilled labour in the future is going to come from nations like China and India. Their populations of about three billion are getting education and training. And in places like China, the training in English is so exceptional that millions of educated Chinese are coming into the labour market each year speaking English fluently and without an accent.
So it is no surprise that the government of Canada has opened visa offices in China and India. And the immigration process that used to take two years now takes about one year.
The big issue, which I would call a crisis in the making, is the ageing of the population. Ten years from now companies in Canada and the US are going to be dealing with critical labour shortages.
This is a global problem and is driving technologies like robots and artificial intelligence.
The big mistake people are making is believing that these new technologies are going to create massive unemployment. It is my opinion that this is not the issue because of a shrinking workforce. Instead, the problem will be economic uncertainty, with governments unsure about education, training and immigration policies.
Fortunately, every period in history that has been characterized by revolutionary change has also been characterized by record levels of innovation and entrepreneurship. And immigrants always lead in developing the new products and services that help societies accommodate the future.