MNI INTERVIEW: Canada To Retrain Workers As Covid Ends Jobs

--Labour Minister Says Pandemic Also Shone Light On Precarious Work

--Tassi: Safe Restart Is Focus, Working At Home Boosts Productivity For Some

By Greg Quinn

     OTTAWA (MNI) - Canada will retrain workers whose sources of employment

disappear after Covid-19 and will try to ensure government programs create

better-paid jobs than those which left millions needing relief checks within a

few weeks of the health lockdown, the country's labour minister told MNI in an

interview.

     "With respect to the workers who don't have jobs to go back to, we are

looking at training programs, retraining," Filomena Tassi said, when asked about

how the labor market might be affected by social distancing. "Those are things

that we will continue to look at and develop."

     While it is too soon to know how many jobs could be permanently lost or

scaled back, keeping workers safe is the top priority as the economy re-opens,

Tassi said, pointing also to how the pandemic had exposed the economic

vulnerabilities of a large chunk of the workforce.

     "The precarious nature of work, the light has been shone on that as a

result of Covid," Tassi said. "We want to make sure that the programs we are

investing in are going to create jobs that allow people to earn a living that

they can support themselves [...] save, and have conditions that are fair, build

up security."

     Some 8.2 million Canadians drew relief checks through June in a nation of

38 million people, helping push the budget deficit to a post-World-War-II-high

16% of GDP, after low-paid jobs left many workers with scant savings to pay

rent, utilities or buy food even through a short layoff. Unemployment hit a

modern-day record 13.7% in May and even after major re-openings the following

month there were 1.8 million, or 9.2%, fewer jobs than before the pandemic.

     --HOME WORK

     With Covid-19 accelerating pre-existing digital economy trends including a

shift to home-work, Tassi suggested that the emerging labor landscape might

offer more flexibility to some employees, and that stricter workplace regulation

may not be the answer. But companies will need to provide home workers with the

same kind of equipment and support as those going to the office, she said.

     Statistics Canada reported four in 10 workers could do work at home

regularly and Tassi cited an opinion poll saying 79% of respondents were

satisfied with the switch from office life.

     "Some people are going to be more productive at home," she said. "You

aren't taking a lunch break, because you're not surrounded by people in your

office that are all leaving for an hour lunch. You've taken the commute out,

perhaps the wardrobe."

     "These are things we have to look at before we take measures going

forward," she said.

     Tassi is applying a similar logic to a mandate from Prime Minister Justin

Trudeau on "the right to disconnect" by say shutting off email after regular

hours. An advisory council recommended letting employees and firms come to their

own terms over a legislated right.

     "What we have to do here is understand that people are different, that they

are going to respond to this differently, but we need at the end of the day to

ensure that that work-life balance is attained," she said.

     --BURDEN ON WOMEN

     Canada is negotiating restart guidelines with provinces as it rolls out

CAD14 billion in special funding, and seeks to shift relief payouts to wage

subsidies that encourage people to return to work when safe.

     The government will continue to protect the jobs of working parents who

need to stay at home because schools and daycares are closed, she said. It will

also focus on ways of easing the disproportionate job losses that have fallen on

women in the shutdown, said Tassi, a former school board trustee from Hamilton

just west of Toronto.

     "We are far better off as a country when we provide opportunities to all

Canadians, provide a level playing field that those that want to work have the

opportunity to work," she said.

--MNI Ottawa Bureau; +1 613-314-9647; email: greg.quinn@marketnews.com

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