Last year came to an end amidst ominous warnings of runaway household debt and news income inequality is getting worse.
As we head into the new year, we must collectively confront these challenges. We can do it by addressing an underlying cause of both: the creation of good jobs.
Minor fluctuations in the unemployment rate don’t hide the fact that a good, full-time job is hard to find right now. Especially troubling are the high number of people unemployed for long periods and youth unemployment rates of almost 14 per cent.
An upturn in part-time jobs may look good at first glance, but it does not hide the fact that B.C. has 84,000 fewer full-time jobs than we did before the recession began.
Tax cuts and privatization have not created good, full-time jobs in B.C. They also have not helped the B.C. economy bounce back from the recession, as other provinces have recovered faster and are creating more jobs than we are.
According to Statistics Canada, B.C. was the only province that saw its productivity decrease from 2003 to 2008.
There is no reason to believe the HST, should it survive, will lead to significant job growth either. Given the current level of post-HST job creation, it will take more than a decade to get us back to the unemployment levels of 2007.
B.C. desperately needs a new agenda that puts the creation of good jobs first and foremost.
Victoria can begin by addressing its own prediction that B.C. will face a shortage of 160,000 skilled workers in five years. It is not enough to build bridges, buildings and roads. We also need to build a generation of builders.
Too many employers have ignored their obligation to train workers. We must invest in British Columbians, so we can perform the skills in our province, and that requires we rebuild the apprenticeship system in our province.
B.C. also needs to rebuild its wood-products manufacturing base, which was the backbone of this province for more than a century. In the last decade, more than 70 wood-processing facilities in B.C. have closed. The government has sat on the sidelines and watched logs, jobs and entire mills shipped overseas. The provincial government needs to invest and restore the industry while there is still something left.
A jobs agenda for the province must also include the creation of good, green jobs as we make our economy more environmentally sustainable.
Rebuilding BC’s physical infrastructure is long overdue and can create good green jobs. This requires the province develop a comprehensive, co-ordinated, green industrial strategy with a focus on construction and retrofitting, green manufacturing, waste management and transportation. It also requires the provincial government support research and the development of new technologies and training for the people who will work with these technologies.
Public sector jobs, in health care or the civil service for example, are inherently green. They also provide important public services in tough economic times like these and are part of the human infrastructure we need to have an economy that can compete globally.
Our public assets and public sector workers make an invaluable contribution to our individual and collective health and prosperity. We need to invest in these assets and jobs not eliminate or privatize them.
Jim Sinclair is the president of the B.C. Federation of Labour.