There was a good article in the New York Times regarding lagging paycheques in the US:
Yet many are far from making up all the lost ground. Hourly earnings have moved forward at a crawl, with higher prices giving workers less buying power than they had last summer. Last-minute scheduling, no-poaching and noncompete clauses, and the use of independent contractors are popular tactics that put workers at a disadvantage. Threats to move operations overseas, where labor is cheaper, continue to loom.
…
Economists have offered various explanations for why workers are not doing better: the steady weakening of labor unions, the ability of American companies to find cheaper labor abroad or automate further, piddling productivity growth and the rise of superstar companies that are extremely efficient with a relatively small labor force.
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It’s difficult to look through this list of trend-drivers and find a suitable place for the imposition of public policy constraints – most potential measure will do more harm than good, to everybody.
However, I will suggest that it is appropriate for labour legislation to make ‘last minute scheduling’ less attractive – it’s an extremely exploitive management strategy that needs to be reined in. For instance, my contact in the nursing business works as ‘permanent casual’ (I think that’s the label!) with a major hospital complex. She has no set hours; every week she has to tell them her availability and they call her when they need her … and by ‘call’, I mean at 5am to start a 7am shift.
She has to give them so many potential shifts every week, including some on weekends, some graveyard shifts and some afternoons. If they call her for an ‘available’ shift and she turns it down, that’s a black mark. Three black marks in a year and she’s fired.
The problem with this – besides illustrating the complete mismanagement of the Ontario health care system – is that she gets nothing for making herself available other than the chance she might get called. It’s ridiculous. She could make herself available for 168 hours a week, not get a single call and they wouldn’t have to pay her a dime. That’s what I call exploitive. And, mind you, she works for a hospital – a civil servant in all but name. One would think that employment standards there would be pretty good.
If the ‘last-minute scheduling’ system is to be allowed to endure – and there are good reasons why it should be around to some degree – then workers should be either guaranteed that some proportion (two thirds?) of their availability will be taken up, or paid some hourly rate ($5/hour minimum) for availability that isn’t taken up.
Scheduling has attracted some notice from the Ontario Ministry of Labour and revised legislation is scheduled to come into force:
On-call pay — Three-hour minimum pay: Employees who are “on-call” and not called into work, or who are called into work but work less than three hours, must be paid three hours pay. Only one three-hour minimum applies to all on-call scenarios which may occur during a 24-hour period. On-call pay is not required if the on-call is for purposes of ensuring the continued delivery of essential public services and the employee was not required to work.
I think that addresses my concern – at least partially – but notice that ‘essential public services’, such as nursing in hospitals, has been specifically exempted! We will have to see whether the legislation survives the new Ontario Mindless Kneejerk Party government, and just how everything works out in practice.
Another possibility to be explored is a Guaranteed Annual Income. There was a long opinion piece in the weekend Globe about the idea, but the experiment that’s currently running is very poorly conceived:
In its new pilot, Ontario is providing single recipients up to $16,989 a year and families up to $24,027, minus 50 percent for any earnings
Fifty percent. And then there’s traditional taxes on top of that. So what’s the effective marginal tax rate on that? Maybe sixty, seventy percent for a low income earner? Boy, that leaves a lot of incentive to pick up an extra shift and go for that minor promotion, doesn’t it?
No, the way to implement a Guaranteed Annual Income is to make it universal and include it in taxable income. We don’t need to implement the whole thing all at once. Start off with a $1,000 refundable tax credit, included in income, and increase it whenever possible. Bear in mind that effective marginal tax rates are important … especially the particularly moronic ones, with a sharp cut-off of benefits.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
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| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.5154 % | 3,167.9 |
| FixedFloater | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.5154 % | 5,813.0 |
| Floater | 3.41 % | 3.62 % | 70,015 | 18.27 | 4 | 0.5154 % | 3,350.1 |
| OpRet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.3807 % | 3,198.7 |
| SplitShare | 4.59 % | 4.50 % | 60,800 | 4.92 | 5 | 0.3807 % | 3,819.9 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.3807 % | 2,980.4 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.63 % | -14.47 % | 60,725 | 0.09 | 9 | 0.0481 % | 2,907.5 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.37 % | 5.48 % | 53,187 | 14.70 | 26 | 0.1198 % | 2,989.4 |
| FixedReset | 4.29 % | 4.58 % | 131,403 | 4.18 | 106 | 0.0326 % | 2,561.3 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.12 % | 5.87 % | 64,769 | 5.47 | 27 | 0.3665 % | 2,981.5 |
| FloatingReset | 3.28 % | 3.78 % | 32,647 | 3.37 | 9 | 0.0740 % | 2,842.4 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| IFC.PR.F | Deemed-Retractible | -1.00 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.65 Bid-YTW : 5.64 % |
| SLF.PR.C | Deemed-Retractible | 1.03 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 21.63 Bid-YTW : 7.14 % |
| TRP.PR.E | FixedReset | 1.07 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2048-07-16 Maturity Price : 21.99 Evaluated at bid price : 22.59 Bid-YTW : 4.83 % |
| SLF.PR.B | Deemed-Retractible | 1.11 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.85 Bid-YTW : 6.51 % |
| SLF.PR.A | Deemed-Retractible | 1.16 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.71 Bid-YTW : 6.57 % |
| IFC.PR.C | FixedReset | 1.31 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 23.20 Bid-YTW : 5.38 % |
| MFC.PR.B | Deemed-Retractible | 1.41 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 22.25 Bid-YTW : 6.87 % |
| MFC.PR.C | Deemed-Retractible | 1.75 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 21.55 Bid-YTW : 7.29 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| RY.PR.W | Perpetual-Discount | 204,575 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2048-07-16 Maturity Price : 24.55 Evaluated at bid price : 24.80 Bid-YTW : 5.00 % |
| TRP.PR.F | FloatingReset | 147,100 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2048-07-16 Maturity Price : 20.73 Evaluated at bid price : 20.73 Bid-YTW : 4.10 % |
| BMO.PR.C | FixedReset | 56,600 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2022-05-25 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.27 Bid-YTW : 4.39 % |
| RY.PR.J | FixedReset | 54,821 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2048-07-16 Maturity Price : 23.45 Evaluated at bid price : 24.57 Bid-YTW : 4.75 % |
| TRP.PR.J | FixedReset | 51,153 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2021-05-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 26.25 Bid-YTW : 3.92 % |
| TRP.PR.D | FixedReset | 50,960 | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2048-07-16 Maturity Price : 22.19 Evaluated at bid price : 22.90 Bid-YTW : 4.79 % |
| There were 17 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| MFC.PR.N | FixedReset | Quote: 23.72 – 23.96 Spot Rate : 0.2400 Average : 0.1628 YTW SCENARIO |
| HSE.PR.A | FixedReset | Quote: 17.91 – 18.22 Spot Rate : 0.3100 Average : 0.2329 YTW SCENARIO |
| PWF.PR.R | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 24.96 – 25.20 Spot Rate : 0.2400 Average : 0.1665 YTW SCENARIO |
| IAG.PR.I | FixedReset | Quote: 25.10 – 25.30 Spot Rate : 0.2000 Average : 0.1290 YTW SCENARIO |
| MFC.PR.L | FixedReset | Quote: 22.67 – 22.89 Spot Rate : 0.2200 Average : 0.1503 YTW SCENARIO |
| PWF.PR.P | FixedReset | Quote: 19.66 – 19.93 Spot Rate : 0.2700 Average : 0.2024 YTW SCENARIO |