The Canadian Latte Pits (Part 3)

In the last installment of this series I asked about unions. Why isn't the retail sector better unionized? Part of it is an overall decline in unionization. Unions have been, in terms of numbers of members, on the decline for a while. Another part of the problem is that no one wants to stay in retail. Most people think of it as a stopgap measure until they can start their "real" career elsewhere. Those that do not look at retail that way are trying to use a retail position as way onto the corporate ladder.

Retail is composed therefore of people who see the solution to their working conditions as being working somewhere else as well as those whose career-path would be stopped in its tracks if they did attempt unionization. Of course the reality is that more people are spending more and more of their lives in retail or other service jobs. Asking for a union though seems to imply a sort of permanence at a given position. People aren't prepared to admit that kind of permanence working on the sales floor.

The Canadian Latte Pits (Part 2)

Yesterday I sort of jumped off on a bit of a rant that was derived from a Rick Salutin column. I ended up talking about the working conditions in retail jobs. Rick was talking more about the global economic structure and I suppose I should clarify that what I'm saying doesn't necessarily go against what he's saying. Nonetheless, even if we recover some of our manufacturing jobs it seems inevitable that many more of us will spend more of our working lives in the service sector.

If you work in some areas of the service sector this does not exactly fill you with hope. We seem to have accepted this sort of cultural expectation that this kind of work has poor pay, inconsistent hours, little opportunity for advancement, and not much security. The companies that manage to buck this trend are out there, but they are rare. The "floor" for what you can expect in retail is quite low: minimum wage, no guarantee of benefits, no guarantee of hours - you get the picture. Those companies that are above this sort of floor are of their own volition. What we ought to do is find ways to raise that floor.

Some have called for increased union involvement in the service sector, and yet I don't see much evidence that unions are terribly interested in this (correct me if you know of a union that is). Should unions be a part of the solution here? Are they interested? Are retail workers interested?

The Canadian Latte Pits (Part 1)

Chris Tindal linked to this interesting column by Rick Salutin in which Mr. Salutin ponders the prospect of an all-retail economy. I do not think however we will be all retail, rather our economy will be shaped rather like a "V" with many jobs in resource-harvesting at one end at and many in service at the other. All of the refining and manufacturing, all the real "value-adding" will take place elsewhere. We will send our timber and oil to China and we will then sell Chinese-manufactured goods to each other.

Rick is gloomy about this, but there is one thing that he does not mention but which is broadly hinted at. Life in the retail/service sector is tough. I've slung espresso, I've worked in call centres, I've worked in electronic stores - the sort of thing that seems to be a rite of passage for my generation. My father paid for university in part through construction jobs, those of under 30 seem to have paid for it by life in retail. We know these jobs all too well. There are numerous things that we'd change about them if we could - more about that later.

A service-based economy need not be all bad. In one sense you could say that economies that run off of, say, banking are service-based. Banking is a service, in that sense a place like Switzerland is arguably service-based. The problem with retail/service economy as we now have it is in large part how those who work in it are treated. There are exceptions to be sure, but for many retail means unreliable hours (12 hours one week, 30 the next) not much in the way of job security and a general lack of respect.

More on this later...