Contractors or Disguised Employees? A Case Study of Couriers in Winnipeg

Geoff Bickerton, Research Director for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Rosemary Warskett, Department Of Law, Carleton University, Ottawa

September 2005

 

The courier industry in Canada is rapidly expanding. This is due to a number of factors including greater international trade in goods; more use of just-in-time inventory strategies; and the rapid development of internet commerce. Significant technological and organizational developments within the industry have led to greater segmentation of markets. As a result, large national and international parcel delivery firms dominate the international and intercity markets, while there has been a proliferation of smaller firms in the same-city, same-day markets. More business has not resulted in improved wages, benefits and security for workers in the same-day market. Instead greater competition has coincided with an increase in non-standard forms of work that have varying degrees of precariousness, including lack of job security, part-time hours, low paid and no benefits. ¹ By standard work we mean a full time, secure job that has reasonable pay and benefits and in the case of the courier industry is unionized.

It is often assumed that standard and non-standard forms of work are different kinds of jobs, found in different sectors of the economy. Generally the research literature points to the business service sector having an increase in non-standard forms of work, whereas the manufacturing sector is thought to produce, in general, traditional standard employment. Clearly there are many exceptions to this and the courier industry is a case in point. While the courier industry is a business services our findings from a case study, that was conducted in Winnipeg, reveal that couriers in certain parts of the industry are relatively well paid with benefits and employment conditions negotiated by their union, while others are independent contractors with low incomes, no benefits and insecure tenure. In other words, in the case of couriers, very similar work results in very different working conditions depending in which segment of the market the job is found.

The focus of this article is a comparison of the experience of these two types of couriers. Also we examine what is being done to improve the terms and conditions of work for same-day couriers, while giving an indication of the problems encountered and successes achieved by some of these workers who were aided by Winnipeg’s Workers’ Organizing Resource Centre.²

---

1. There is a substantial amount of statistical evidence and literature on the general nature of precarious, non-standard work (Jackson, 2005; Vosko, Zukewich & Cranford 2003; Law Reform Commission of Canada, 2004).

2. This case study was undertaken by the Winnipeg Courier Research Project Group, that produced the report “Straddling the World of Traditional & Precarious Employment.” We gratefully acknowledge funding for this research from SSHRC through the Centre for Research on Work and Society’s (CRWS) INE grant.