Painting a picture of work

A first-ever survey aims to better understand the physical and psychological working conditions of Canadians

WHILE CANADIAN GENERALLY enjoy pretty good working conditions when measured globally, a majority of us are still facing some kind of risks in the workplace, according to a first-ever survey of Canadian working conditions released last week by Statistics Canada.

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The types of risks, potential hazards and working conditions complaints in Canadian workplaces are quite varied. Many of them are physical or environmental risks. More than half of workers across all industries, StatCan reported, face ergonomic risks, like repetitive hand or arm movements, a rate that depends significantly on what field you are in — manufacturing jobs, for instance, encounter such risk 73 per cent of the time. Sixty-five per cent of natural resources workers experience “ambient physical risks,” and others are sector specific: 46 per cent of healthcare workers say they are frequently exposed to biological or chemical risk, while only four per cent of those in finance felt the same.

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The survey found that workers in Canada are dealing with a whole host of other frustrations as well. Half of all workers in management roles reported frequently working with tight deadlines, and 35 per cent of them reported doing unpaid work in their free time to meet those demands. Long hours, too, were a common complaint: two in five men have workdays that exceed 10 hours at least once a month, while only 25 per cent of women did — although on the flipside, a larger share of women (20 per cent) work in jobs in which they deal with “angry or dissatisfied clients.”

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But, to send it off on a good note, the survey also found that on the whole Canadians remain happy with the nature of their work, with 82 per cent of workers across the country signalling they were “doing useful work most of the time, or always.” Kieran Delamont