Good morning. A strike at Canada Post is serving as a flashpoint for new challenges facing both workers and employers. The cost of living is high, and now we have to worry about robots coming for our jobs? I’d feel more at ease about it if they promise to pay taxes. More on the economic forces driving angst at the workplace below, but first:
In the news
Roy Gori is retiring next May as Manulife Financial Corp.’s chief executive officer, an announcement that caught Bay Street by surprise.
Canadian pension funds have sizable financial exposure in the event of a bankruptcy filing by Northvolt AB, the Swedish battery-maker that is burning through cash as electric-vehicle demand hits the skids.
Ukraine bonds are rallying on bets that Donald Trump can fulfill a campaign promise to end war with Russia.
Happening today
- It’s consumer price index day in Canada and the euro zone.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to attend a G20 meeting on “sustainable development and energy transition.”
- Earnings include George Weston Ltd., Walmart Inc., and Lowe’s Companies, Inc.
Neither look all that pleased with this workplace dynamic.
In focus
The new economics shaping the future of work
(Or: What we talk about when we talk about Nvidia)
A crush of economic reports, earnings and labour disruption this week is highlighting a new wave of complexities weighing on workers and employers.
This morning’s inflation report is expected to show price increases have broadly stabilized, but many are still feeling the squeeze of elevated shelter and grocery costs. Canada Post’s workers are on strike over wages and job conditions, but they’ve also pushed back over the Crown corporation’s implementation of automation.
And Nvidia Corp., which reports earnings after close tomorrow, is a US$1-trillion reminder of how its chips are powering its titanic clients’ ambitions to rewire work across industries.
Taken together, a new picture is emerging of an economy finding its footing after the height of the pandemic. Employers are navigating the effects of inflation, heavy debt, labour shortages, geopolitical upheaval and now the likelihood of strict tariffs on imports into the U.S.
Workers, meanwhile, are contending with high costs and growing anxiety of being replaced by new technology. Unions representing Canada’s airlines, railways, ports and the postal service have all sought wage and compensation increases in their work stoppages this year, but they’re also prioritizing job security as companies increasingly employ automation.
Changes in competition, technology and globalization have been accelerated by the pandemic, and have spurred new anxieties among Canada’s work force, said Professor Gordon Cooke, a labour relations expert at Memorial University in St. John’s.
“Those three broad influences are rippling below the surface because they shape the degree of power that workers have individually or collectively,” Cooke said. “And at the moment, there’s this feeling among organized labour that now is the time to stand up for their rights.”
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has been vocal about its resistance to Canada Post’s plans to hand over tasks to machines, pointing to technologies in use at its new processing centre in Ontario, where the vast majority of sorting is automated. The union says the corporation has started testing robotic parcel arms, autonomous mobile robots, and “follow-me robots for letter carriers” that represent a threat to jobs. At the docks in British Columbia, the Longshore and Warehouse Union Ship & Dock Foremen were seeking job security as the BC Maritime Employers Association planned “technological change implementation,” including automated machines used to load and unload cargo containers.
The growing push to ensure machines don’t displace humans from the workplace comes as the realization settles in that the pandemic speeded the adoption of digital technologies by several years, according to report by McKinsey & Company. As companies focus on finding ways to stay afloat in a strained economy – often through automation and AI – workers are experiencing whiplash over what those advancements mean for their job security, and their ability to put food on the table.
From the employers’ perspective – in particular at Canada Post, which in 2023 described its own financial situation as “unsustainable” – management has to be at least “directionally competitive,” Cooke said. That means finding efficiencies through technological adoption.
“There’s going to be fewer employees at Canada Post in five years than now, in 10 years from now. I’m not cheering it on, but it’s going to happen.”
“The question is, can it be managed in a way that is respectful and that is empathetic?”
Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said AI and automation aren’t inherently good or bad, “but it’s how we apply it that determines whether it’s good or bad.”
The speed with which companies embraced technology in response to the pandemic was worrisome to workers’ job security, Bruske said, but it also instilled a “loss of respect and dignity at work.”
“The world is changing very, very quickly. Workplaces are changing very, very quickly. There’s an uptick of artificial intelligence, of automation. And so, people are feeling vulnerable.”
“There’s just so much coming at us that people are feeling like, wait a minute, where’s my place in this?”
Ken Whitehurst, executive director of the Consumers Council of Canada, said there was a sense among workers and consumers in the thick of the pandemic that pay freezes and higher grocery prices, for example, were tough but necessary, and “that everybody was in this together.”
But now, “there’s a strong sense that Canadians are not being provided reassurance from companies and policymakers that what happened through the pandemic was fair.”
“This is a fantastic opportunity to see where the next century’s opportunities are,” Whitehurst said. “But what we’re seeing is a real lack of insight coming out of business, venture capitalists, investors, government, into what that marketplace needs to be” to prepare for technological advancement, climate change, the risk of more pandemics, and geopolitical shocks.
“And nobody’s really saying, hey, you know, what just happened to us is like the early, easy wake-up call.”
Charted
‘Trump trade’ tanks the loonie
The re-election of Donald Trump has supercharged the U.S. dollar, sending Canada’s currency exchange rate to a four-year low against the greenback – potentially helping Canadian exporters ride out the impact of tariffs but also pushing up prices for imported goods, Mark Rendell reports.
The outlook
On our radar and reading list
Dressing down: How slippers went from inside to outside, and even worn with a suit and tie.
On time: A gold pocket watch given to the captain who rescued Titanic survivors sells for a record price.
In search of joy: A neuroscientist taught rats to drive – and they loved it. Their joy suggests how anticipating fun can enrich human life.
Up next: Nvidia Corp’s. earnings report after close tomorrow marks potentially the most important day remaining on the market calendar for 2024.
Morning update
Global markets were mostly lower as investors flocked to safe-haven assets after President Vladimir Putin updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine amid escalating tensions with the United States over Ukraine. Wall Street futures slid and TSX futures followed sentiment lower ahead of October inflation data later this morning.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.92 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 0.4 per cent, Germany’s DAX fell 1.2 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gave back 1.28 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.51 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.44 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 71.32 U.S. cents.