Who pays? The cost of contracting out at Canadian post-secondary institutions

The lack of retirement support also means that more workers will collect the Guaranteed Income Supplement in the future, shifting the costs of retirement from the employer to the public purse. [...] Reduced costs to the post-secondary institution, due to price competition, shifting of liability to the service provider, the economies of scale the service provider is expected to offer, and the flexibility of only paying for work actually provided (which is usually a reference to flexible staffing and/or eliminating paid sick leave). [...] These are some of the lowest paid members of the post-secondary campus community, and none of these workers are getting rich from a publicly- funded salary (unlike some of the administrators who make the decision to outsource.) That makes the difference in wages even more important: $4 or $5 an hour can be the difference between a living wage that lets workers meet all their basic needs and provid. [...] There is also a significant difference in the quality of the pension benefit offered to in-house and contracted-out workers, with 81.6 per cent of institutions with in-house workers offering a defined benefit pension compared to only 10 per cent of the private contractors. [...] Provincial governments should protect the rights of workers and put a stop to the race to the bottom in wages and working conditions that outsourcing provokes by expanding successorship rules to cover outsourcing and contract flipping in all sectors of the economy.