At the age when some still play Lego, Adrien conscientiously stacks the cans at the end of his shelf. Every evening, the young boy leaves school running to come to work in this large area in the north of the island of Montreal. Two hours of daily work after school: a busy schedule for this 12-year-old boy. At the checkouts of this same supermarket, very young teenagers, like him, help customers fill their bags. How many hours per week for each, for what salary? The manager refuses to answer.
These minors are however employed, a priori, in complete legality. In Quebec, there is no minimum age required to start working. The law on labor standards merely lists a few restrictions: the employer must make sure to obtain the written authorization of the parents for minors under 14 years of age. Up to 16 years of age, it is forbidden to make them work during school hours, and night shifts are prohibited.
In 2016, a survey conducted by the Institut de la statistique du Québec pointed out that one in three schoolchildren had a paid job during the school year. An already special situation, which made Quebec, and more generally Canada, exceptional figures within the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of child labor.
“Child Empowerment”
“ From the end of the 1990s, the deregulation of retail opening hours in the evenings and on weekends led to an explosion in the need for part-time workers.explains Elise Ledoux, professor of ergonomics, specialist in labor issues at the University of Quebec in Montreal. School children, freed from their lessons from the start of the afternoon under the organization of school time in Quebec, were an ideal workforce for a few hours a day. »
Today, the phenomenon has reached an unprecedented scale. According to a study by Statistics Canada, the employment rate of miners in Quebec exceeds 51%. The current economic situation in the province – an unemployment rate of just 3.9% and a shortage of workers exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with some 240,000 vacancies – is increasing the pressure on employers. Corollary: immigrant labor and minors are particularly courted. On the highways of the country, the giants of fast food like Tim Hortons or McDonald’s deploy an offensive communication thanks to huge billboards promising parents that a job at home “will promote the career of [leur] child “.
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