Better literacy skills crucial to Canadian workforce

Canadian society must more and more rely on its wits instead of big biceps. That's a grim fact for two million illiterate employees who will be hard hit by the future need for greater analytical and communications skills in most workplaces.

Two million workers across Canada are trapped in a tightening vice between their own illiteracy and a relentless rise in job demands for reading, writing and using numbers.

The Southarn Literacy Survey confirms that illiterate workers—one out of six in the labor force—will be hard hit by the need for greater analytical and communications skills in most industries.

New types of jobs will make much greater literacy demands than before, government and industry studies predict, and existing jobs are being transformed by technologies like numerical control. Dairies are installing personal computers on the shop floor and the cabs of future tractor-trailer rigs will feature continuous printouts on vehicle wear and tear.

"The ability to learn will be the premium skill of the future," declared the Economic Council of Canada in a 1987 jobs study.

But only one in four of the nation's two million working illiterates think they need help with reading and writing on the job. Fewer than 10 per cent say they're even likely to take remedial instruction.

"It's a gloomy picture for programs trying to tackle literacy in the workplace," says Dr. Paul Nesbitt, a psychologist with The Creative Research Group.

The survey identified 24 per cent of adult Canadians whose literacy skills are too limited to handle simple day-to-day reading, writing and use of numbers. Nearly a third of these functional illiterates are retired; of those looking for work, 86 per cent had some sort of job in the past 12 months.

Occupations volunteered by the illiterates roughly mirror the pattern for the Canadian workforce. This means illiterates aren't concentrated in industries that might be sheltered from the projected onslaught of learning on the job.

Twice as many illiterates as literates told the survey interviewers that reading and writing aren't now important in their jobs. But other studies have found 40 per cent of Canadian workers expect their jobs to be altered by technology over the next five years.

The survey's gloom is borne out by the start-up troubles in the summer of 1987 of the first national workplace literacy program, being introduced in three regions by Laubach Literacy under a $1.2-million federal grant over three years.

Literacy in the workplace usually means one employee helping another in basic reading, writing or mathematics, with the tutoring preferably done half on their own time and half on the company's. Learning materials often come from the workplace—shop manuals, office forms or a machinist's shift report.

The three projects based in Sydney, N.S., St. Catharines, Ont., and Winnipeg, Man., originally struggled to reach an initial target of 20 students. One recurring problem is a backlash by management and workers to the very word "literacy".

"If only they had some other name for the program," says Bob Ruttan, general manager of a dairy in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

The dairy is enthusiastically participating in the Laubach workplace project, initially by providing tutors rather than students. The introduction of a personal computer on the assembly line —so machine operators can monitor their efficiency — might spur employees to take courses.

"We claim that better reading and writing skills are going to improve the productivity of employees. But we don't know it for a fact," says Peter Sawyer, who co-ordinates the projects from Laubach's national office in Saint John, N.B.

Some studies suggest improving reading skills may boost productivity no more than 10 to 15 per cent. Researchers at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., will monitor the success of the on-the-job approach by Laubach, a U.S. offshoot that claims 5,000 volunteer literacy tutors in Canada.