● Percentage of Canadian workers who believe that “their employer is genuinely interested in their well-being”: 16
● Hourly wage of workers at the R.L. Denim/Metro Group factory in Bangladesh, in cents: 11
● Total compensation of Metro Group CEO Eckhard Cordes in 2008: $5,100,000
● Amount of time Cordes would have to work to earn a Bangladesh factory worker’s full-time, annual salary, in minutes: 9
● Current surplus of the federal Employment Insurance fund: $57 billion
● Percentage change since 1996 in the average maximum weekly Employment Insurance benefit: – 25
● Percentage of a university-educated male salary that a university-educated women in Canada earned in 1995: 75
● Percentage in 2005: 68
● Year in which Nelson Mandela was officially removed from the United States Terror Watch List: 2008
● Percentage change in the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange from April to June 2009: + 35
● Number of full-time Canadian jobs lost during June 2009: 48,000
● Percentage of countries in the world where the share of wages out of total income has fallen in the past 20 years: 70
● Ratio of what American employers spend on health care for workers to that of Canadian employers: 6 to 1
● Original estimated cost of Brampton, Ontario’s “public-private partnership” civic hospital: $357 million
● Actual cost of the hospital: $614 million
● Estimated cost overruns of the 12 “public-private partnership” hospitals currently being planned in Ontario: $7.2 billion
● Percentage of Americans who are in favour of military action against North Korea: 57
● Percentage of Americans aged 18-24 who can’t locate North Korea on a map: 70
● Percentage who can’t locate Israel on a map of the Middle East: 75
● Ratio of income of a top Canadian CEO to that of an average full-time worker in 1998: 104 to 1
● Ratio in 2007: 259 to 1
● Estimated number of people around the world who will lose their jobs in 2009: 51,000,000
● Ratio of Venezuela’s annual GDP growth rate to that of Canada’s, since 2004: 4 to 1
● Percentage change in the value of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment fund during the last fiscal year: – 18.6
● Amount the CPP Investment Board’s top executives gave themselves in bonuses in 2008: $7 million
● Amount of CPP savings currently invested in U.S. military contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin: $100 million
● Number of its employees that British Airways has asked to work for free during July 2009: 30,000
● Number who have agreed to do so: 1,000
● Monthly salary that company CEO William Walsh will forego during July to “help the company’s survival plan”: $115,500
● Estimated number of plastic water bottles disposed of in the United States every day: 60 million
● Factor by which increases in university tuition fees in Canada over the past 15 years have outpaced the rate of inflation: 4
● Total student debt load in Canada: $13 billion
● Estimated cost of “employee stress” on Canadian businesses each year from health claims and lost productivity: $12 billion
● Percentage of all Canadian media currently owned by the seven largest media corporations in the country: 84
● Per capita amount spent on health care in the United States: $7,290
● Per capita amount spent in Sweden: $3,323
● Number of violent acts which occur in Canadian workplaces each year: 356,000
● Chance that they involve victims who work in social assistance or health care services: 1 in 3
● Hourly wage which two parents with two children in Toronto would need in order to live above the poverty line: $16.60
● Chance that a British citizen supports returning services privatized in the last 25 years back into public ownership: 2 in 3
● Year in which the first Labour Day was celebrated by the union movement in Canada: 1872
● Number of Typographical Union leaders arrested in Toronto that year for going on strike: 24
Our Times Tally, inspired by Harpers Index (see www.harpers.org), is compiled by freelance writer Sean Cain.
