Work Values and Attitudes of Young Quebec Workers: An Intergenerational Analysis
This paper focuses on measuring how much the work values and attitudes of young Quebec workers differ from those of older workers. We analyze the three core dimensions of the work relationship, i.e. the centrality of work, its principal finality, and attitudes towards the dominant managerial norms. We build our analyses on the data from a 2007 survey questionnaire administered to 1,000 workers representative of the Quebec labour force aged 18 years or more and not in full-time study. According to our study, although worker values and attitudes do not diverge significantly among the age groups surveyed, young people tend to attach less importance to work than do older workers and their aspirations towards work are not as high. Nevertheless, their adherence to the dominant managerial norms slightly exceeds that of their elders. Consequently, branding young people on the basis of their work values and attitudes fails to reflect observed reality, at least insofar as the centrality and finality of work and attitudes about managerial norms are concerned. For each of the target dimensions, employment status and level of training apparently outweigh age class as determinants shaping values and attitudes.