Precarious Employment in Canada: Taking Stock, Taking Action

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Precarious employment is an increasingly common term used to highlight labour market insecurity. In Canada, precarious employment normally involves those forms of work involving atypical employment contracts, limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low job tenure, low wages and high risks of ill health. Precarious employment is shaped by tendencies in late capitalism whereby employers use subcontracting and other strategies to minimise labour costs and thereby lower the bottom of the labour market. This Forum on Precarious Employment considers the nature and shape of precarious employment in Canada based on preliminary findings of four research projects of the Community University Research Alliance on Contingent Employment (ACE). ACE is group of professors, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from four Canadian postsecondary institutions (York University, McMaster University, University of Quebec at Montreal and George Brown College) and researchers and activists from community and labour organisations. Toronto Organising For Fair Employment (TOFFE), the Ontario Federation of Labour, Parkdale Community Legal Services, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers as well as analysts from the Institute for Work and Health and the Housing Family and Social Statistics Division of Statistics Canada participate. In its research program, ACE aims to foster new social, statistical, legal, political and economic understandings of precarious employment that are grounded in workers’ experiences of their work and directed at improving their quality and conditions of work and health. Since January 2001, ACE researchers have pursued research on the size, shape and location of precarious employment in Canada; labour laws, regulations and policies; work organisation and health; and organising amongst workers. Community and university partners are involved in defining research questions, shaping research methods and carrying out research in each of these areas. This forum presents highlights from each of the four main areas of investigation in ACE. Collectively, PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT IN CANADA: TAKING STOCK, TAKING ACTION