ALLIANCE ON CONTINGENT EMPLOYMENT

ABOUT THE ALLIANCE ON CONTINGENT EMPLOYMENT

The Community-University Research Alliance on Contingent Employment is a network of researchers from universities and other public sector institutions, non-governmental organizations, and community groups, based in the School of Social Sciences (Political Science), Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, York University. The ACE is supported by the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.

The Alliance includes:

• university researchers from:

  York University
  George Brown College
  McMaster University
  University of Toronto
  University of Quebec at Montreal

• community researchers from:

  Toronto Organizing For Fair Employment
  Parkdale Community Legal Services Clinic
  Ontario Federation of Labour
  Canadian Labour Congress

• analysts from the Housing, Family and Social Statistics Division of Statistics Canada;
• Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers
• Institute for Work and Health
• Canadian Council on Social Development

There is mounting evidence that the standard employment relationship is a declining norm in the contemporary Canadian labour market. Reaching its height in the post-World War II period, the standard employment relationship is conventionally characterized as an employment relationship where the worker has one employer, works full-time on the employer's premises, enjoys extensive statutory benefits and entitlements and expects to be employed indefinitely.

In contrast, non-standard forms of employment, ranging from part-time work, independent contracting and temporary work to home-based work, on-call work and self-employment, are becoming increasingly prevalent. Despite the common tendency to group non-standard forms of employment together, by defining them simply as "those forms of employment that differ from the traditional model of a full-time job," they are structurally heterogeneous. There is also considerable income and occupational polarization among various categories of non-standard workers, such as the own-account self-employed and self-employed employers and temporary help workers.

This structural heterogeneity, combined with the rapidly changing nature of employment, makes it necessary to interrogate, deepen and redefine what have come to be normalized descriptive concepts - terms such as standard and non-standard employment. The qualitative dimensions of "new" employment relationships also compel us to cast greater attention to defining precarious employment - those forms of work loosely conceived as involving atypical employment contracts, limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low job tenure, low wages and high risks of ill health.

The objective of this Community University Research Alliance is to examine the growth of precarious employment in order to foster new social, statistical, legal, political and economic understandings of this phenomenon that are grounded in precarious workers' experiences of their work and directed at improving their quality and conditions of work and health. There is a pressing need for greater study of precarious employment. Research demonstrates that precarious employment is a growing population, especially in urban areas with sizeable immigrant populations and high levels of labour force participation among women, and that precarious employment is characterized by spatial, temporal and relational fragmentation. Alliance building between researchers and community groups is critical to meeting this need. This alliance is building a comprehensive portrait of the precarious workforce enabling the creation of effective forms of regulation that capture its dynamic shape.

Research into legislation, regulation and public policies aimed at fostering social cohesion based on inclusive principles and rooted in precarious workers' concerns is essential. Vulnerable populations, such as youth, women and immigrants, are over-represented in precarious employment and hence more likely to experience the full impact of changing employment norms. In turn, scholars, policy-makers and community organizations that provide settlement, housing, training and employment services increasingly recognize the need to map precarious employment to begin to address the challenges confronting precarious workers.