Apr. 6, 2021 "As Liberals consider EI update, gig workers hope to qualify for social safety net": Today I found this article by Tara Deschamps and Jordan Press on CTV news:
Ryan G. Hinds longs for the days of walking through the halls of a theatre and seeing musicians warm up, stage managers chit-chatting and technicians sharing a piece of licorice before a show.
It's been a long year for the 42-year-old Toronto actor and cabaret performer, who has watched how a safety net for unemployed workers has failed to catch gig workers like Hinds.
The place of gig workers has become a key issue in ongoing deliberation on how the decades-old employment insurance system will be updated.
There is general agreement that the social safety net program created eight decades ago needs to be adapted to cover gig workers when they fall on hard times.
Questions exist at the practical level, such as how to calculate premiums and benefits, in addition to policy concerns about determining when someone needs aid, given that the nature of gig employment includes ups and downs.
"EI has to join the 21st century because to me, an EI that doesn't cover everybody isn't a functional or realistic or fair or useful EI," said Hinds, who uses the pronoun they.
The April 19 budget could signal where the government is heading, particularly as it lays out federal expectations for premiums paid by employers and employees, and benefits to be paid out, over the coming years.
Nura Jabagi, an expert on the gig economy, said government policy will catch up with the new realities of employment, noting movement in Europe.
"There's this very antiquated thinking around employment that hasn't really caught up with what's going on," said Jabagi, a Concordia University Public Scholar who spent a decade in e-commerce.
"Historically, freelance work was sort of a niche thing, and it's becoming much more mainstream. And so we have to recognize these shifts and think about how we view employment."
The country's gig economy comprised 1.7 million workers in 2016, a 70 per cent jump from a decade earlier, according to Statistics Canada.
At the time, recent male immigrant workers were almost twice as likely as their Canadian-born counterparts to be part of the gig economy, and more women than men in the overall labour force were gig workers.
Last year, gig workers accounted for about one-tenth of all hours lost through the pandemic, a greater proportion than any preceding downturn.
A briefing note to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the loss of hours reflected the growth in the gig economy over the last decade. This group of workers "does not tend to lose their job the way that employees do," officials wrote in the note, a copy of which The Canadian Press obtained under the Access to Information Act.
Quebec musician Francois Plante was working for a television show at the onset of the pandemic and watched as performer after performer cancelled appearances because some had travelled to COVID-19 hot spots, or feared getting on planes.
Most of Plante's gigs were then called off and he was left worrying that the sector wouldn't return to what it was before the pandemic.
Plante said he enrolled in urban-planning courses in case he needed a backup career, possibly outside the gig economy.
"I'm well-established and I had a couple of online gigs, but for a lot of people, it's been really hard and a lot of them have already switched to another job," Plante said.
Jim Stanford, director of the Centre for Future Work, said precarious self-employment grew slightly during the initial months of the pandemic, and fell after July when economic conditions improved.
Stanford suggested the pandemic may have initially driven some people to take up new gig-type jobs that don't normally qualify for EI.
"During the pandemic these workers had nothing to fall back on. That posed a threat to public health, as well as equity, because these people were compelled to keep working no matter what," Stanford said.
"It is urgent that the federal and provincial governments expand and reform existing income (support) and labour policies to make sure that gig workers have something to fall back on."
Jabagi said many ride-hailing service workers, like Uber drivers, have shifted to delivery services to avoid contact with people, but they haven't made up lost earnings with supply of drivers outpacing service demand.
She noted that gig workers on professional-services platforms who can work remotely have not seen a steep drop in their hours, reflecting similar trends in the broader economy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2021.
As Liberals consider EI update, gig workers hope to qualify for social safety net | CTV News
Jun. 18, 2021 "Delivery-app drivers and other gig workers fear loss of income as restaurants, stores reopen": Today I found this article by Vanessa Balintec on CBC News:
In the middle of the pandemic last summer, Samouel Garinis saw an opportunity to earn an income delivering meals to people stuck at home.
As a new full-time Skip the Dishes driver in Fredericton, Garinis made about $20 an hour during good weeks and as little as $5 an hour when times were tough.
Now, after witnessing a decrease in orders as the province sheds COVID-19 restrictions, he is wondering what will become the new norm.
"The glamour does fade away," said the 21-year-old. "It's not as fun as it was when I first started, but I still look upon it well.
"It's a very free job — I can listen to music, podcasts, I can pick my shifts for whenever, really. As long as someone else hasn't swiped away those shifts already."
Garinis said that every Thursday, Skip the Dishes shifts for the next week become available randomly throughout the afternoon, up for grabs for any driver to claim. This is the most stressful part of his week.
"You don't know how good a day is going to be," Garinis said.
"It might be horrible one day, it might be great another.
Obviously, with the pandemic slowing down it's going to get less busy of course — but that's the main bit of it. It's just not a very stable job."
Statistics Canada, which describes gig workers as
self-employed freelancers,
on-demand online workers
and day labourers,
found they represented about eight to 10 per cent of all Canadian workers in 2016, according to the agency's most recent data.
Before the pandemic arrived in Canada in 2020, an estimated 10 per cent of Canadians worked in the gig economy, Statscan says.
Gig worker Megan Foster of Fredericton said the meal delivery platforms
Skip the Dishes
and DoorDash
and grocery counterpart Instacart
were not widely used in the city until last year, when the pandemic started keeping people at home.
The meal delivery platforms are often grouped alongside ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft for offering on-demand delivery and transportation services.
"I didn't even know any of them, like none of them existed," Foster said of the three food delivery platforms she now works for.
"And then the pandemic hit and people needed stuff brought to their houses, and restaurants needed to make money. And so it definitely accelerated [use]. And I'm hoping that it doesn't stop after the pandemic."
Unlikely to be stable, expert says
But looking ahead, experts say gig work in Fredericton may not be able to stabilize and grow at the rate expected in larger urban centres.
"They really have to follow the demand where and when it arises, and really then, I would call that more instability than flexibility," said associate professor of sociology Paul Glavin at McMaster University in Ontario, who is studying the gig economy and its effect on participants' mental health.
For the 26-year-old Foster, taking up shifts for each platform helped supplement her full-time income as a personal support worker.
"By doing the side hustle with Skip the Dishes and DoorDash and Instacart, I was able to pay off a lot of my debt, so it was a big help," said Foster, who hopes to keep doing gig work part time once she transitions back into her day job.
"Now that I'm taking a break from home care, it's helping cover bills on its own."
Gig worker sees continuing need
With New Brunswick now in Phase 2 of its so-called path to green, with green meaning full reopening, Foster hopes customers and workers will continue to use the apps. She said the services fill gaps, especially for people in rural areas or with mobility issues and in need of help with groceries.
"I find with Instacart, that one has been really helpful for the seniors. I know a lot of the regular seniors that I shop for, and they really enjoy having us bring [groceries] to them."
Although gig work has become more common, New Brunswick does not have any information that tracks who participates in the gig economy.
Moving out of the pandemic, the biggest challenge for researchers and government is finding ways to track this fluid labour market, said Glavin.
"It's very easy to identify a full-time worker with a single employer, but when people are loosely attached to gig work, that makes it challenging."
Although Garinis believes app-based work will become more commonplace, he said he's planning on a gradual transition back into traditional full-time work.
"It's already been slower this summer than it was last summer, where I could average out, like, $20 when the pandemic really was starting. It's not been good — I am prepared to get another job."
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