The benefits of "precarious employment"

The benefits of "precarious employment"

Recently I attended a "town hall" event entitled "Just-In-Time Jobs: Getting by in a world of part-time, contract and precarious work." Matt Galloway of the CBC Morning Show hosted it. This 90-minute event showcased the short term disadvantages and hardships experienced by people who work in non-salaried jobs.

As a professional recruiter, with 34 years of experience in the employment industry, I have personally witnessed several advantages that many workers have enjoyed while developing their skills and work history via this so-called "precarious employment" career path. What are these advantages?

For starters, these workers go where the need is greatest for their accumulated skills, knowledge and experience. This frequently results in higher wages for the worker and greater productivity for the employee - a win-win scenario for everyone, including the economy.

In addition, many of these workers actually prefer temp or term employment for the flexibility it can offer while they use their non-work hours to pursue other personal and/or professional interests.

One often-expressed advantage is that the "gypsy" work style of the career contractor provides opportunities to experience many different work environments. From each job, they learn and take "lessons learned" into future workplaces to their benefit and to the benefit of their employers.

Another claimed advantage is financial. The fact that self-employed contract workers are able to reduce their taxable income by claiming tax-deductible business expenses is a very common reason why many workers choose contract work.

To my way of thinking, however, the single biggest benefit is the least obvious one, but one that I have witnessed hundreds of times throughout my career. It can be summarized in one phrase: "Necessity is the mother of invention." By this, I mean that all successful, "precariously- employed" workers have internalized the critical lesson that their accumulated work history, skill sets, specialized knowledge, professional references, personal productivity and adaptability are all key to remain gainfully employed in our uncertain, modern job markets.

Survival is the #1 need of all human beings. When your financial survival instincts are continually challenged, you will continually seek ways to improve your "working game" in order to compete successfully in our modern, highly competitive job markets. In a nutshell, the best guarantee for job security is marketable skills. It is never advisable to become complacent about professional self-improvement.

Lauren Friese, one of the four CBC “town hall” panellists and  founder of TalentEgg - a national online career resource for students and recent graduates- advises her clients to think of themselves in entrepreneurial terms - to develop a "Me Inc" mindset. Like all successful entrepreneurs, these young workers are encouraged to continually re-evaluate their one-person business models in order to make the calculated and market-informed adjustments necessary to carve out their own personal road to success. Great advice!

 The timing of the CBC "town hall" event was interesting because many striking teaching assistants from York University and the University of Toronto were in attendance. Since I have been employed for 28 years without a salary- relying 100% on sales commissions- my view of their demands for more job security was quite foreign to me. Negotiating job security is unrealistic in this day and age for anyone other than possibly those employed in the public service where they enjoy the unique privileges of labour legislation that enables them to employ the bullying and force-based "negotiation" tactics of collective bargaining. I found myself wondering what makes any of them so "special" that they should be entitled to these legal privileges. Why should they have the power to coerce job security advantages for themselves when these no longer exist for the majority of the other taxpayers who are employed in the private sector?

It's unfortunate that the organizers of this CBC town hall event didn't choose to highlight any of the benefits of "precarious employment" as described above. Human capital is a terrible thing to waste in a world in which change is the only constant, and the ability to successfully adapt to change is the best strategy for long-term success.

For the sake of the greater good, and for creating a fair and level employment playing field for all citizens isn’t it time to eliminate the regulations that allow labour unions to distort this nation's workplaces? These regulations only serve to shelter the hundreds of thousands of public sector, unionized workers from becoming the best working professionals that they can be. Surely, by freeing our public service employees to experience the same competitive, "precarious employment" job market forces, the beneficial “Me Inc” self-reliant attitude will stoke the productive energies of all of our citizens equally. The ultimate benefits undoubtedly will be greater long term success and a higher standard of living for everyone.