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.
