A new voice for labour in a world of precarious work

The Urban Workers Project seeks to mobilize young professionals in freelance, part-time, and contract jobs and lobby for better protection.

Thestar.com
March 29, 2016
By Sara Mojtehedzadeh

There’s no easy way to summarize what 26-year-old Joan Lillian Wilson does for a living, other than to say it involves a lot of slashes: graphic designer/photographer/activist. Part-time/contract/volunteer. No union/benefits/pension.

Sound familiar? Then you, too, might be a part of the city’s invisible workforce. It’s composed of independent contractors, part-time employees, self-employed entrepreneurs, and creative types - a hitherto disparate group that Toronto activists are now seeking to unite.

“There is a huge group of people who aren’t being spoken to right now. So we are hoping to be a place for those people who are kind of outside of the political system,” says organizer and communications consultant Stephanie Nakitsas, who is starting the Urban Workers Project with former NDP MP Andrew Cash.

The project, which launches Tuesday, hopes to bring together and advocate for workers who, until now, had no obvious way to connect - a demographic that, for many years, fell outside the scope of traditional union structures and often has little protection under the law.

“We just in general need to start looking at public policy through the lens of precarious work - how do we build a new foundation that supports all workers,” says Cash, who fought for better legislation for interns and precarious workers during his time representing the riding of Toronto-Davenport.

Around half of all jobs in the GTA and Hamilton are now insecure, according to research by United Way and McMaster University. Young people entering the workforce increasingly find there is little in the way of stable employment on offer, Cash adds.

Mira Etlin-Stein, who is about to give birth to her first child, says while the newly configured world of work offers young people flexibility and freedom, the stress associated with chronic instability can also be crippling.

“I’m happy I’m doing what I’m doing because I love it and I think it’s really meaningful,” says the 31-year-old occupational therapist, who started her own business called Dream Weavers to help people with disabilities and mental health issues. “But I didn’t graduate and think, this is what my life is going to be. I do so much for free all the time, work such long hours, and don’t have any benefits.”

Etlin-Stein says she believes entrepreneurial endeavours like her own are driving her field forward. But those who take on the risk of striking out on their own face often insurmountable hurdles, like lack of affordable housing and child care.

“This is the holistic way we’re looking at these solutions,” says Nakitsas. “I think we need to be creative because our system was built when work was different and I think that’s one of the fundamental things we’re trying to draw attention to.”

One of the project’s first campaigns will be to lobby for more rights for independent contractors, who currently have no protection under Ontario’s Employment Standards Act. The group hopes to feed into the provincial government’s current review of its employment and labour laws, giving young urban workers a say in the process.

“We want to try and help Canadians understand the new reality of work for the majority of new workers in the Canadian economy today,” says Cash, who was a writer and musician before entering politics. “We feel we can add a voice to that conversation.”

Some unions have already launched similar outreach efforts: private-sector union Unifor, for example, has an organization for Canadian freelancers in the media. While the Urban Workers Project is not affiliated with a union and does not intend to serve as one, Cash says he hopes the group can build bridges with like-minded movements.

“Labour is doing some good work in certain sectors,” Cash says, speaking from an airy industrial warehouse-turned-café at Bloor and Lansdowne. “The new reality of work is so diverse and disparate - this coffee shop right now is a workplace. That’s very hard for traditional organizing.”

But where there is challenge, says Nakitsas, there is also opportunity.

“I think it is exciting. Whenever we bring this up in a coffee shop, people are like ‘yes, I want to be a part of something. I want to fight to make things better.’ ”