Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP says problem of precarious work 'a challenge'

Yorkregion.com
April 11, 2019
Tim Kelly

Near the end of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev’s town hall on precarious employment April 7, a young man posed a question to the representative.

“What advice would you give the audience to get permanent work?”

That was the question asked by Luke Sagar of Richmond Hill, who works 10 hours a week for the Town of Aurora doing the mail run.

Alleslev said, “that’s a challenge, I don’t have an answer for that. That’s what the town hall is all about, because people want to have permanent, full-time, consistent work and we now have a third of our population and growing, who don’t have that."

“Don’t have an answer yet,” she told Sagar. “I’m working on it.”

The elected official defines precarious employment as work with low pay, variable work hours, uncertainty in current or future employment, no pension, no weekly minimum hours of work, no benefits, no sick pay and other issues.

“We have to put in place structures where people can have more full-time work. I think we lost 67,000 full-time jobs in March in Canada. For me, that’s moving in the wrong direction,” she said.

Alleslev gave out a handout that said the highest groups impacted by precarious work are those under 25 and over 65 and who work in the information, culture and recreation services, accommodation and food services and educational services.

Single parents at 51.7 per cent, recent immigrants at 40.7 per cent and visible minorities at 34.4 per cent were hit by precarious employment.

Alleslev spoke about young people she said she knew “who have three part-time jobs, and they have zero hours. How can someone give them a part-time job and not give them a single hour of work? How can you define that as a part-time job?”

She said “maybe it actually shouldn’t really be considered a job, maybe there should actually be a minimum amount of work that should come with a job.”

Sagar said the answer for him is to consider returning to school. He has attended open houses at both Centennial College and Seneca College in the last few weeks.