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Precarious Employment

Precarious Employment

Causes, Consequences and Remedies

by Stephanie Procyk, Wayne Lewchuk and John Shields

This edited collection introduces and explores the causes and consequences of precarious employment in Canada and across the world.

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About the book

This edited collection introduces and explores the causes and consequences of precarious employment in Canada and across the world. After contextualizing employment precarity and its root causes, the authors illustrate how precarious employment is created amongst different populations and describe the accompanying social impacts on racialized immigrant women, those in the non-profit sector, temporary foreign workers and the children of Filipino immigrants.

Labour & Unions

Authors

Stephanie Procyk

Stephanie Procyk is the manager of research, public policy and evaluation at United Way Toronto and York.

Wayne Lewchuk

Wayne Lewchuk teaches in the School of Labour Studies and Department of Economics at McMaster University.

John Shields

John Shields is professor emeritus in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he taught for thirty-five years. He is an active researcher in the areas of the non-profit sector and immigration and settlement studies. He often works in close collaboration with community-based researchers.

Preface: The PEPSO Story
Part 1: Precarity in Canada
Origins of Precarity: Families and Communities in Crisis (Wayne Lewchuk, Stephanie Procyk & John Shields)
Part 2: Creating Precarity and its Social Impact
“No One Cares about Us”: Precarious Employment among Racialized Immigrant Women (Yogendra B. Shakya & Stephanie Premji)
Precarious Undertakings: Serving Vulnerable Communities through Nonprofit Work (John Shields, Donna Baines & Ian Cunningham)
Sacrificing the Family for the Family: Impacts of Repeated Separations on Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada (Aaraón Díaz Mendiburo, André Lyn, Janet McLaughlin, Biljana Vasilevska & Don Wells)
Precarious Students and Families in Halton, Ontario: Linking Citizenship, Employment and Filipino Student Success (Jennilee Austria, Philip Kelly & Don Wells)
Part 3: Resisting Precarity
$14 Now!: Voices of the Minimum Wage Campaign (Serene K. Tan)
Re-scripting Care Work: Collaborative Cultural Production and Caregiver Advocacy (Philip Kelly & Conely de Leon)
Cleaners Against Precarity: Lessons from a Vulnerable Workforce (Sean Kamin-Patterson (formerly Sean Patterson), Jenny Carson & Myer Siemiatycki)
Austerity, Precarity and Workers’ Voice: Representation for Precarious Workers in Non-Unions Social Services (Ian Cunningham, Donna Baines & John Shields)
The Immigrant Discount: Working on the Edges of the Labour Market (Diane Dyson & Nasima Akter)
Part 4: What To Do About Precarity?
Workers’ Precarity: What to Do about It? (Wayne Lewchuk)
Resources
References
Acknowledgements
Contributors