Gig economy puts workers on shaky ground

It sounds like so much fun: make your own hours, be in control of your life, work when you want to work.

Except the “gig economy” isn’t really as advertised.

The concept is a simple one, and is gaining momentum: instead of hiring workers and keeping them on staff, employers simply pick up freelance help when they need it, and ditch the workers when they don’t.

Here’s a look at how the idea’s growing, from a 2017 piece in the Globe and Mail: “According to staffing company Randstad Canada, if you add up all the contingent workers, freelancers, independent contractors and consultants, you are talking about 20 to 30 per cent of the Canadian workforce being ‘nontraditional workers’ already. That percentage is only going higher. Eighty-five per cent of the companies surveyed by Randstad figure that they will increasingly move to an ‘agile workforce’ over workers (though hard to fully quantify) is estimated to represent around 34 per cent of the American workforce. By 2020, that number is expected to reach 43 per cent.

There certainly are benefits for gig workers — your day can be more flexible, you can take advantage (sometimes) of things as simple as good weather. Heck, for some jobs, you can work in your bathrobe.

But you also do your own payroll, manage your own taxes (remember to pay those instalments), and try not to turn down a job — because the employer can just go to someone else and never come back.

(That’s the biggest fiction, the argument that you can sit back and say, “No, I don’t feel like it today.”)

It’s more than a sweet deal for employers. They don’t have to keep staff during slow periods, and can ramp their workforce up and down depending on how much work they have.

Your employer doesn’t have to worry about calculating the number of vacation days you have left — you don’t have any. The employer doesn’t have to worry about health plans or severance, about union negotiations or wrongful dismissal suits.

Employers can assign unreasonable workloads, and shorten lead-times. Sometimes for the unfortunate gig employee — actually, often — work flows in from a number of clients simultaneously.

And they don’t ever have to fire you.

They can just stop calling. that precarious.

The “agility” of the workforce is just another thing being demanded of workers — workers who, by the way, aren’t necessarily paid extra for that agility.

Try it; I’ve done a variety of part-time gig work for years. There are many pitfalls, and those pitfalls are far worse if you’re depending It’s on it for your entire paycheque.

You’re on call always. It’s frequently feast or famine. All your plans can go out the window to keep a client.

In the last week, I worked about 20 hours on gig work, four hours of it on Labour Day.

My wife, who works full time in the gig economy, worked 10 and a half hours on Labour Day alone, because there was work that simply had to be done for core clients.

Gig workers may be able to wrestle some work/life balance out of the whole thing that fulltime employees do not. But it’s a whole new level of stress, wondering where the next job is coming from.

The benefits for employers are a lot clearer. All material in this publication is the property of SaltWire Network., and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for statements or claims by advertisers. The publisher shall not be liable for slight changes of typographical efforts that do not lessen the value of an advertisement or for omitting to publish an advertisement. Liability is strictly limited to the publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of any monies paid for that advertisement.