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From Casual Work to Economic Security: The Case of British Columbia

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Abstract

Analysis of casual work in British Columbia is an important issue given that the increase in casual work has been greater in this province than in other provinces in Canada and given that the labour market has been substantially deregulated since 2001. In this paper, we analyse how individuals’ casual employment status affects their economic security based on a specially designed survey undertaken by the authors. We follow the ILO’s classification of the dimensions of economic security but, based on our findings, add a further dimension—Time security—As being of particular importance to casual workers. On the basis of these results, we analyse the policy interventions that might be necessary to increase the economic security of casual workers, policies which we suggest can best be conceptualized as providing a “security quilt”.

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Notes

  1. The figures for 2004 are presented in Table 1. A base year of 1997 is used as this was the first year that Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey included data on temporary workers. For complete figures see MacPhail and Bowles (2008).

  2. This is calculated for employed temporary workers, aged 20–64 years, excluding full-time students, living in British Columbia.

  3. While the Labour Force Survey has a question regarding the reason for part-time work, it does not have a similar question on the reason for temporary work.

  4. The ILO (2004: 171) report does discuss time insecurity but the focus is on the large number of hours worked per day and total working time.

Reference

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Xingying Hu, Dana Mate, Halyna Millar and Candace McRae for conducting interviews and Mike Dumler (CUPE), Eyob Naizghi (Mosaic), Baljit Sethi (Immigrant and Multicultural Support Services) and Frank Seigrist (Native Friendship Centre) for their assistance in the recruitment of survey respondents. The authors thank Workshop participants for helpful comments, especially David Green. This paper is part of a larger SSHRC-CURA Economic Security Project, led by Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Seth Klein.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economics Program, University of Northern British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Prince George, BC, Canada, V2N 4Z9

    Fiona MacPhail & Paul Bowles

Authors
  1. Fiona MacPhail
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  2. Paul Bowles
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Correspondence to Fiona MacPhail.

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MacPhail, F., Bowles, P. From Casual Work to Economic Security: The Case of British Columbia. Soc Indic Res 88, 97–114 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-007-9208-1

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