Full bibliography

This chapter focuses on the challenge that precarious employment in Canada’s labor force poses to protective labor law and policy, and thus to state policy more generally. Precarious employment is conceptualized as work for remuneration characterized by multiple dimensions of labor market insecurity, such as job uncertainty, low income, lack of control over the labor process, and higher risks of ill health. The chapter shows that these dimensions of insecurity are associated with particular forms of employment including self-employment, part-time forms of self- and paid employment, as well as temporary paid employment. In considering workers’ legal protections, the chapter focuses on three distinct domains: employment standards (ES), collective bargaining, and occupational health and safety (OHS). It demonstrates that precariously employed workers are vulnerable to ES violations, are less likely to benefit from laws that facilitate access to collective bargaining coverage, and tend to experience relatively high rates of injury and benefit less from OHS regulation.