by Jason Foster
LORIMER
2023/$27.95/248 pp.
What do a freelance journalist, a substitute teacher, a sex worker, a Starbucks barista, a migrant farm worker and an Uber driver have in common? A new book from Athabasca University labour studies scholar Jason Foster answers this question with one word: Precarity.
In Gigs, Hustles & Temps, Foster doesn’t provide a specific definition of the word. That’s because, in his view, existing definitions of precarious work don’t adequately capture the concept’s fluidity. It is a “continuum, rather than a category,” he writes, in which workers lack stability and security and are vulnerable to “exploitation, economic hardship and social marginalization.” Precise definitions are limited, even harmful. To cite one example among many, Statistics Canada’s “nonstandard employment” classification, which includes anyone who isn’t full-time and permanently employed by a single employer, excludes important factors, such as pay, benefits and workplace safety, that factor into whether a job is precarious.
Foster places the rise of precarious labour in the context of the decline of the “standardized employment relationship” (SER) of the Fordist model, in which workers were provided not only stable, reliable work but also sufficient income to live a secure middle-class existence. Importantly, he notes that precarious work isn’t new. Rather, the SER paradigm was a temporary respite from the brutal, exploitative capitalist relations that were the norm prior to the Second World War. Foster aptly characterizes the current gig economy, with its labour conditions often subject to an opaque algorithm, as “remade serfdom… in a new, digital package.”
The author only mentions sex work, perhaps the ultimate form of precarious labour, a few times in passing, which he dismisses as a “touchy” topic. “I’m not arguing for legalizing illegal activity or celebrating what some see as immoral activity. My point is that when we reject this activity as work, we do not make it nonexistent, but we only make it disappear from our own minds,” Foster writes.
This is a missed opportunity. One need not celebrate sex work to detail the conditions workers face and advocate for policies to reduce their vulnerability, as Foster does elsewhere. His broader point about pushing certain forms of work underground and out of sight is correct, but it requires elaboration. Instead the author tiptoes by so as not to upset the moralistic impulses of some readers.
Elsewhere, Foster deftly outlines how even the public sector, with its reputation for well-paying, stable, secure and unionized employment, isn’t immune to the vicissitudes of precarity. He convincingly ties this phenomenon to the rise of neoliberalism, which offloads government responsibilities to the private sector. New public management seeks to structure the remnants of the public sector along the lines of the private sector, with an emphasis on efficiency, cost reduction and treating citizens as customers. Blurring the distinction between public and private sectors brings into question the need for a public sector at all, triggering further austerity.
Foster makes clear there’s no going back to the SER, which, for all its merits as compared with gig work, left out significant portions of the population—often racialized and female—who were forced into varying shades of precarity. Instead, he suggests precarious workers start unions specific to their field. Gig Workers United in Ontario, which organizes delivery drivers, provides a potential model for this approach.
With the election of an Alberta premier who has repeatedly stated her intention to use Uber as a model for delivering public services, Foster’s book has a heightened sense of urgency. This is what’s coming. We would be wise to heed the call.
Jeremy Appel is the author of the forthcoming Kenneyism: Jason Kenney’s Pursuit of Power (Dundurn, 2024).
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