Ugh, so… I’m conflicted about the discussion around the gig economy in general.
On one hand, as has been reported, these sorts of mundane jobs with harsh requirements aren’t just limited to the gig economy. Lots of piecework or menial task work is like this, but less and less of it is done “in the west”. It feels a little first-world-y to focus on one and not the other.
Second, I have some personal experience with this sort of thing - my family, growing up, owned a fourth-generation midway. The workers (carnies!) there were paid $300/wk (1995 CDN dollars, $450 today’s dollars) for their work. If you count them working 11am-10pm 3 days a week (when we were open), that’s about $13 an hour. Add to that another 20 hours for setup/teardown, that’s about $8/hr. But they had to live with the midway as it travelled (or commute themselves from wherever), and had tasks to perform (cleaning/maintaining rides, etc) outside those tasks, and were basically expected to perform it “for free”. Realistically, from sunup until midnight six days a week, they were working.
By most standards, they worked for a few dollars an hour, and collected “pogey” (seasonal employment insurance) over the winter. but many of them had been doing it for a decade or more, as a lifestyle more than anything, and midways wouldn’t be able to survive without these lifers (would you visit a midway that cost 2x as much as today?)
I mean, I believe that folks should have an opportunity to have access to education and training, and meaningful employment. The fact that my province is trialing guaranteed minimum income programs, at the same time as our universal healthcare and free medication under 25 helps families with no other options than this cheap, underpaying work survive.
The work has to get done, so there’s essentially three options, IMHO: 1) supplement income for these folks, as Ontario is trying to do, 2) increase costs for the goods/services provided by these workers so they can be better paid, or 3) move these positions to regions where cost-of-living is low enough that the income provided by these jobs is acceptable.
I vastly prefer #1 over #2, because the first option places the burden on the wealthy who pay more taxes, versus option 2 which increases costs for all consumers, including these very people we’re discussing, who need lower costs for goods, not higher ones. #3 just kicks the can down the road as regions develop and standards of living increase.
