Help for Vulnerable Workers

This comes from the Weekly Work Report, produced by Lancaster House.

The Canadian Policy Research Network has released two studies of vulnerable workers.

Non-Standard Work and Economic Vulnerability looks at the kinds of employment relationships and the extent of low pay among these workers, essentially part-time and self-employed workers.

The second study, Towards Enhancing the Employment Conditions of Vulnerable Workers: A Public Policy Perspective, discusses ways of ensuring that vulnerable workers are covered by minimum employment standards and receive traditional benefits This could include:

• broadening the scope of existing laws to include non-traditional employment relationships;
• providing some rights and benefits on a universal basis;
• creating "social drawing rights", based on paid or unpaid work that is socially useful;
• and improving access to collective representation