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Work Quality Experience and Engagement among Young Workers

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In recent years, young people have faced difficulties in the labour market. Myer Siemiatycki discusses the quality of work for young people (age 16-29), in Ontario, through their own experiences and words.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 21, 2024

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The project described aims to address the challenges faced by young workers in a rapidly changing job environment. It recognizes that young individuals are particularly vulnerable to issues like technological change, wage suppression, and poor management practices. The initiative is part of the Better Work Project at Toronto Metropolitan University, which seeks to enhance understanding and empower young workers.

The project involves two main strategies: conducting a survey and organizing in-depth interviews. They surveyed over 1,000 young people aged 16 to 29 in Ontario to gather insights about their work experiences. Key findings highlight rampant issues such as poor job quality, with 45% of respondents reporting quitting due to these conditions. Many participants also felt subjected to age discrimination, characterized by disrespectful treatment and being assigned the least desirable tasks.

Responses to these negative experiences ranged from resignation—accepting poor conditions—and quitting, to resistance, which included speaking out against mistreatment and collective actions, such as unionizing efforts within the retail and gig economy sectors. The project concludes that young workers desire greater awareness of their rights and the tools to improve their work situations.

Ultimately, the findings emphasize the importance of equipping young people with the agency to influence their work environments positively, underlining that the future of work relies on their engagement and active participation in shaping conditions that benefit both themselves and society at large.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This project, aimed to do two things.

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One, to generate knowledge, secondly,

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to build capacity among young workers.

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So it begins with the recognition that the, the nature

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of work is, transforming dramatically,

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with significant challenges

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and adversities for young people especially.

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So we started this with a recognition

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that whether it's technological change,

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whether it's the gig economy, whether it's attempts to,

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suppress and, and, and contain wages,

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whether it's really a shocking pattern of bad management

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that young people experience, that,

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young people are especially vulnerable

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to changes in the economy and the nature of work.

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So we wanted to understand what is the work experience like

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for young people, and to then use their own words,

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their own experiences, to try to look at, well,

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what could be done to try to build the capacity

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of young workers to have more agency and more voice

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and more control over the quality of their work.

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So, you know, that's where this project,

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project comes from.

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And, we are the Better Work Project,

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which is, located at,

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Toronto Metropolitan University in downtown, Toronto.

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And we emerged out of,

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a very interesting initiative at our university,

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the Young Workers Rights Hub.

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We are a university that is urban,

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that is community centered, that has a sense

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of social mission to it,

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and we recognize that, our students

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and young workers, were, were especially

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challenged and, and, vulnerable in, in the workplace.

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And the Young Workers Rights Hub put together a variety

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of resources programs to, try

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to better understand young workers' experiences,

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but also to, hopefully equip them

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to face those challenges in a more robust,

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activist kind of way.

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And out of that, we realized we just wanted

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to know more about what are young people facing.

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And, it's not a, it's,

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it's not an altogether pretty picture out there

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for young people at work.

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I think what we wanted to know was, is there anything about,

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you know, these, you could say these challenges affect

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everyone in the workplace regardless of their age.

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So we wanted to get a sense of, is there

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anything distinctive about being young

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and that work in, in this, in this moment of

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what I think everyone recognizes is some pretty

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fundamentally trend fundamental transformations in,

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in the nature of work.

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So that was part of it, but we also wanted

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To, I'll put it in a, in a way, get into the heads

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of young people, like what is, from the interior,

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what is their exp, how are they experiencing this,

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and how are they responding to, to the experience?

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So that's what we were really aiming to get at.

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I think we rooted ourselves really in two

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research strategies.

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One was conducting a survey,

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and we surveyed over 1000 young,

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people in the province of Ontario, in Canada.

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Uh, and, you know, Ontario is by far the largest pop,

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population-wise province in the country.

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Uh, and, and, and our scope was, people's definition

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of who's young and what is young mean, can vary,

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in my elderly gray haired status.

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I think of young people being what other people might think

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of as rather elderly.

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Uh, so it's, it's a subjective kind of,

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kind of an assessment.

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But we, we settled on the age range of 16 to 29.

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That's, that's our, that's our cohort.

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So we surveyed over a thousand

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and got a rich, portrait back from them.

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And then from that, we, did

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in-depth interviews with close to 40, of those people

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who, who we had surveyed

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and really were able to drill down a lot deeper.

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And, and, and so

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that gave us the picture we were looking at.

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And then I also, because I haven't mentioned it yet,

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wanna introduce now, we then used our findings

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to create 17 social media videos

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that highlight the, the main issues

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and concerns that young people voiced for us.

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And we regard those videos, which begin with,

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snippets of what we, what young workers told us.

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And then move into what kind of resources, networks

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act, actions could young workers take to try

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to improve their circumstances.

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So that, that's the capacity building side of, of,

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of, of, of the project.

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So we knew from the beginning we wanted to learn things,

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and we wanted to take those learnings in an applied

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useful way for young people themselves.

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So we asked a whole bunch of questions.

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Uh, we asked questions like,

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how did they define good work?

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How did they define bad work?

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Uh, have they ever felt singled out in any way?

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Have they ever felt discriminated, singled out in any way

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because of their, their young age?

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How many jobs have they had?

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Uh, to this point?

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And I mean, that's one of the, you know,

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one should know this from one, from,

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from the younger people, in our lives.

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But it, it was pretty bracing to be reminded.

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Uh, it's not uncommon for people to, for young people,

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really young people to begin work, at a time when,

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people in the age of Charles Dickens were, begin,

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begin, were, were, we're in the midst of, of, of,

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of, of, of, of working.

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Like, people start work really young at times, even

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before high school.

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And then certainly in high school.

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Many of them are, if not most, are already beginning

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to work, and they churn through a pretty

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shocking number of jobs.

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And one of the things we found was,

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and maybe this, this is, if I have one statistic

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to pull out, 45% of all

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of our 1000 plus survey

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taker said survey, they had quit at least one job

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because of poor work quality.

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Uh, so you know, that that's implying it's a pretty

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recurring and, and,

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and almost inescapable, sort of, experience for,

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for, for, for young people.

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And they're juggling lots of different jobs.

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And, I wanna hone in on,

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on a finding that,

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they felt age discrimination was significant.

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They talked about being disrespected, being talked down

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to being abusively treated, not having,

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promotion opportunities, getting the worst job assignments,

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which they attributed rightly or wrongly.

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But this was their experience

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because they were the youngest

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around the easiest to pick on.

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Um, so, you know, that emerged from, from the project

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and, the, the,

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the most distressing things we heard were the examples,

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and they were multiple of just

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what young people were subjected to by bad managers.

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I mean, I mean, really abusive,

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abusive kind kind of treatment.

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So it was, it was, you know, it, it was, you know,

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certainly not a universal experience,

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but distressingly frequent an occurrence,

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for young people.

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We really probed into that.

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And, and, and, and it kind of turned into a kind

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of bifurcated, set of responses,

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which, relying on alliteration, we describe

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as a response that ranged from

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resignation to resistance.

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So the resignation piece of it was a number

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of respondents who said, you know,

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this is, you know, they just had

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to take it l like there was nothing they could do about it.

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This is the way the world is.

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Some of them, you know, k kind of were,

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were really astute in saying, you know,

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we've been raised all our lives to kind of accept things

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as they are, follow instructions, do what you're told.

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And so, you know, whether it's family or schooling.

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And, and so that's a mindset

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that there I almost kind of conditioned to.

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So, so certainly some of it was, was resignation.

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I can't resist remembering one person who said, okay,

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if they're paying me the minimum,

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I'm giving them the minimum effort.

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Like, let's, let's have a fair trade here.

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You wanna pay me a kind of lousy, I'll work as lousy

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as I can get away with.

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Uh, but the other part of resignation, of course,

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is quitting, which I had mentioned, and, and,

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and such a frequent occurrence of, of,

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of young people just fed up not, not believing

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that the, that the experience can be improved upon.

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And so quitting that job

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and going on to another, hopefully, better for them,

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the resistance side of the equation had two kind

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of sides to it.

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One was, an individual stance of,

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this is unacceptable.

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I'm not taking this,

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and I'm speaking out typically to my immediate

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or next above supervisor to say, you know, this kind

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of treatment, you know, I'm not taking this, this kind

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of treatment towards me has to stop.

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The second was a more collective form of,

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of resistance.

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And that could take the form of,

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collectively pushing back on their immediate management.

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And there's not just one person raising concerns,

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but a group of, of, of, of workers, it could take the form

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of, expressing interest in,

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in, exerting legal rights

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that they had at work together, whether it was

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for minimum wage, statutory holidays, et cetera,

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or for, attempting to unionize a workplace.

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And, and, you know,

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I think it's very interesting that I,

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I I would hazard the guess.

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It's certainly the case in North America.

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I'd hazard the guess. It's across, across continents

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that we are in the midst of a wave of young workers

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taking collective action to try

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to improve their working conditions.

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Uh, and you see it, especially I think, in sectors

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where young people are predominantly employed,

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like the retail sector, like the gig economy.

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So attempts to unionize,

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retail establishments.

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We've seen that, you know, whether it's Starbucks in the,

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in North America and probably in Europe

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and elsewhere, whether it's attempts to unionize,

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delivery workers through a gig platform,

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operations, there is this sort of percolating

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attempt to act together to improve working conditions.

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So, you know, it, it, it's, it's almost like you can

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track successive waves of collective action

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and unionization historically.

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You know, it, it, it sort of starts with artisans

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and craft workers from 17th, 18th, 19th century.

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It goes to mass production workers on assembly lines.

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It goes to public sector workers.

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And we seem to be in a new way, potentially in a new wave

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of unionization where young workers in, in,

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in, I'll call it traditional retail sectors,

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but also in new wave gig economy, sectors

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are turning to unionization.

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So just like the assembly line, as a new mode of production

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and work relation gives rise to collective action.

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And the public sector did that in the sixties

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and seventies and eighties.

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The geek economy is now

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generating its own collective response from its own distinct

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workforce, so many of whom are young.

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So there's, there's this very interesting kind of both

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connecting tissue and historical, thread here.

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But with the new spin of, it's in a new mode of work

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and, and, and work relationships,

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and especially anchored in young people, conclusions are,

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a takeaway from young workers.

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They want and need to know more about,

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rights at work, how they can make work better.

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And so I think right across the board from, governments

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to schools, to, social organizations, we need

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to do a much, much better job of, kind

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of signaling to young people expect better at work.

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It's not only in the interest of young people

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to be better treated at work,

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it's in the interest of the employer.

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It's in the interest of society at large to have, a kind

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of engaged,

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dedicated rather than churned over and, and, and, and, and,

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and demoralized, young labor force.

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I mean, important to recall that

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young people are the future of work.

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We talk a lot about the future of work, the future of work,

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and we think of entrepreneurialism, we think of technology.

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The, the future of work is in the hands of young,

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of young people, and they should have more ownership of

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that, of, of, of, of the direction that that work takes.

15:11.675 --> 15:15.175
And we're hoping that, you know, a whole set

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of stakeholders will kind of recognize that,

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it's important to better equip young people to

15:25.515 --> 15:26.805
have agency

15:27.065 --> 15:31.005
and some voice in the direction of work, rather than

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to be kind of passive objects of whether it's employers,

15:35.865 --> 15:39.125
desires or, or, or, or the,

15:39.185 --> 15:41.885
or the, impact of technology.

Empowering Young Workers in a Changing Economy

00:00:00 - This project, aimed to do two things. One, to generate knowledge, secondly, to build capacity among young workers. So it begins with the recognition that the, the nature of work is, transforming dramatically, with significant challenges and adversities for young people especially. So we started this with a recognition that whether it's technological change, whether it's the gig economy, whether it's attempts to,
00:00:33 - whether it's really a shocking pattern of bad management that young people experience, that, young people are especially vulnerable to changes in the economy and the nature of work. So we wanted to understand what is the work experience like for young people, and to then use their own words, their own experiences, to try to look at, well, what could be done to try to build the capacity
00:01:06 - and more control over the quality of their work. So, you know, that's where this project, project comes from. And, we are the Better Work Project, which is, located at, Toronto Metropolitan University in downtown, Toronto. And we emerged out of, a very interesting initiative at our university, the Young Workers Rights Hub.
00:01:37 - that is community centered, that has a sense of social mission to it, and we recognize that, our students and young workers, were, were especially challenged and, and, vulnerable in, in the workplace. And the Young Workers Rights Hub put together a variety of resources programs to, try to better understand young workers' experiences, but also to, hopefully equip them
00:02:12 - activist kind of way. And out of that, we realized we just wanted to know more about what are young people facing. And, it's not a, it's, it's not an altogether pretty picture out there for young people at work. I think what we wanted to know was, is there anything about, you know, these, you could say these challenges affect everyone in the workplace regardless of their age.
00:02:42 - anything distinctive about being young and that work in, in this, in this moment of what I think everyone recognizes is some pretty fundamentally trend fundamental transformations in, in the nature of work. So that was part of it, but we also wanted To, I'll put it in a, in a way, get into the heads of young people, like what is, from the interior, what is their exp, how are they experiencing this, and how are they responding to, to the experience?

Surveying Young Workers' Experiences and Needs

00:03:14 - I think we rooted ourselves really in two research strategies. One was conducting a survey, and we surveyed over 1000 young, people in the province of Ontario, in Canada. and, you know, Ontario is by far the largest pop, population-wise province in the country. and, and, and our scope was, people's definition
00:03:48 - in my elderly gray haired status. I think of young people being what other people might think of as rather elderly. so it's, it's a subjective kind of, kind of an assessment. But we, we settled on the age range of 16 to 29. That's, that's our, that's our cohort. So we surveyed over a thousand and got a rich, portrait back from them. And then from that, we, did
00:04:23 - who, who we had surveyed and really were able to drill down a lot deeper. And, and, and so that gave us the picture we were looking at. And then I also, because I haven't mentioned it yet, wanna introduce now, we then used our findings to create 17 social media videos that highlight the, the main issues
00:04:52 - And we regard those videos, which begin with, snippets of what we, what young workers told us. And then move into what kind of resources, networks act, actions could young workers take to try to improve their circumstances. So that, that's the capacity building side of, of, of, of, of the project.
00:05:22 - and we wanted to take those learnings in an applied useful way for young people themselves. So we asked a whole bunch of questions. we asked questions like, how did they define good work? How did they define bad work? have they ever felt singled out in any way? Have they ever felt discriminated, singled out in any way because of their, their young age? How many jobs have they had?
00:05:51 - And I mean, that's one of the, you know, one should know this from one, from, from the younger people, in our lives. But it, it was pretty bracing to be reminded. it's not uncommon for people to, for young people, really young people to begin work, at a time when, people in the age of Charles Dickens were, begin, begin, were, were, we're in the midst of, of, of, of, of, of, of working.

Challenges Young Workers Face in Employment

00:06:24 - before high school. And then certainly in high school. Many of them are, if not most, are already beginning to work, and they churn through a pretty shocking number of jobs. And one of the things we found was, and maybe this, this is, if I have one statistic to pull out, 45% of all of our 1000 plus survey
00:06:56 - because of poor work quality. so you know, that that's implying it's a pretty recurring and, and, and almost inescapable, sort of, experience for, for, for, for young people. And they're juggling lots of different jobs. And, I wanna hone in on, on a finding that,
00:07:26 - They talked about being disrespected, being talked down to being abusively treated, not having, promotion opportunities, getting the worst job assignments, which they attributed rightly or wrongly. But this was their experience because they were the youngest around the easiest to pick on. so, you know, that emerged from, from the project and, the, the,
00:08:01 - and they were multiple of just what young people were subjected to by bad managers. I mean, I mean, really abusive, abusive kind kind of treatment. So it was, it was, you know, it, it was, you know, certainly not a universal experience, but distressingly frequent an occurrence, for young people. We really probed into that.
00:08:31 - of bifurcated, set of responses, which, relying on alliteration, we describe as a response that ranged from resignation to resistance. So the resignation piece of it was a number of respondents who said, you know, this is, you know, they just had
00:09:02 - This is the way the world is. Some of them, you know, k kind of were, were really astute in saying, you know, we've been raised all our lives to kind of accept things as they are, follow instructions, do what you're told. And so, you know, whether it's family or schooling. And, and so that's a mindset that there I almost kind of conditioned to. So, so certainly some of it was, was resignation.

Young Workers: Minimum Effort for Minimum Pay

00:09:36 - if they're paying me the minimum, I'm giving them the minimum effort. Like, let's, let's have a fair trade here. You wanna pay me a kind of lousy, I'll work as lousy as I can get away with. but the other part of resignation, of course, is quitting, which I had mentioned, and, and, and such a frequent occurrence of, of, of young people just fed up not, not believing
00:10:08 - And so quitting that job and going on to another, hopefully, better for them, the resistance side of the equation had two kind of sides to it. One was, an individual stance of, this is unacceptable. I'm not taking this, and I'm speaking out typically to my immediate or next above supervisor to say, you know, this kind
00:10:40 - of treatment towards me has to stop. The second was a more collective form of, of resistance. And that could take the form of, collectively pushing back on their immediate management. And there's not just one person raising concerns, but a group of, of, of, of workers, it could take the form of, expressing interest in,
00:11:16 - that they had at work together, whether it was for minimum wage, statutory holidays, et cetera, or for, attempting to unionize a workplace. And, and, you know, I think it's very interesting that I, I I would hazard the guess. It's certainly the case in North America. I'd hazard the guess. It's across, across continents that we are in the midst of a wave of young workers
00:11:45 - to improve their working conditions. and you see it, especially I think, in sectors where young people are predominantly employed, like the retail sector, like the gig economy. So attempts to unionize, retail establishments. We've seen that, you know, whether it's Starbucks in the, in North America and probably in Europe and elsewhere, whether it's attempts to unionize,
00:12:20 - operations, there is this sort of percolating attempt to act together to improve working conditions. So, you know, it, it, it's, it's almost like you can track successive waves of collective action and unionization historically. You know, it, it, it sort of starts with artisans

Emerging Unionization among Young Workers

00:12:50 - It goes to mass production workers on assembly lines. It goes to public sector workers. And we seem to be in a new way, potentially in a new wave of unionization where young workers in, in, in, I'll call it traditional retail sectors, but also in new wave gig economy, sectors are turning to unionization.
00:13:21 - and work relation gives rise to collective action. And the public sector did that in the sixties and seventies and eighties. The geek economy is now generating its own collective response from its own distinct workforce, so many of whom are young. So there's, there's this very interesting kind of both connecting tissue and historical, thread here.
00:13:53 - and, and, and work relationships, and especially anchored in young people, conclusions are, a takeaway from young workers. They want and need to know more about, rights at work, how they can make work better. And so I think right across the board from, governments to schools, to, social organizations, we need
00:14:24 - of signaling to young people expect better at work. It's not only in the interest of young people to be better treated at work, it's in the interest of the employer. It's in the interest of society at large to have, a kind of engaged, dedicated rather than churned over and, and, and, and, and, and demoralized, young labor force.
00:14:53 - young people are the future of work. We talk a lot about the future of work, the future of work, and we think of entrepreneurialism, we think of technology. The, the future of work is in the hands of young, of young people, and they should have more ownership of that, of, of, of, of the direction that that work takes. And we're hoping that, you know, a whole set of stakeholders will kind of recognize that, it's important to better equip young people to
00:15:39 - and some voice in the direction of work, rather than to be kind of passive objects of whether it's employers, desires or, or, or, or the, or the, impact of technology.

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