Hoback backs Conservative party promise for gig workers
While there is a certain flexibility that comes with gig work but that flexibility carries a trade-off. The Conservative party has promised to eliminate one of the drawbacks, however, if they are elected to the federal office on September 20.
The Conservatives announced that, if elected, they would bring in the equivalent of Canada Pension Plan and EI benefits for gig workers. The companies hiring gig workers would have to make equivalent contributions into an employee savings account.
“There’s a new emerging economy where you have programmers and people working in the computer industry that work by contract,” said Randy Hoback, the party’s candidate for Prince Albert and the representative for the riding since 2008. “They don’t get employment insurance, they don’t get CPP, they tend to do contracts that may be a year or six months in nature, and because of that, they’re left out of all of our safety nets.”
Freelancers, independent contractors, project-based workers, and temporary hires are all considered part of the gig economy. A study from earlier this year by Payments Canada suggests as many as 13 percent of Canadian adults are gig workers, and as many as 37 percent of companies hire workers in this field.