Contingent Employment, Workforce Health, and Citizenship By Marc ...

Chapter 2

The Contingent Work Employment Relationship and Its Implications

Contingent employment is a historical artefact of labour market processes. In the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, it was the norm, particularly in sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and domestic work and among women, immigrants, and racialised groups² (Vosko, 2000, 2006). With the advent of the post–World War II boom, Canada and the United States entered an economic period that was marked by unprecedented levels of accumulation and stability, low levels of unemployment, growing wages, labour and wage stability, and general improvements in the terms and conditions of work (Ross & Trachte, 1990; Strangleman, 2007). With the advent