Newsstand: May 22, 2015

For Friday, think about the people around you: the precariously employed people making up half the city's workforce, the Serbian Orthodox Church leader asked to step down, and the teachers clashing with provincial government who may soon be legislated back to work.

By Tannara Yelland • Illustration by Matthew Daley

Nearly half of all workers in Toronto and Hamilton (44 per cent, to be exact) hold jobs “that have some degree of insecurity,” says a Globe and Mail article on the high rates of precarious employment in the city. Precarious employment includes temping, contract work, and freelancing, among other types of work. It’s defined by offering little long-term security and few if any non-wage benefits, like health insurance and training. While precarious employment appears to be the new norm, it has serious consequences: health problems like anxiety and stress are exponentially higher among precariously employed people, and such employment is often exceedingly hard to get out of. And of course, this unstable form of labour is not distributed evenly: people of colour and women are disproportionately represented among the precarious working class.

Bishop Georgije Djokic, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Canada, has been relieved of said leadership under unclear circumstances. The church’s assembly met in Belgrade over allegations of what Serbian media has called “indecent conduct,” though it’s unclear what the nature of that conduct was. Djokic had also promised to retire at 65, and is now 67, leading a Mississauga reverend in the church to remark that “the best thing he could do is accept this and bring peace to the Serbian community by retiring.”

In spite of a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that enshrined workers’ right to strike, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has raised the possibility of legislating teachers back onto the job. Over the last several weeks of strikes, students in the Peel, Durham, and Rainbow (around Sudbury) regions have been kept home. Teachers say they are protesting class sizes, a central issue in many North American classrooms.