Study of non-profit employment

Community Action, May 17, 2004

TORONTO -- How secure are non-profit employees? This is one of the questions that York University Ph.D. candidate Sam Ladner is exploring in her research on employment in the nonprofit sector. The study will also examine how nonprofit management opportunity compares with the private sector and will learn how their employment opportunities stack up against the private sector.

"Many of us know that work in the private sector has become less secure," says Ladner. "This project will explore if this is also true in the nonprofit sector."

Ladner will use quantitative data to first find out if nonprofit workers are subject to what labour scholars call "nonstandard work," to find out if part-time, temporary and contract work is the norm for nonprofit workers. Currently, 900,000 people are employed in Canada's nonprofit sector. They are typically well educated but not as well paid as their private sector counterparts.

She expects other studies have examined issues such as pay and benefits and overall quality of work. But it's not currently known how serious the problem of part-time, temporary and contract work is in the non-profit sector.

sladner@yorku.ca.