The following are the personal stories of just a few of London's precariously employed
Mary Lawrence: ‘I couldn’t afford to keep my job’
Mary Lawrence loved her job. She loved working, and she loved her position. There was only one problem: she couldn’t afford it.
Despite taking every shift she could – days, afternoons, and splits, sometimes all in the same week – the mother of two still got most of the family’s groceries at food banks. She still couldn’t afford to pay for the tooth extraction she had needed for the past two years, or even for her kids’ prescriptions. Earning minimum wage, without benefits, working five-hour shifts, six days a week in a town 40 minutes away from her home meant she was bringing in less money than her family would receive on Ontario Works.
So finally, she gave in. “I couldn’t afford to keep my job,” said Lawrence. She asked for raises and has applied for dozens of other jobs, hoping to land something full-time with benefits in her field. But every position she comes across has similar work conditions – low pay, entry level, unpredictable hours.
“Why didn’t you prepare for a rainy day?” the Ontario Works case worker asked Lawrence, when she finally quit last spring, thinking it would be easier to search for work if she wasn’t actually working. “I don’t understand how they think I was making enough money to pay for a rainy day when I can’t pay all my bills to begin with.”
Years ago, Lawrence did everything people said she should do to get off welfare. She did her research on the job market, made a plan, went back to school, never missed a class and graduated with honours. It would take her three years and more than 100 resumes to finally get work at a Strathroy group home. “At first, I was like oh yeah, I got a job. ‘Woo hoo.’ Then a couple of months later, it was like – ‘Oh, I have no benefits…I have a tooth in my mouth that needs to be extracted,’ says Lawrence. “That kind of causes other health problems. The stress. I suffer from depression and anxiety.”
It’s difficult to deal with those other problems while juggling low-paid shift work and a family, she says. Then, add in the side effects: frequent money arguments with a spouse. Kids’ activities, birthday parties, school requests. “It never ends,” says Lawrence. “Pizza lunches, hot dog lunches, subway lunches…$35 for a ukulele for both my kids. Field trips every few weeks.”
She found another job, but it’s overnight shifts, inadequate hours, and the pay is too low, once again. But she took it. She’s hopeful this one will lead to something.
“People told me to get an education, get a job. Everything will be fixed. OK. So, I did that. I got an education, I got a job. I worked my butt off. I graduated with honours. I graduated with perfect attendance,” she says. “If you’ve never lived a day in poverty, you’re not going to understand what it’s like. I work extra hard every day just to make ends meet, just to get dinner on the table.”
Andrew Glen: ‘You can only take so many rejections’
Andrew Glen has had four different employers over the past two years. But he hasn’t had steady work for the past ten. The father of two says his employment troubles began in 2008, when he was diagnosed with stage 4 bladder cancer. Back then, the married father of two young boys was a property manager, working full-time with benefits. His income was good, and so was life in London’s affluent Wortley Village.
With the diagnosis, doctors gave Glen a 16% survival rate. He left work to go through treatment. Two years later, he returned to work a healthy man. But then, another setback – a physical injury, thought to be related to his illness or the treatment. This time, when he called about returning, the employer said things had changed and there was no longer a position for Glen with the company.
Glen, who is also an author and has written a memoir about his experience with cancer, started sending out resumes and cover letters, hoping to get another job like the one he’d had. That went on for a while – dozens of resumes, dozens of phone calls – but he couldn’t get anywhere. The job market had changed, people said. Things were different now. He’d gotten sick right as the 2008 recession was starting and, by the time he was better, it was tough to find a standard full-time job in London.
Glen enrolled in an accounting course through a second-career program and graduated with a 95% average. He came out looking for an entry level position, but one year later, he stopped looking for work in accounting. The gap in his resume was getting big – and hard to explain. And it wasn’t for lack of trying; Glen says that within the past three to four years, he’s applied to more than 200 jobs.
He started looking for seasonal positions, and that’s where he’s had his success. For the past two years, Glen has been employed in a string of seasonal jobs, cutting grass on a golf course in the summer, driving a sidewalk plow sometimes in the winter. “It’s seasonal, working for minimum wage. The benefit is I was back working again, which gave me the opportunity to get out of the house and socialize with people,” he said. ”The problem is, it’s so short lived.”
Working for minimum wage has been slightly better since it increased to $14 last year. But it’s still tough. “Without CPP, I don’t think my wife and I would be able to live in the house we live in. I don’t think we’d be able to do the things we do,” he said, referring to a disability pension that took him three years and three appeals to begin receiving. And now, working those few months here and there could impact even that. “Now I have CPP telling me that because I’ve been employed for two years, even though its seasonal and I’m laid off in the winter, it appears to them that I’m not as disabled as I once was, and I should be able to return to work.”
“There’s going to come a time where push is going to come to shove. Either I’m not going keep working or they’re going to cut me off.” Glen tries to stay positive, but he knows that it wears on his family. “Every decision you make…you’re looking for the absolute cheapest way.”
Glen continues to write and plans to publish his second novel and second children’s book before the end of the year. You can find his books at amazon.com/author/andrewglen
Rebecca D’Souza: ‘You feel a little downtrodden’
When she arrived back home in London with a Master’s Degree, Rebecca D’Souza had big plans. “I was really hoping to work in government or in a think tank, somewhere policy was being created,” says D’Souza, 23, who earned her Master’s in social policy from Oxford University in England. “My passion is education, so anywhere I could work in the education sphere, implement programs and curriculum to benefit all students.”
Now, three years later, she lives at home with her parents and works as a youth outreach worker. It’s full time, but the pay is low and so is her self-esteem, and she’s still searching for something more closely aligned with her educational qualifications.
“I don’t think there are a lot of jobs out there to begin with and those that are…a lot of the times they are filled internally,” she says. D’Souza, who has done a thesis on immigrant settlement funding in Ontario, says she suspects her out-of-country degree plays a part in her struggle.
Those jobs she does see advertised tend to be for contract work, and she finds herself constantly balancing job security against job fulfillment. “I have yet to find a qualified position that is just as secure and will take me and is in my field,” she says, adding she often compares her career path to those of her university colleagues doing challenging work overseas. “It can be a little frustrating. You feel a little downtrodden.”
The situation has hurt her self-esteem. “Sometimes I think it’s a fluke that I got into this graduate program, and it’s a fluke that I passed, because clearly I don’t have the skills to be as successful as everybody else.”
D’Souza says living with her parents isn’t just helpful – it keeps her out of poverty. That became clear this summer, when she had to pay $800 for a car repair. “If I was living by myself, I would just not have a car, and my entire job is based on having a car,” she says. “I’m really fortunate.”
She tries to make the best of her situation, and volunteers with an impressive list of organizations. She’s a member of the Welcoming Communities working group, sits on the London and Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership Civic Engagement Committee, and she’s on the Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre’s board of directors and the inclusivity committee at the YMCA.
But she worries about the future. “I’m so scared I’m going to lose what I learned in my Master’s. Lose the momentum. I feel like the longer it goes on, the less of a qualified candidate I’ll be,” she says. “If it’s been years and I’m in a position that I’m clearly overqualified for, I’m nervous that will say something about me too. Maybe you’re not committed enough, or maybe you’re not hard-working enough, you know?”
Francis Hinnah: ‘I have two Western degrees and I make $14 an hour’
When he arrived in London back in 2005, Francis Hinnah didn’t expect to walk right into a high-paying job. He knew, despite his qualifications earned back in his home country of Liberia, despite the leadership skills that caught the attention of the United Nations and landed him in Canada, he would have to pay his dues in his new country.
And he’s done that – first training as a truck mechanic and gaining full-time employment that ended after the 2008 recession, then working in fast food, then earning not one, but two degrees from Western University and volunteering on several city organizations. Still, Hinnah works midnight shifts at the same minimum-wage job he has had since university.
It’s not enough. Even with his wife’s income as a personal support worker, Hinnah’s family relies on food banks. They worry about their kids, they worry about food, about shelter. There are months when they can barely cover their mortgage.
But worse than the worry is the crushing loss of self-esteem. “I have two Western degrees and I make $14 an hour,” says Hinnah. “I’m not allowed to do what I aspired to do. We are in debt. I thought the higher education would help me better pay and bring down that stress a little bit. It hasn’t worked yet.”
With a background in mechanical engineering, Hinnah worked for the government in his home country of Liberia, before he and his family fled in 1996 during the civil war. They spent seven years in the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana, where Hinnah helped establish a local governance system for distributing supplies to the 42,000 people who lived there. He helped improve sanitation, launched a recycling and compost system that helped bring in revenue, and got ID cards for the camp members. For his efforts, Hinnah was recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and invited to Canada where he was sponsored by London’s Cross Cultural Learner Centre (LCCLC).
He volunteered with LCCLC, then went to school for truck mechanics and got an apprenticeship. He started at $13 and progressed to $22 an hour with health benefits included. He made enough to put down on a mortgage in 2008. Two years later, he was laid off as a part of restructuring cuts. It’s been a struggle since.
Hinnah signed on with a temp agency and started doing odd jobs on call. But it was unpredictable, and difficult to manage with two little kids at home. He wanted more. He enrolled at King’s University College, where he got a degree in political science, and then completed a Masters in Local Government at Western. His wife – who was a nurse in Liberia – works as a Personal Support Worker and attends Brescia University.
While going to school, he worked at fast food restaurants to help cover bills. He finally found employment in a security position, which meant he could do homework at night and be with the kids in the morning. He’s on the board of directors for London Urban League, a member of the London Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership, the Medway Working Group, and the London Housing corporation. He helped to run a mayoral campaign and he is on his neighbourhood community association. He has applied for countless government positions, including election officer. But no offers.
.“Every opportunity for training, I’m taking part in it. Every opportunity for volunteering, I’m taking part in it,” said Hinnah, who helped educate Londoners about how ranked ballot voting works as part of his volunteer role with the Urban League. In effort to network and stay current, he attends conferences on city building. “My wife sacrifices a lot. All the years I’ve been going to school, she’s been working harder than me. I thought by now, things would’ve changed income wise. We are barely surviving.”
The family sets spending priorities. They want their kids to have equal opportunities, so they pay for a family YMCA membership, use their credit card to put both in soccer and make the minimum payment. “If it is really tight, we borrow from the credit card with the hope that things going to get better,” he says. “It’s going to get better.”
Jennifer Vale: ‘You take what you can get and it’s never enough’
Her sick toddler in her arms, Jennifer Vale walked out of the emergency room in the middle of the night. She was scared. Her little boy had pneumonia, needed a $120 prescription, and she didn’t have enough money for a cab ride home.
“What do I do?” Vale remembers thinking. Tears fill her eyes even now, years later. “’There’s no bus, I have no money. What do I do?”
Vale had just finished high school when she became a mom. Determined to get off welfare, she took out a loan, completed Fanshawe College’s Personal Support Worker program, then took two part-time jobs. She worked all the shifts she could, but still couldn’t cover rent, let alone extras - certainly not cab fare. That night at the hospital, she swallowed her pride again and called her parents, who took her to a 24-hour drug store. Another blow. Her benefits – covered by Ontario Works as a top-up to her wage – didn’t cover the prescription. They covered another, but only for people who were allergic to the prescription.
Desperate, Vale lied, telling the pharmacist her son was allergic. She then waited while he called the hospital to confirm. “I literally sat there with knots in my stomach, while he made that call. I remember…feeling like I had just done such a disservice to my son for being who I am and where I am.”
That feeling was a constant theme in her life as a young single mom, compounded by disappointment after disappointment as she tried to get steady full-time work with benefits. She poured her heart into applications for full-time postings, only to realize the best person for the job would be chosen based on seniority.
To bring in less than $1,000 a month, she took as many shifts as possible, whenever possible, throwing routine to the wind. “You’re working days and evenings and nights. You take what you can get and it’s not enough.”
These days, they call that “non-standard,” work. Nearly half of London’s workforce is employed in non-standard work, meaning jobs that are not permanent or steady and typically don’t include benefits. This work is unpredictable, and usually low paying and linked to stress. And poverty. The working poor. Vale learned to use food banks on a rotation so that she only visited the same one every month. There were no extras – sports, birthday parties and activities cost money – which meant they were also socially isolated.
“The stress of not having money is really, really hard. People say money can’t buy you happiness…but food in the fridge? And shelter? Those things buy happiness. And they cost money.”
Eventually, Vale encountered a rare opportunity to have her education costs covered by the Sisters of St. Josephs while she earned a degree in Women’s Studies and Community Development at Brescia University College. The ability to acquire an undergraduate degree without any debt gave Vale a big step out of poverty. In her work in the field of mental health, Vale has since supported clients experiencing much of the same hopelessness with people who experience stigma everyday that they should just get their act together and get a job, while actually having little to no access to stable employment.
Vale is now earning a Masters degree in Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University and intends to combine her own experiences, and the experienced gained from working within the system to impact larger social change through research and policy.
“It takes a village,” says Vale. “I worked hard, I did homework, but I had a lot of privilege.”
“What do I do?” Vale remembers thinking. Tears fill her eyes even now, years later. “’There’s no bus, I have no money. What do I do?”
Vale had just finished high school when she became a mom. Determined to get off welfare, she took out a loan, completed Fanshawe College’s Personal Support Worker program, then took two part-time jobs. She worked all the shifts she could, but still couldn’t cover rent, let alone extras - certainly not cab fare. That night at the hospital, she swallowed her pride again and called her parents, who took her to a 24-hour drug store. Another blow. Her benefits – covered by Ontario Works as a top-up to her wage – didn’t cover the prescription. They covered another, but only for people who were allergic to the prescription.
Desperate, Vale lied, telling the pharmacist her son was allergic. She then waited while he called the hospital to confirm. “I literally sat there with knots in my stomach, while he made that call. I remember…feeling like I had just done such a disservice to my son for being who I am and where I am.”
That feeling was a constant theme in her life as a young single mom, compounded by disappointment after disappointment as she tried to get steady full-time work with benefits. She poured her heart into applications for full-time postings, only to realize the best person for the job would be chosen based on seniority.
To bring in less than $1,000 a month, she took as many shifts as possible, whenever possible, throwing routine to the wind. “You’re working days and evenings and nights. You take what you can get and it’s not enough.”
These days, they call that “non-standard,” work. Nearly half of London’s workforce is employed in non-standard work, meaning jobs that are not permanent or steady and typically don’t include benefits. This work is unpredictable, and usually low paying and linked to stress. And poverty. The working poor. Vale learned to use food banks on a rotation so that she only visited the same one every month. There were no extras – sports, birthday parties and activities cost money – which meant they were also socially isolated.
“The stress of not having money is really, really hard. People say money can’t buy you happiness…but food in the fridge? And shelter? Those things buy happiness. And they cost money.”
Eventually, Vale encountered a rare opportunity to have her education costs covered by the Sisters of St. Josephs while she earned a degree in Women’s Studies and Community Development at Brescia University College. The ability to acquire an undergraduate degree without any debt gave Vale a big step out of poverty. In her work in the field of mental health, Vale has since supported clients experiencing much of the same hopelessness with people who experience stigma everyday that they should just get their act together and get a job, while actually having little to no access to stable employment.
Vale is now earning a Masters degree in Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University and intends to combine her own experiences, and the experienced gained from working within the system to impact larger social change through research and policy.
“It takes a village,” says Vale. “I worked hard, I did homework, but I had a lot of privilege.”
Stuart Clark: ‘I didn’t realize how difficult it would be’
Stuart Clark’s resume reads like an employer’s dream: IT professional with 25 years of experience, podcaster, writer, technology consultant – he’s even the Chair of the London Public Library board. Still, after sending out more than 80 resumes this spring, he only received three job interviews.
And that’s nothing new for Clark, whose life turned upside down in 2011, when the company he worked for nearly three decades “downsized,” eliminating its entire 40-person IT department. Since then, Clark’s life has been a series of short and longer-term contracts that have led to personal stress and financial hardship for he and his wife.
When he lost his job in 2011, Clark expected to find work again fairly quickly. He was in demand at his former company, often called to save the day for employees facing IT challenges. But when he found himself jobless in London during a period of mergers and automation, things had changed in the IT world. It seemed employers were seeking programmers and developers, while “back-office” experts were no longer in such high demand.
“I didn’t realize how difficult it would be,” he says. Looking back, he has a clearer understanding about what he was up against. “For those of us who had been in it 25 or 30 years…the interesting thing about changing careers is you’re facing a whole crowd of people just coming out. And you’re not living in a bachelor apartment anymore, eating ramen noodles and pizza. You’re facing competition from people who don’t need as much salary and potentially will probably move on very quickly in their career,” says Clark.
Since then, he’s worked one contract after another, while running a consulting company on the side. Last year, he managed to land stable, full-time work (with benefits) with a large corporation in London, but that ended after it downsized and laid off 20% of the IT staff.
Money has been tight. Clark’s wife doesn’t work due to health issues that also come with constant medical bills, he says. So, they cut costs – even when it affects their quality of life. “Because we don’t have benefits, things like dental or getting new eyeglasses. If I get a cavity, I can’t afford to fix it. If my wife gets really sick, we have to go to the (Emergency Room) which clogs up the system,” says Clark, who is a strong advocate for universal health care. “We downsized, moved out of our house about two years ago. We certainly don’t contribute to the local economy other than the essentials.” “
And there’s the constant stress. You’re always worried.”
