, Student Voice

The Student Job

Sparky Dundee
Guest Contributor

common sentence to hear while speaking to students is

how student jobs decline each year. This started with the
global financial crisis of 2008, and quickly snowballed with the

assistance of Stephen Harper’s
conservative dictatorship. The
elimination of more than 22,000
full time livable wage jobs

that had been available before
Harper's folly were quickly
axed, and very slowly replaced
with 65,000 minimum wage part
time jobs providing an annual
wage for the most part that
could barely pay monthly rent.

An increase in minimum

wage part time jobs was

touted as an improvement,

but took no notice of the

fact that to live with these
jobs, one wasn’t enough. The
government reported that the
unemployment rate had fallen
and that was amazing, yet the
number of people who were
out of work and who wewre
unable to apply for employment
insurance only seemed to
increase. Just to create a
situation that was unbearable,
funding that used to go to
programs allowing companies to
hire summer students was cut,
increasing the unemployment
rate among the student
populations. As students, we
have reached a critical moment

This is coupled with the fact that textbook prices
increase every year while textbook volumes are

continually re-released without any substantial

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where we cannot simply
wait for external companies
to create jobs that pay us a wage that gets us nowhere.

Thirty years ago, a four month summer job anywhere
would net enough money to pay for a full year’s education
and provide enough money to also cover a portion of
room and board. Calculations performed in 2014 showed
that in the province of BC, while working a single full
time summer job, a student would have to work without
holidays for seventeen months to be able to afford a
single semester of post secondary university education.

changes, but with substantial price increases.

In this day and age, if students want to be able to get by
without significant loans and debt, we will be forced to
create the jobs that we will work. Companies exist around
the city of Prince George that are willing to work with
students allowing those students to teach or instruct a
skill they might have to classes of people that wish to
learn. When just beginning in these roles, students will
be forced to take on small classes that do not pay much,

but as they show they can handle these groups, they will
be allowed to take on larger and more lucrative classes.

Top Drawer Yarn is one such
company which is willing to work
with students to offer classes in
knitting, crocheting, felting, tatting,
macrame or any other skill that can
be performed with wool or yarn.
This company will allow instructors
to keep 90% of the money they
earn for the class while 10% is kept
by the company. The traditional
idea of a student job seems to have
unravelled, due to the fact that
companies that hire students are
not necessarily willing to work
around a student’s schedule, and

in some cases might expect the
student to quit school to continue
working at the end of the summer.

Many companies have lost sight of
the fact that students are attending
post secondary schools to improve
themselves and to also learn the
important skills needed to work in
a job that pays a survivable wage.
Students looking for summer
work are trying to find something
that can occupy their time, and
allow them to continue living

day to day without losing a home
from the inability to pay rent.

Student loans are often touted as

a means to get by until something
better can come up, but realistically
unless a student has been promised
a job by a company that has stood
the test of time, nothing better can be expected to come

up. In order to continue into this brave new world, student
groups should be supported to start small businesses that
could bid on contracts which would employ students.

Business Insider

Unfortunately with the way that businesses are currently
handled, the possibility of anything student led being allowed
to continue is minute at best. The power is in the hands of
the students, make your own job and the future is your oyster.