, 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.