A pharmaceutical company reportedly linked to tax evasion to the tune of over $4 million through offshore Cyprian accounts gathers for a lunch and cocktail at Montreal’s Old Port. Initiation into the event is coat check, where a cascade of rented racks too janky for winter coats topples over to the sound of a shrieking manager. This is the first day of a thoroughly Aquarian season of freelance catering.

This industry has everything. Ornate cups of burrata and wasabi cephalopods. Details of your colleague’s trip to the gynecologist over 45 bowls of Caesar salad. Shuffling through your 14th hour in borrowed shoes. Someone shouting about Peruvian droughts over a platter of dirty napkins and champagne flutes. Wafting vetiver incense and Persian rugs. Conceptual acrobatics. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Snipers. That one guy in a trench coat from Bloomberg. And when you’ve paid $2,000 for your pair of tickets to step through the steel doors to New City Gas, Montreal’s historical gas-lighting warehouse, you’ll be greeted by a vaguely “Oriental” dance-off meant to bewitch the city’s fanciest philanthropic donors.

For those whose livelihoods depend on the flexibility of catering work, there is also a price for this view into an often inaccessible world. While catering is the quintessential gig economy, temp-worker agencies and the informalization of labour in the sector pose new challenges for workers’ rights in a precarious industry—one that has long lacked many vital labour protections that are considered basic rights for other classifications of workers. The repercussions are vast, threatening the victories achieved by unionized hospitality workers, including hotel banquet caterers, and revealing the ways in which employers continue to exploit loopholes that put profit over people. Increasing informalization, both through temp-work agencies and the classification of workers as self-employed contractors, is exacerbating precarity and abusive labour conditions.

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When caterers show up for their shifts, it’s next to impossible to predict who employs the coworkers beside them. A venue may have a few of their own staff, say at the bar. And then they’ll hire caterers, too. But these workers, rather than being employed directly by the catering company, are hired on a freelance basis. Before COVID-19, catering companies had staff on payroll, but now, people compete for shifts on an app.

To make it more confusing, any gaps in staffing are filled in by temp-agency workers, who also get their shifts through apps—sometimes picking up shifts through the same app as the one used by the catering company itself. While they’re said to be filling in gaps, they’re always there. Workers may look like a unified front, all employed by the same company, but behind this image is a hot mess. Servers, bartenders, kitchen staff, the maître d’hôtel: from the kitchen to the floor, freelancers from temp-work agencies hustle alongside catering company staff who are deemed “self-employed”—in other words, freelancers.

While there’s a particular satisfaction to the adrenaline-fuelled endurance race of working heated 10-plus hour shifts and pulling doubles, workers classified as self-employed don’t receive some of the basic benefits, like time-and-a-half pay legislated for working holidays, that would be afforded to a venue or company’s permanent staff. They are also without job security, access to legal recourse if something goes wrong at work, and, though rare for the hospitality industry, health benefits.

Wage inequity in the same workplace is routine. An agency worker can earn $23 or $24 per hour before tax doing the same work as someone staffed by a catering company but classified as self-employed and paid $20 per hour. Some workers pulling multiple contracts between different companies and agencies might be demoted from a higher-paying agency wage to a lower catering company wage when an agency works the same event.

By keeping workers in the ambiguity of freelance contracts while exploiting all the power of a regular employer, catering companies and agencies revoke responsibility for the rights and well-being of their workers, and renounce accountability for damages through their own management practices, short-staffing, equipment and material deficiency, and health and safety practices—keeping the profits while passing on the risks to disposable catering “consultants.”

Once the purview of Uber, DoorDash and its many doppelgangers, aspects of this informal economy are spreading in an already precarious sector. Since 2019, temp-work agencies that used to be in the minority have become normalized. Rather than fixing a labour shortage by integrating temporary workers into workplaces, the ubiquity of temp work and defaulting to classifying workers as self-employed contractors is being practiced in other sectors. Exploiting a similar model, temp-work agencies have also become prevalent in Quebec’s public health-care system. Four years since their explosion during COVID-19, private nursing agencies are entrenched in the province, with hospitals continuing to rely on temp workers amid pushback to reduce dependency and eventually ban the use of these agencies in public health care.

Despite the ubiquity of precarious labour, workers who have been siloed into self-employed classifications while being functionally dependent on employers, agencies and digital platforms are not taking the transgressions on their rights lightly. In 2020, Foodora couriers in Ontario won their right to unionize under CUPW, a crucial precedent for recognizing gig workers as dependent workers rather than self-employed contractors. Similarly, Uber drivers represented by UFCW Canada have organized grassroots protests to advocate for a baseline minimum wage and more regulation on how many Uber drivers can operate within a city.

Governments, too, have been urged to address the issue, and legislation is beginning to catch up amid mounting pressure. Companies in Montreal, however, continue to exploit loopholes for precarious labour as Quebec falls behind the rest of Canada, and contractors seeking flexibility have few means to fight back.

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A desperate flurry of applications to Montreal’s premiere catering companies lands a gig at the historic Marché Bonsecours. The mid-19th century stone is cast in a romantic light as a murder of black-clad servers perches on windows, hidden behind curtains for propriety as diamonds, flight simulations, and luxe meals are auctioned off to the tune of Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers.”

Workers aren’t only hidden behind curtains, however. Once they are accepted onto the nebulous team, their profile is added to an app that sends notifications when shifts become available. Those shifts are claimed within seconds.

The app of choice, be it New York-based Nowsta or Montreal-based Workstaff, is an opaque space of privilege. Shifts are shared by catering companies or temp agencies on a first-come, first-served basis—but not always. Sometimes it’s based on seniority. Sometimes it’s based on whether you’re an anglophone. Most of the time, it’s not clear. Nothing is guaranteed, but the draw is unavoidable: the addictive nature of gamified earnings and the momentary thrill of being “accepted.” Shifts are available tomorrow!

Your shift starts once you’ve checked in and accepted the app’s request to access your geolocation. Dress code is nearly universal, but you’d better bring your own food-grade cleaner, wet floor sign, and maybe even defibrillator. You might be bestowed with an apron or a bowtie. You’ll quickly realize there is no training amid an endless stream of what kitchen staff call “so many new faces.”

Some of these new faces might be from the event and hospitality temp-staffing agencies that have bloomed across Montreal, including but not limited to SALIN, Sacrée Soirée, VS Event Staffing, and Agence First Round. Sleek company branding on catering companies’ social media and staffing agencies’ websites obfuscates workers’ precarity in an already gig-based industry.

Salin refers to catering workers as “consultants,” even though workers are functionally dependent on the agency providing and approving shift work. Agence First Round refers to workers for big-ticket clients like the CF Montréal soccer club and Stade Saputo, Centre Bell, and Complexe Desjardins as “fast, market-driven staff replacements.” Sacrée Soirée brands temp workers as “free spirits” and markets their labour as a cost-cutting solution for hospitality management expenditures, of which around 75 percent are “recruitment, turnover, benefits, and absenteeism,” according to their website.

This may sound like a modern problem. But years before the likes of Uber normalized gig work, labour activists saw the dangers of employers shifting costs and liability onto sub-contractors and independent workers amid a wider deregulation of labour markets. The scale of precarity in the hospitality industry in Montreal today, however, is staggering considering it is one of the world’s cultural capitals and host to major international conferences, festivals and sporting events. While this brings millions of tourists to the city each year, the boon hospitality jobs are said to bring to the city’s precariat is a thing of the imagination in the current climate.

As Montreal continues to recover economically from COVID-19, tourism profits are on the upswing. Last summer’s in-person business convention attendance rebounded to 72 percent, which is 12 percent higher than in 2022. The Palais des congrès convention centre alone held 288 events in 2023, hosting over 870,000 delegates which, according to the Palais, has contributed “substantial economic spinoffs of around 425 million dollars for Montreal and Quebec.” Some of Montreal’s most profitable sporting events, like the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix and Tennis Canada’s National Bank Open, rake in millions of dollars in profits and public subsidies.

In such a profitable sector, why are there not enough resources to retain permanent staff on livable incomes, regularize seasonal and temp workers as company employees, and provide dignified benefits, protections and wages to flex-workers whose labour runs the show? While there are regulations in Quebec stipulating that temp workers cannot be paid less than directly employed staffers, other contractors can earn less than temp workers. It’s this loophole companies are using to save a buck by shaving it off someone’s salary.

The problem, though, persists across Canada. According to Samia Hashi, Ontario Regional Director for Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, the misclassification of employees has only grown in magnitude as employers exploit regulatory loopholes to tap into cheap sources of labour. “The much-touted ‘flexibility’ of gig and temp work only benefits the bottom line of employers,” Hashi says, adding that this allows employers to avoid extending statutory protections under employment standards codes.

Collective organization likely has something to do with why working conditions in Quebec are so poor right now. For things to change, people usually have to put themselves on the line by agitating for it. Many self-employed contract workers and temp-workers aren’t able to exercise collective action and draw attention to the growing precarity impacting the hospitality industry, and the inherent unpredictability in the sector contributes to the unique challenges of organizing unions or strikes with fellow freelance caterers. Raising your voice simply means you’ve worked your last shift. Catering workers may not even be given the courtesy of dismissal: they’ll just have to read the subtext around their lack of notifications.

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Collective action by contract workers in other sectors has drawn harsh blowback, but it’s also shown possibilities. In February 2024, temp agency workers at the Del Monte plant in Oshawa—represented by Unifor Local 222 and employed by Premier, a third-party temp-staffing agency owned by swipejobs—were fired while on strike against long-standing conditions of precarity. Their employer was able to terminate all 71 workers’ employments at once by ending their contract with Premier. Many were on temporary contracts with Del Monte for over five years, in what the union described as “poor and dangerous working conditions.” Showing that it’s possible for contractors to advocate for more robust workers’ rights, Unifor has called for stronger regulation of temp-worker agencies, and for new legislation from the Ontario government that would ensure temp workers are hired after a certain period of time with just cause protection from being unfairly terminated.

In an industry where the customer is always right, there can be little sympathy for noisy striking workers ruining weddings. Having the audacity to drop the “nice” façade of customer service, however, is exactly what has effectively implemented change. In February 2022, 159 hospitality workers employed at the Palais des congrès convention centre—and unionized under the Fédération des employeés et employés de services publics—were prepared to go on strike until their union reached an agreement on fair wages.

Not all workers in the city’s most prestigious venues have been as lucky, however, to bargain or even retain their permanent jobs—flexible and event-based as they are. In January 2020, about 20 employees working in security, housekeeping and event organization at the Marché Bonsecours were laid off to be replaced by contract workers.

Elsewhere, contract labour has threatened to weaken the negotiating power of unionized workers as employers find loopholes to continue generating profits amid strikes. Workers at B.C.’s Radisson Blu Vancouver Airport hotel have been on strike for three years. Last year, their union filed complaints with the B.C. Labour Relations Board for alleged scabbing— crossing the picket line to work despite the strike—by third party caterers at the hotel restaurant. Workers brought attention to the hotel’s rental of its restaurant for private use, allowing it to profit while skirting the economic impacts of striking workers by using private contractors. (Later, a labour arbitrator ruled against the union’s argument in the absence of sufficient proof that hotel workers would have otherwise been responsible for the labour at the hotel restaurant.)

In light of weaknesses and inconsistencies in provincial anti-scab legislation across Canada, CUPE called for federal legislation last year. On June 20, 2024, the historic federal anti-scab law (Bill C-58) was passed, banning the use of temporary replacement workers if there is a strike in a federally regulated workplace.

And despite the pressures of corporate lobbying against tighter regulations, recent laws being adopted across Canada are starting to address inequities and set precedents for broader federal and provincial legislation. In federally regulated workplaces, amendments to the Canada Labour Code proposed in 2019 prohibit wage disparities between temporary workers and permanent staff doing the same work, in the same conditions. Self-employed classifications, however, allow employers to skirt these protections.

Wage transparency laws are also coming into effect across the country, along with anti-reprisal protections that prohibit employers “from asking applicants about their past salaries and from penalizing employees for disclosing their wages amongst themselves,” CTV News reports. These regulations, however, are not universal; they have only come into force in B.C., Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Changes to B.C.’s legislation proposed last fall and coming into effect this fall are more comprehensive than just protecting the right to discuss wages. They formally recognize gig workers as employees, establishing a minimum wage, covering essential expenses, offering compensation benefits for workplace injuries, and providing other bare minimum standards like wage statements and notice of termination. But these changes do not go far enough. Gig workers are still exempt from rights extended to regular employees including paid sick days, overtime pay and statutory holiday pay, and the legislative changes only apply to food delivery and ride-hail platform-based workers.

Quebec’s legislation is lagging behind the rest of the country as temp-work agencies, platform-based employment, and misclassification of workers as self-employed become normalized. There are currently no laws, for example, that mandate wage transparency or provide anti-reprisal protections to workers who share information on wages with each other.

Regulations for temp-work agencies that took effect in 2020 have tightened restrictions on some ambiguous working conditions and the lack of employer accountability. Similar to restaurant operating permits, agencies must now be licensed with Quebec’s Commission des normes, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) to operate legally. (As of July 2024, SALIN, VS Event Staffing, and Agence First Round did not appear in the CNESST’s licence database for placement agencies.) They are also banned from charging workers recruitment fees.

Other gains appear progressive, but have actually resulted in different forms of inequities. Agencies can no longer prohibit clients from recruiting temp workers as regular employees after a six-month period. Within seasonal work like catering, however, this still effectively keeps workers in a dependent relationship with a third-party service provider for the entire season.

Frédérique Verreault, a media relations person for the Quebec Labour Ministry, emphasized that temp-workers in Quebec cannot earn a lower wage than salaried employees simply because they are agency employees or they work fewer hours per week. But this does not address earning higher wages on a shift with a catering company’s freelance staff in an environment where salaried employees are almost non-existent.

According to Verreault, temp workers have the same rights and obligations as regular employees regarding labour standards, pay equity, and the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. They also have the same recourse as regular employees in case of unjustified dismissal, harassment, or a hostile work environment. These protections, however, only refer to Quebec’s existing laws. Temp agency and seasonal workers also have to go to the CNESST in case of unfair dismissal, or for workplace accidents or illness, so that issues are treated individually rather than through collective action against systemic inequities.

Verreault says the Quebec government is closely following the normalization of temp-work agencies and will be holding a consultation on the impacts of new technologies on the labour market, like app-based gig work. Verreault did not provide further information on this consultation.

Dependent contractor provisions could provide access to meaningful labour protections and recognize the independent contractors’ rights to unionize and take collective action. A wage floor and wage transparency measures could also provide workers with some level of accountability.

“Governments across the country can do more on effective implementation of laws that are already on the books,” Hashi says. Many of the new labour protections for temp agency and gig workers at the federal and provincial levels have yet to be implemented, including federal provisions prohibiting wage differences between temporary staffers and employees from 2018. After claiming it would implement these provisions in 2022, Hashi explained, the federal government has again missed its spring 2024 deadline.

Employment and Social Development Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

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Temp agencies and employers cast a patronizing veneer over the self-employed classification by defending freelancers’ rights to be freelancers. Gig-workers, however, have shown that we are not willing to accept the depreciation of our labour, and that the flexibility of gig work should not come at the cost of dignified working conditions, labour protections, and workplace equity—or to the detriment of permanent employees.

The hospitality industry is at times a place of catharsis, at times an addiction. It is certainly a place of contrasts, full of both absolute precarity and the certainty of there always being work, somewhere. The seduction of fast money and the trap of poverty. The dance between hyper-vigilance and blasé detachment. Where intimacy is created over secret cups of coffee and leftover baklava, trails of gossip with people you will never see again, and urgently whispered plans to escape to Bali, Bangkok, Berlin—anywhere but here, in the kitchen where there are no more baskets for bread.

A shift pops up on my screen with an “URGENT” need for staff. A dopamine rush, or that mid-afternoon coffee, hits before tapping: “Skip.” For a second, I’ve won the game.