When Aretha Reid arrives at the airport in the middle of the night, it’s not because she’s there to catch a plane.

The 24-year-old works 20 hours a week at Pearson as a passenger service agent, a precarious job that earns her $12.75 an hour. The commute from her Brampton home requires two buses and can take more than an hour and a half. Because on some days buses stop running before midnight, she sometimes has to leave at 10:30 p.m. to make a shift that starts at 2 a.m.

“I’m there probably an hour or two hours before my shift starts. I just have to sit,” she said, adding that her shifts are usually only four to five hours long.

The mother of two, who came to Toronto from Jamaica about seven years ago, said her inefficient commute means she doesn’t get enough sleep, and it taxes her time and well-being. “You’re so miserable, the passengers come and you want to smile, but you don’t have the strength,” she said.

New research conducted by Stephanie Premji, an assistant professor at McMaster University’s School of Labour Studies, is shedding light on the link between precarious work and long, inefficient and costly public transit commutes.

The study, done in collaboration with Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services, found that not only do precariously employed workers endure complex commutes that drain their time and money, their travel patterns may contribute to their inability to find better work.

Premji said the findings reflect the fact that transit hasn’t adapted to reflect the rise of precarious part-time, temporary or contract employment, which now makes up more than half of all work in Toronto.

“Society is set up for the standard 9-to-5 jobs,” said Premji. “The system is just not set up for this new reality of employment.”

Premji interviewed 27 immigrants living in Toronto about their commuting experiences. The participants predominantly worked in low-skill positions as general labourers, housekeepers, gas station attendants and retail workers, in jobs that were involuntarily part-time, casual, seasonal or on-call.

Most reported they weren’t able to live close to where they worked because there were no jobs in their neighbourhoods, and housing in areas where there was employment was too expensive.

“In this kind of housing market, they’re being pushed away from the centre of the city, away from public transportation like subways . . . to places where they have to rely on buses that are less frequent,” Premji said.

Participants reported spending between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of their household income on commutes, which could take anywhere between three and six hours each day as they travelled to points across the GTA, often darting between multiple part-time jobs.

Although the location of jobs posed a challenge, the type of work also increased the burden of commutes.

Shift work required participants to wake up in the middle of the night to catch transit service that ran infrequently outside of peak periods. And unpredictable hours meant that workers could end up being sent home early, having spent more time commuting than on the job.

“Participants sometimes found it difficult to decide whether the number of hours worked on a particular day would make the commute worthwhile, since the work hours were unpredictable,” the study found.

Premji’s research also suggested that burdensome commutes make it difficult for precarious workers to access stable employment, because they’re sometimes forced to turn down jobs if the commute is too onerous.

According to Surranna Sandy, CEO of Skills For Change, a provincially funded organization that provides job training for immigrants, long transit trips can also prevent workers from accessing employment help.

“We find that with our clients, they say, ‘I can’t come and meet with the employment counsellor because it’s too far for me. But I know I need a job,’” Sandy said.

She argued that lack of access to efficient transit is a “significant economic hindrance for people who are already precariously economically placed.”

According to TTC spokesman Brad Ross, the commission has adjusted service as employment patterns have changed.

Last year the agency added service to 43 bus routes outside of rush hour and expanded the after-hours Blue Night network of 31 bus and streetcar routes. In January it began opening the subway system one hour earlier on Sundays, at 8 a.m. There are now 125 bus and streetcar routes that run all day, every day.

The service changes are “a recognition of a workforce and of a world that is not 9-to-5,” said Ross. “This is a 24/7 city, and a lot of people do need to get to work at different hours.”

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Aside from service improvements, Premji’s study recommended incorporating transit costs in social assistance rates, instituting discount fares for low-income riders or during off-peak periods, switching to a time-based transfer system, and providing transit orientation workshops to new immigrants.

Premji said society needs to acknowledge the “deeply intertwined” relationship between commuting and upward mobility.

“It always seems like, well, that’s the worker’s responsibility to get to work and to get home,” she said. “But what we have to realize is it’s a central part of work, even though it’s not paid, and it’s both affected by work and also impacts people’s ability to have jobs.”