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Drawing on qualitative interview data from case studies in Scotland and Canada in the post 2008 era, this article explores the impact of austerity policies on the conditions and experience of employment in two nonprofit social service agencies and their shifting labour process. Despite differences in context, the article finds a similarity of experience of austerity-compelled precarity at several levels in the agency. This precarity increased management control and evoked little resistance from employees. These findings contribute to our understanding of austerity as articulated differently in different contexts, but experienced similarly at the front lines of care work.

Examines how the increase in precarious employment has exacerbated health and safety hazards and injuries in Ontario work places. Concludes that the Canadian regulatory system is flawed. Based on surveys and interviews conducted in southern Ontario in 2005 and 2006.

This paper explores the impact of precarious employment relationships on health outcomes. It uses a novel framework, “Employment Strain” to describe the characteristics of different employment relationships and how they impact health outcomes. It uses interview data and comments provided on a survey to explore these issues. The paper begins by exploring if the health effects reported by mid-career individuals in precarious employment are different from those of younger and older workers. Finding limited evidence to support this hypothesis, the paper goes on to explore in detail the conditions under which precarious employment does increase stress and tension and impact health outcomes. It concludes that a combination of an individual's desire for more permanent employment, the expectation that permanent employment will be found, and the support individuals receive from various sources are critical to understanding the health effects of precarious employment.

I) Objective: The study aimed to explore the health effects of precarious employment relationships in Ontario, and understand how various forms of support shape health. II) Methods: Three measures make up our "Employment Strain" model: employment relationship uncertainty; employment relationship effort; and, employment relationship support. This new framework was used to measure the characteristics of precarious employment and their effect on health using data from a structured, self-administered, population-based survey completed by 3,244 workers, and 82 semi-structured interviews using a stratified sampling technique to select participants. III) Results: Precarious employment has negative health consequences for many workers. However, the relationship between precarious employment and health is complex, whereby the characteristics of the employment relationship and levels of support determine health outcomes. Using the "Employment Strain" framework, we found that workers exposed to High Employment Strain - workers with high levels of employment relationship uncertainty and high levels of employment relationship effort - have poorer health. Importantly, support does shapes health and can help to buffer the health risks associated with precarious employment.

This article reports a new conceptual approach to measuring the characteristics of precarious employment and their effect on health. Our starting point is the Karasek 'job strain' model. We argue that 'job strain' focuses on the health effects of work once people are employed. It is less effective in capturing the health effects associated with the employment relationship, the process by which workers acquire work, keep work and negotiate its terms and conditions. We develop a new construct, 'employment strain' to measure these aspects of work organisation. Evidence presented indicates employment strain is associated with poorer health outcomes.

[Examines] the prevalence of both precarious and stable employment in the labour market stretching from Hamilton in the west to Whitby in the east, and centred on the City of Toronto. [The report] expands the discussion of the social consequences of Canada’s polarizing income distribution by examining the effects of precarious employment on people’s lives. It explores how employment precarity and income together shape social outcomes. What makes this issue all the more important is our finding that barely 50% of people in our study are in jobs that are both permanent and full-time. --Website description. Contents: Background -- Part 1: The rise of precarious employment -- Part 2: The characteristics of the precariously employed -- Part 3: Precarity and household well-being -- Part 4: Precarity and the well-being of children -- Part 5: Precarity and community connection -- Part 6: Options for change -- Appendix A: How we collected our data -- Appendix B: Defining individuals in precarious employment -- Appendix C: How we determined low, middle, and high household income brackets -- Bibliography.

The paper examines the impact of lean production on indicators of the quality of life at work in the automotive industry and finds that it varies across companies and to a lesser extent between countries. The paper explains this by arguing that lean production seeks to impose new employment standards. This is a contested process where management's capacity to shift to new standards and labour's ability to protect its interests vary across workplaces.

While new models of work organization (lean production) in the automobile industry have been portrayed as a 'democratic' break with Fordism, we find considerable parallels with those traditional patterns of labour control they were intended to supplant. Far from understanding these as exemplars of 'democratic Taylorism', the article identifies specific company responses to problems associated with declining productivity and competitiveness. Moreover, the article argues that new models of work organization associated with lean production, far from heralding empowerment, are more conerned with asserting management control in varying ways in different companies.

This chapter offers a broad overview of who is exposed to precarious employment, its characters, its association with health outcomes and its impact on house hold well-being. --From authors' introduction Almost every person works at some point in their lives. The Research Handbook on Work and Well-Being examines the association of particular work experiences with employee and organizational health and performance. --Publisher's description.

Background: Although worker representation in OHS has been widely recognized as contributing to health and safety improvements at work, few studies have examined the role that worker representatives play in this process. Using a large quantitative sample, this paper seeks to confirm findings from an earlier exploratory qualitative study that worker representatives can be differentiated by the knowledge intensive tactics and strategies that they use to achieve changes in their workplace. Methods: Just under 900 worker health and safety representatives in Ontario completed surveys which asked them to report on the amount of time they devoted to different types of representation activities (i.e., technical activities such as inspections and report writing vs. political activities such as mobilizing workers to build support), the kinds of conditions or hazards they tried to address through their representation (e.g., housekeeping vs. modifications in ventilation systems), and their reported success in making positive improvements. A cluster analysis was used to determine whether the worker representatives could be distinguished in terms of the relative time devoted to different activities and the clusters were then compared with reference to types of intervention efforts and outcomes. Results: The cluster analysis identified three distinct groupings of representatives with significant differences in reported types of interventions and in their level of reported impact. Two of the clusters were consistent with the findings in the exploratory study, identified as knowledge activism for greater emphasis on knowledge based political activity and technical-legal representation for greater emphasis on formalized technical oriented procedures and legal regulations. Knowledge activists were more likely to take on challenging interventions and they reported more impact across the full range of interventions. Conclusions This paper provides further support for the concepts of knowledge activism and technical-legal representation when differentiating the strategic orientations and impact of worker health and safety representatives, with important implications for education, political support and recruitment.

Worker representatives were formally recognised as agents in regulating workplace health and safety in most Canadian jurisdictions in the late 1970s. This was one component of the transition to an Internal Responsibility System that included mandated Joint Health and Safety Committees, right to know regulations, and the right to refuse dangerous work. Very little has changed in this regulatory framework in the ensuing three decades. The effectiveness of these regulations in improving health and safety was contentious in the 1970s and continues to be debated. Earlier work by Lewchuk et al. (1996) argued that the labour-management environment of individual workplaces influenced the effectiveness of worker representatives and Joint Health and Safety Committees. In particular, the framework was more effective where labour was organised and where management had accepted a philosophy of co-management of the health and safety function. The Canadian economy has experienced significant reorganisation since the 1970s. Canadian companies in general face more intense competition because of trade deals entered into in the 1980s and 1990s. Exports represent a much larger share of GNP. Union density has fallen and changes in legislation make it more difficult to organise workers. Non-standard employment, self-employment and other forms of less permanent employment have all grown in relative importance. This chapter presents new evidence on how these changes are undermining the effectiveness of the Internal Responsibility System in Canada, with a particular focus on workers in precarious employment relationships. Data is drawn from a recent population survey of non-student workers in Ontario conducted by the authors. -- Publisher's description. Contents: pt. 1. National arrangements for workers' representation: case studies from Europe and Australia. Worker representation on health and safety in the UK -- problems with the preferred model and beyond -- The Australian framework for worker participation in occupational health and safety -- Health and safety committees in France: an empirical analysis -- Characteristics, activities and perceptions of Spanish safety representatives -- An afterword on European Union policy and practice -- pt. 2. Challenges and strategies for worker representation in the modern world of work -- Precarious employment and the internal responsibility system: some Canadian experiences -- Employee 'voice' and working environment in the new member states: translating policy into practice in the Baltic States -- Health and safety representation in small firms: a Swedish success that is threatened by political and labour market changes -- Trade union strategies to support representation on health and safety in Australia and the UK: integration or isolation? -- Worker representation and health and safety: reflections on the past, present and future. Includes bibliographical references and index.

[C]ontributes to an understanding of the nature of precarious employment and its broader social implications, with an emphasis on its impact on health. It reports findings of a survey exploring connections between the employment relationship, the organization of work, and workers' health. ...[The authors] develop a new concept - "employment strain" - to examine how precarious employment relationships affect workers' health.

This article integrates the employment strain model with the social stress model in order to reveal the mechanisms that explain the relation between precarious employment and mental well-being. This model is applied to the case of temporary agency employment by analysing 41 in-depth interviews with temporary agency workers from Canada. The results show how temporary agency workers perceive employment-related uncertainties and efforts mainly as negative and to a lesser extent as positive experiences, respectively evoking strain or activation. Further, it is revealed how uncertainties and efforts mutually reinforce each other, which increases strain, and how support can serve as a buffer.

In times of economic growth, it is fair to expect that wages and job quality will improve with positive benefits being experienced throughout society. But between 2011 and 2017—a period when Ontario’s economy experienced significant gains—our research found that these expectations did not come true: the adage that a rising tide will lift all boats proved to be false in Ontario.

This interdisciplinary volume offers a powerful critique of how social structures and relations as well as ideologies shape workplaces, labour markets, and households in contemporary Canada. Contributors dissect recent transformations in work and expose the uncertainty, insecurity, and instability that increasingly characterize both paid and unpaid work. Using a progressive approach to political economy, contributors propose alternative policies and practices that might secure more decent livelihoods for workers and their families. Contributors include Hugh Armstrong (Carleton), Pat Armstrong (York), Wallace Clement (Carleton), June Corman (Brock), Gillian Creese (British Columbia), Alice de Wolff (Independent Researcher), Ann Duffy (Brock), Andy King (United Steelworkers of America), Kate Laxer (York), Belinda Leach (Guelph), Wayne Lewchuk (McMaster), David W. Livingstone (OISE), Meg Luxton (York), Norene Pupo (York), Antonie Scholtz (OISE), Vivian Shalla (Guelph), Janet Siltanen (Carleton), Leah F. Vosko (York), Rosemary Warskett (Carleton), and Charlotte Yates (McMaster).

This report compares work organization and workload at three [Ontario] developmental service agencies in order to identify factors that precipitate and contribute to injuries, stress and health problems in the social services. The restructuring of services in this sector has resulted in reduced funding and therefore workloads and health risks associated with overwork and burnout appear to have increased dramatically in all three sites studied. Restructuring has also exposed workers and clients to higher levels of stress and violence. This study also uncovered serious incidents of workplace bullying and traumatic work cultures. While workplace bullying certainly predates restructuring, some studies show that it is a phenomena that has seen rapid growth within the context of restructured public sector and non profit workplaces. Given the serious under funding of this sector it may appear that there is little that can be done to improve health and safety in the short term. However, this report recommends several measures including an immediate increase in government funding, the incorporation of worker’s knowledge into how work is to be organized and planned, guarantees to part-time workers of enough hours of work to support themselves, an end to the use of split shifts, a cap on overtime and subsequent hiring additional fulltime staff in order to ensure workplace stability and the introduction of immediate, assertive, transparent measures to improve workplace morale and eradicate traumatic workplace cultures. --Executive Summary

Draws on survey data collected in Canada, Britain and Japan in an attempt to assess the claim that lean production represents a positive change in the employment relationship in the automobile industry. Concludes that despite the rhetoric of consensual participation, the difficult working environment created by the regime relies on significant degrees of imposition to keep the assembly lines running, whcih negatively impacts on employees' working lives.

This paper examines the association between income and precarious employment, how this association is changing and how it is shaped by gender and race. It explores how precarious employment has spread to even middle income occupations and what this implies for our understanding of contemporary labour markets and employment relationship norms. The findings indicate a need to refine our views of who is in precarious employment and a need to re-evaluate the nature of the Standard Employment Relationship, which we would argue is not only becoming less prevalent, but also transitioning into something that is less secure.

In 2013, the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research group released the report, "It's More than Poverty: Employment Precarity and Household Wellbeing." Based on 4,165 surveys collected in late 2011 and early 2012, and 83 interviews conducted in 2011 with workers in different forms of precarious employment, It's More than Poverty examined the characteristics of employment in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTHA). It documented the range of employment experiences and it revealed the extent of insecurity associated with insecure employment relationships. Equally important, it showed the impact of insecure employment relationships on individual and household well-being and community participation.... --From Executive Summary.

Precarious Employment (PE) is characterized by job, income, and benefit insecurities. Studies surrounding PE and well-being have been predominantly quantitative, leaving a gap in rich descriptions of employment experiences. We recruited a sample of 40 adults aged 25-55 who were involved in PE during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic or lost employment due to the pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were administered. Employment and income insecurities were common and had negative impacts on the well-being of participants and their families. Uncertainty about future employment prospects and job and income loss resulted in chronic distress. Other insecurities—access to benefits, violation of worker rights, worker safety—was also reported as impacting well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened insecurities, hardships, and distress among workers with PE conditions. Given the myriad insecurities experienced by those engaged in PE, the focus of precarious work research should also include working conditions, violation of worker rights, and managerial domination.