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The contemporary precarious condition, ‘precarity,’ in life, work and culture parallels transformations in national and global economies, in part through the rise of immaterial production. Precarity has led to destabilization and reconfiguration of a class /class system and the creation of a new majority precarious class including domestic and farm workers, academic workers, care givers, part-timers and more. The thesis identifies how a historical moment of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (1979-1999) experienced marginal social protection, racial discrimination, limited legal rights, short-term contracts, vulnerable working conditions and precarious life without health care. The transnational lessons of the CFU include a better understanding organizing precarious citizens today — including what has not worked; importance of visual cultural analysis and counter-visuality to inform resistance. Theories of immaterial labour; porousness of international borders; lack of social protections; shorter career cycles; challenges to traditional craft unions; shift in social values as citizens organize across sectors, geographies and borders; and, migrant experiences as central to the experience of precarity. Confronted with the difficult task of re-imagining old ‘modernist’ visions of ‘class,’ ‘people,’ ‘nation-states’ and many established perspectives of resistance that have been stalemated. The thesis also includes a short survey of visual cultural expressions from twenty-first century precarious citizen groups. [This] The Master of Arts - Cultural Studies major project includes a 96-page illustrated history book entitled "Fields of Power: The Canadian Farmworkers Union," with photographs and text by [the author].

Cet article analyse les effets possibles des dépenses de formation formelle sur la productivité des entreprises canadiennes. Si certains travaux mesurent l’intensité de la formation en entreprise à partir de données longitudinales, les résultats obtenus demeurent partagés. Les différences observées dans les résultats antérieurs peuvent être expliquées notamment par les données disponibles, le type de formation, la mesure de formation et les biais techniques influençant cette relation. Cette recherche s’appuie essentiellement sur la théorie du capital humain.Notre étude s’appuie sur les données de l’Enquête sur les milieux de travail et les employés (EMTE) de Statistique Canada de 1999 à 2005, auprès d’un échantillon de 1621 emplacements où, nous modélisons la relation entre la formation et la productivité à l’aide d’une fonction de production Cobb-Douglas, en intégrant les investissements en capital physique et une variable technologique. Ceci nous permet de montrer que les dépenses de formation contribuent à accroître la performance des établissements, via la productivité, de façon progressive dans le temps. Ces dépenses effectuées au cours d’une année donnée influent significativement sur la productivité jusqu’à trois années plus tard, là où elles atteignent leur maximum d’effet, pour se stabiliser par la suite. Toutefois, ces résultats permettent de soulever un paradoxe : celui de la rentabilité observée des dépenses de formation d’un côté, mais, de l’autre, l’hésitation du monde des affaires à investir en cette matière pour leurs propres employés. Nos résultats suggérent également que les investissements en formation au sein des entreprises devraient être considérés davantage comme un atout, plutôt qu’une simple obligation financière à l’appui d’une stratégie globale de développement des compétences au sein des entreprises.

Repenser la responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise : l'École de Montréal by Corinne Gendron and Bernard Girard is reviewed.

This paper provides a discussion and analysis of the situations in which an employee will be found to stand in the position of a fiduciary vis-a-vis his or her employer, and therefore be under an obligation to act solely in the employ- er's interests, Focusing on the English common law, with comparisons to the Canadian as well as the American and Australian law, the author notes that the employment relationship has not been viewed as inherently fiduciary, even though there is broad acceptance of the principle that an employee owes to the employer duties of trust, confidence and fidelity. However, an employee will be characterized as a fiduciary in two fairly exceptional circumstances: where the employee acts as the employer's agent, or where a fiduciary obligation is implicit in the terms of the employment contract or, alternatively, in the employ- ee's position, powers and responsibilities. With respect to the latter category, some courts have affixed fiduciary responsibility not only where the employee was a de facto director or member of top management, or was otherwise "key" to the enterprise, but also where the employer was said to be "vulnerable" to the employee's misuse of his or her position - an approach which the author criticizes as being too broad in its application to rank-and-file employees. More generally, the author maintains that it is the particular facts underlying an employment relationship, not the existence of the relationship itself that may give rise to fiduciary duties on the part of the employee, and that even high-level or senior employees should be not be considered fiduciaries unless their employ- ment contract or explicitly assigned duties justify such a finding.

The article reviews the book, "Power from the North: Territory, Identity, and the Culture ofHydroelectricityin Quebec," by Caroline Desbiens.

The authors show that the decline in the relative wages of immigrants in Canada is far from homogeneous across the wage distribution. The well-documented decline in the mean wage gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers hides a much larger decline at the low end of the wage distribution, while the gap hardly changed at the top end of the distribution. Using standard OLS regressions and unconditional quantile regressions, the authors show that both the changes in the mean wage gap and in the gap at different quantiles are well explained by standard factors such as experience, education, and country of origin of immigrants. Interestingly, an important source of change in the wages of immigrants relative to the Canadian born is the aging of the baby boom generation, which has resulted in a relative increase in the labor market experience, and thus in the wages, of Canadian-born workers relative to immigrants.

Review of: Initiation à la négociation collective (2nd edition) by Pierre-Luc Bilodeau et Jean Sexton.

This article examines the period leading up to the establishment of the Schefferville iron mine in subarctic Québec, Canada, with a focus on the years 1937–54. The beginning of iron ore mining at Schefferville was a decisive moment in the growth of the modern Québec state, opening the way for the industrial exploitation of the province’s natural resources – mineral and otherwise – in the hinterland. Relying on oral and written sources, the research emphasizes the roles and actions of Innu individuals during this phase of development conducted by exploration companies and the Iron Ore Company of Canada at the heart of their ancestral homeland. If the early mining experience at Schefferville evolved largely to the detriment of the Indigenous communities inhabiting the region, a decentring approach to ethnohistory in the context of industrial colonialism reveals that the Innu also worked to determine their own engagement with the mining world, adjusting and maintaining their practices on the land while participating in the wage labour economy.

"Depicts...[the] labour environment at Louisiana State University and a stark difference in resolve between US and Canadian academic librarians with respect to unionization.." -- Editors' introduction.

The article reviews the book, "The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929-39," by Eric Strikwerda.

This report documents how the growth of unions from the First World War to the mid 1970’s helped create a shared prosperity or “middle class” in Canada, which has been steadily shrinking with the rise of corporate power and the erosion of unions since the late 1970’s. It provides compelling empirical validation of the crucial role unions played in redistributing income from capital to labour (profits to wages) and from the upper to the lower parts of the income hierarchy. The report examines ways union renewal can play a crucial role in restoring middle class security and mass prosperity in Canada. The Rand Formula is a formula dating back to 1946 when a decision was made during an arbitration hearing by Justice Ivan Rand that union dues would be paid by all employees benefitting from the collective agreement, not just signed union members. This means the employer deducts the dues from all employee paychecks and then forwards those funds to the union. The Rand Formula prevents employees from benefitting from the work of the union, while not paying union dues.

"[C]onducts a wide empirical study of Canadian employment data in search of any evidence that higher minimum wages reduce employment or increase unemployment. The authors examine the relationship between minimum wages and employment in all ten Canadian provinces betwenn 1983 and 2012, finding no consistent evidence that minimum wage levels affect emoployment in either direction. Instead, their research concludes that employments levels are overwhelmingly determined by larger macroeconomic factors." --CCPA Monitor, Nov. 2014

The article discusses the 1968 United Federation of Teachers (UFT) strike in New York City public schools in relation to the community control movement in New York City schools. Topics include UFT leader Albert Shanker's fears of anti-Semitism among New York City blacks who supported community control, educational innovations by black and Puerto Rican activists, and the impact of teacher professionalization on parent-teacher relations.

The article examines two internal union strategies for improving equality bargaining. The first, representational democracy (RD), highlights the demographic profile of women’s participation in collective bargaining (CB). The discussion presents the existing, albeit imperfect, data on women’s participation. It supports the continuing importance of the gender profiles of negotiators, but also considers the limits of RD via an exploration of essentialism, critical mass and gender composition. It concludes that RD is a limited proxy for voice, and, given the individualism inherent in its claims, an imperfect vehicle for collective agency. The paper then develops the concept of representational justice (RJ), which speaks to collective mechanisms which ensure that women’s interests are represented; in effect, a move from individual equality champions to vehicles for championing equality. As one means to such an end, the article argues for building formal and constitutionalized links between CB and union equality structures. Highlighting internal union strategies to support equality bargaining complements the widespread focus on the substantive issues on the bargaining agenda and takes the discussion of equality bargaining in new directions. Certainly, this approach underscores the importance of unions linking struggles around diversity, equality and representation inside unions to the CB process and agenda.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Selling Sex: Experience, Advocacy, and Research on Sex Work in Canada," edited by Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love; "Sex Work: Rethinking the Job, Respecting the Workers," by Colette Parent, Chris Bruckert, Patrice Corriveau, Maria Nengeh Mensah, and Louise Toupin; and "From Bleeding Hearts to Critical Thinking: Exploring the Issue of Human Trafficking," edited by Kamala Kempadoo and Darja Davydova.

Introduces 10 papers given at a roundtable, entitled History Under Harper, that was convened by the Canadian history and political science associations. Takes note of the royalist and militarist overtones of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's efforts to shape Canadian national identity, such as the unprecedented anniversary celebration of the War of 1812, as well as the Conservative government's decision to conduct a thorough review of the teaching of history in primary and postsecondary institutions.

Across countries, union membership and voter turnout are highly correlated. In unadjusted terms union members maintain a roughly 0.10 to 0.12 point gap in voting propensity over non-members. We propose a model -- with three causal channels -- that explains this correlation and then empirically tests for the contribution of each channel to the overall union voting gap. The first channel through which union members are more likely to vote is through the so-called "monopoly face" of unionism whereby unions increase wages for members and higher incomes are a significant positive determinant of voting. The second is the "social custom" model of unionism whereby co-worker peer pressure creates incentives for union members to vote alongside fellow members. The third channel is based on the "voice face" of unionism whereby employees who are (or have been) exposed to collective bargaining and union representation at the workplace are also more likely to increase their attachment to democratic engagement in society at large. We test to see how much of the raw "union voting gap" is accounted for by these three competing channels using data from 29 European countries. We find that all three channels are at work, with the voice accounting for half of the overall gap and the other two channels (monopoly face and social custom) each accounting for approximately a quarter of the overall union voting gap.

"[D]iscusses the issues of gender and status at Carleton University in the broader context of the pursuit of equity in Ontario during the 1960s and 1970s." -- Editors' introduction.

This article reviews the book, "Wrestling with Democracy: Voting Systems as Politics in the Twentieth-Century West," by Dennis Pilon.

The article reviews the book, "Progressive Education: Revisioning and Reframing Ontario's Public Schools, 1919-1942," by Theodore Michael Christou.