Search

English/French abstracts of articles in the Fall 2013 issue.

The Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies (CAWLS) is an academic association for scholars interested in work, workers, and labour. --Website

Mobility for work is not new, but it is changing. Across the world a wide range of people are mobile for work – women and men, citizens and temporary foreign workers, new workers and those near retirement. From hours-long daily commutes, to travel that takes workers away from home for days, weeks, months and even years; from mobility within work (truck driving, shipping and others) to mobility to get to and from work; from cars and buses, to trains, ships and planes; from highly-paid top executive jobs, to minimum-wage service jobs; from natural resource dependent industry to natural wonder dependent tourism – the types of mobility are many and changing. The On the Move Partnership is a multi-year national scale research program with international links, investigating employment-related geographical mobility and its consequences for workers, families, employers, communities, and Canadian municipal, provincial and federal governments. --Website description

La vie professionnelle : âge, expérience et santé à l’épreuve des conditions de travail, edited by Anne-Françoise Molinié, Corinne Gaudart and Valérie Pueyo, is reviewed.

The article reviews and comments on the books "They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle Over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era California," by Don Mitchell, "Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico," by Deborah Cohen, and "Pineros: Latino Labour and the Changing Face of Forestry in the Pacific Northwest," by Brinda Sarathy.

Ce texte propose une relecture du débat sur l’action syndicale à l’international entre la construction de coalitions globales et le développement de réseaux locaux. Il se base sur le récit des représentants syndicaux du secteur minier au Ghana et au Mexique. Les stratégies syndicales sont saisies sous les trois dimensions analytiques que sont les espaces de l’action syndicale à l’international, les modes d’interaction et le cadre de référence. L’objectif de l’article vise à comprendre comment les syndicats nationaux naviguent entre le local et le global, et les facteurs qui les poussent et les attirent vers les espaces transnationaux.Alors que les deux syndicats sont engagés dans un processus de renouvellement de leur action, leur stratégie transnationale diffère : les Ghanéens sont engagés dans le développement de nouvelles aptitudes et de nouveaux savoir-faire et les Mexicains dans la construction des coalitions. Ces constats suggèrent que l’action syndicale à l’international est fonction des contingences nationales. Primo, le syndicat ghanéen intervient surtout au niveau continental africain et privilégie le développement des compétences locales et nationales. De son côté, le syndicat mexicain est présent aussi bien au niveau continental nord-américain que transnational, notamment dans des campagnes de solidarité. Secundo, les Ghanéens entretiennent de faibles liens avec les autres syndicats. De l’autre, les Mexicains sont engagés dans un large répertoire d’action avec les syndicats nord-américains et les fédérations internationales. Tertio, les Ghanéens conçoivent leurs intérêts sur la base d’une forte identité clanique et définissent leur engagement international en termes de ressources. Pour leur part, les Mexicains bâtissent des coalitions transnationales sur la base d’une identité de classe.Allant au-delà de la dichotomie entre le local et le global, les stratégies syndicales à l’international sont socialement construites et localement enracinées. Elles s’expliquent par la dynamique de l’économie politique dans laquelle se trouvent insérés ces syndicats et les structures d’opportunité transnationale à leur portée.

Labour relations statutes across Canada generally use one of three stand- ing models for regulating essential service strikes - the "unfettered strike," "designation" and "no-strike" models. An ad hoc variant of the unfettered strike and designation models - what the author calls the "instant back-to-work" model - has recently been used several times by the federal government to circumvent the designation model in the Canada Labour Code. After reviewing these models, the author moves to the question of whatforms of strike regulation might be held to infringe freedom of association in section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and therefore to need justification under section 1 as a reasonable limit on that freedom. Pierre Verge, like Brian Langille, has argued that a constitutional right to strike should simply require governments to respect the common law freedom of employees to withdraw their services without incurring criminal or tort liability, in the absence of a section 1 justifi- cation for any infringement of that freedom. This approach, the author suggests, would require excessive recourse to section 1, and would be of value mainly to strategically placed employees because it would offer no protection against employer reprisals for strike action. In his view, a right to strike should instead be held to flow from the Charter-based right to collective bargaining adopted in B.C. Health and Fraser. This would leave legislatures with significant discretion to regulate industrial conflict, but would require that employees who are not allowed to strike must have access to a truly independent means of resolving col- lective bargaining disputes. To that end, the Supreme Court of Canada should reinstate the trial judgment in the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour case, which held (1) that the right to collective bargaining includes a limited right to strike; and (2) that this right was unjustifiably breached by a statute which gave the provincial government the unilateral right to designate those public sector employees who could not strike, and also denied those employees access to an alternative independent dispute resolution process.

More and more internationally trained professionals (ITP) coming to Canada face challenges in getting credentials recognized by regulatory bodies and employers (Forum of Labour Market Ministers 2009; Ontario Office of the Fairness Commissioner 2011b). This leads to a high level of brain waste that recently has been estimated to cost Canada up to $3.4 billion per year (Evans, CGA Magazine 45(4): 26, 2011). This paper looks at some of the challenges regarding prior learning assessments and portfolio-building processes toward credential evaluation, and explains some of the reasons why the current system and tools are not meeting the needs of ITPs. In particular, postsecondary institutions and regulatory bodies’ processes toward preparing individuals for evaluation are compared, leading to a number of conclusions on commonality and future directions. The authors conclude with the proposal of a new generic online and modular professional profile model to better prepare ITPs for credential assessment. Such a model would be particularly useful for credentialing bodies with fewer resources available. It would also provide a common set of information to front-line agencies that support ITPs.

The author argues that the current test for age discrimination in Canada, which is based on the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R. v. Kapp and which requires that discrimination be motivated by or perpetuate stereotyping or prejudice, has led adjudicators to fail to come to grips with wrongful ageism in the workplace. The fact that everyone ages, and that distinctions based on age may in the past have benefitted the same people who are now harmed by those distinctions, has in the author's view been given too much weight, thereby making discrimination against senior workers too easy to justify. She proposes that the legal test for age discrimination should focus on wrongs done in the present, and should not take account of any past or future benefits which may be attributed to a distinction drawn on the basis of age. On the basis of what the author calls the Dignified Lives Approach, she argues that an age-based distinc- tion should be held to be discriminatory if it violates any of these five principles: people of all ages must be assessed on their merits, must be treated as equals, must have enough means to live lives of dignity, must be socially included, and must retain their autonomy. Using as examples four recent cases of alleged age-based discrimination in the employment context decided by Canadian courts and administrative tribunals, the author demonstrates how the Dignified Lives Approach would in her view be more sensitive to different types of age dis- crimination and would bring more just outcomes.

The article reviews the book, "Age, Gender, and Work: Small Information Technology Firms in the New Economy," edited by Julie Anne McMullin.

Considerable evidence points to the diminished significance of ‘labour’ as an industrial and political movement, as a sociological descriptor, and as a distinct field of public policy. This prompts the question: what should labour law be for ‘after labour’? The question is especially timely in the context of what Daniel Rogers has called ‘the intellectual economy of catastrophe’. This Chapter explores three possible responses: that labour law should be viewed as a sub-field of constitutional and human rights law; that it should integrate workers into the structures of capitalism to ensure that they contribute to and benefit from its successes; and that it should maintain its historic function of mobilizing workers to defend their rights and interests, but should also encourage cooperation between workers’ organizations and other social movements. -- From editors' introduction

The article reviews the book, "Partir pour la famille. Fécondité, grossesse et accouchement au Québec, 1900-1950," by Suzanne Marchand.

Portrays nonprofit social services as a largely female, increasingly diverse workforce with a strong care ethic. Concludes that values of social justice and social unionism are integral both to worker engagement and resistance of state austerity and managerialism.

The "accommodation gap" refers to the shortfall between those accom- modations which persons with disabilities require in order to work, and those workplace accommodations which they actually receive. This paper argues that the accommodation gap raises important issues for policy-makers in Canada, given the growing participation of older workers in the labour market and the fact that the incidence of disability increases with age. Such issues include the loss of productivity, higher poverty rates, increased cost of social programs, and failure to achieve the goals of human rights legislation. Using the results of an extensive analysis of data obtained from Statistics Canada's 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, the authors inquire into three questions: (1) Is there a workplace accommodation gap in Canada, and if there is, how big is it and whom does it affect? (2) Is it associated with age or aging, and there- fore likely to be aggravated by the aging of the Canadian population? (3) Are its causes likely to elude complaint-driven enforcement of human rights law because they are systemic? In answering these questions, the studyfinds that a large number of Canadians (about 35%) do not receive accommodations they need to work productively, or at all. Furthermore, the results show that the older the worker and the more severe his or her disability, the greater the accommo- dation gap. The authors suggest that thisfinding supports the view that employ- ers' decisions on whether to provide accommodation are influenced by economic considerations, stereotypes about the link between age and disability, the fact that certain types of accommodation may conflict with workplace culture, and other factors. Finally, the paper contends that the enforcement mechanism cur- rently in place is probably inadequate to deal with the accommodation gap, in view of the systemic nature of many of its causes. The authors set out a number of alternative options which may be more effective in closing the accommodation gap, and propose that those options be considered as part of a comprehensive policy review.

Dans un contexte où la qualité de vie au travail, le bien-être et la santé psychologique des employés sont actuellement au coeur des préoccupations des gestionnaires et des milieux de travail, les enjeux de santé organisationnelle deviennent incontournables. Or, malgré l’intérêt grandissant des chercheurs et des praticiens, la notion de santé organisationnelle a été l’objet de diverses conceptualisations et représente encore aujourd’hui un objet d’étude en pleine évolution. Dans cet ordre d’idées, cet article propose de faire une synthèse des approches contemporaines de la santé organisationnelle et d’investiguer comment cette thématique est abordée par les chercheurs québécois. Pour ce faire, une recension des écrits a d’abord été effectuée afin d’établir un portrait des connaissances acquises à ce jour. Ensuite, une enquête consultative a été réalisée auprès d’experts scientifiques québécois. À la fois les écrits et les experts consultés rapportent que la santé organisationnelle est un concept qui prend plusieurs sens, qui nécessite l’adoption d’une perspective plus globale et qui s’élargit à d’autres sphères que le travail. Or, contrairement à la documentation, les experts abordent surtout les aspects de la santé psychologique et moins la santé physique, et ils considèrent essentiellement les facteurs organisationnels comme des préoccupations de recherche future dans le domaine. Les résultats obtenus permettent de dresser un état des connaissances sur le concept de santé organisationnelle et son évolution, tout en identifiant les tendances émergentes susceptibles d’influencer les orientations scientifiques futures pour le regroupement stratégique en santé psychologique au travail du Réseau de recherche en santé et sécurité du travail du Québec. // More than thirty years after the adoption of the Quebec Act respecting occupational health and safety (AROHS), the regulations respecting the prevention programme (PP), the health programme specific to the establishment, joint OHS committees (JOHSC) and workers' safety representatives (WSR) have not yet been implemented in all occupational sectors, as was the original intention. The AROHS contains provisions respecting JOHSC's and WSR's on construction sites that are still not in force. In the vast majority of Canadian jurisdictions, measures such as the PP, the JOHSC and the WSR (in small workplaces) are mandatory in all economic sectors. The fact that these provisions at the heart of the AROHS do not cover all economic activity sectors cannot be justified based on scientific knowledge and on their application in other jurisdictions. Their adoption could, in the future, serve as the foundation for other measures that are required to respond to the changes in employment relations and the nature of work.

Utilizing a convenience sample of nearly 2000 respondents drawn from administrative data, this study finds 43.7 percent of adolescents (aged 12-14) and 61.5 percent of young persons (aged 15-17) in the Canadian province of Alberta reported employment in 2011/12. Of those employed, 49.7 percent of adolescents and 59.0 percent of young persons reported at least one work-related injury in the previous year. This study also identifies widespread non-reporting of workplace injuries and seemingly ineffective hazard identification and safety training. These results add to the growing evidence that the regulation of teenage employment in Alberta fails to adequately protect these workers from injury.

The article reviews the book, "Still Dying for a Living: Corporate Criminal Liability After the Westray Mine Disaster," by Steven Bittle.

The article reviews the book, "American Labor, Congress, and the Welfare State, 1935-2010," by Tracy Roof.