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The Ontario labour movement is in deep crisis, and has been staggering since the end of the 1990s. Given the labour movement’s historic role in leading and supporting progressive change, its current disorientation should be a matter of alarm to its members of course, but also to anyone concerned with countering the insatiable greed and social destructiveness of capitalism. --Introduction

On February 6, 2018, the Minister of Labour appointed us as a Labour Relations Code Review Panel with a broad mandate to review the B.C. Labour Relations Code, RSBC 1996, c 244 (the “Code”) and to provide recommendations for any amendments or updates to the Code. The terms of reference directed us to consult with the community, consider labour law developments in other Canadian jurisdictions and to: "….assess each issue canvassed from the perspective of how to “ensure workplaces support a growing, sustainable economy with fair laws for workers and business” and promote certainty as well as harmonious and stable labour/management relations. The conceptual and structural framework for the Code was established 45 years ago and there have been significant changes in the B.C. workforce, workplaces and economy in theintervening decades. --Introduction

Using International Social Survey Program data, we explore the relationship between economic context and attitudes with respect to the distribution of incomes in 20 modern societies, including Canada. Our findings demonstrate that economic inequality has an enduring influence on attitudes. Consistent with the economic self-interest thesis, preferences for equality are strongest among those in working-class occu- pations. Moreover, independent of one’s own social class, one’s father’s social class has a similar enduring impact on attitudes later in life. These relationships are relatively similar across the 20 societies we explore. Still, significant differences in attitudes can be explained by national economic context. We find a strong positive relationship between national-level inequality and opinions on how much inequality there ought to be in the income distribution. In contrast to previous research, however, our findings suggest that national-level economic prosperity and equality of opportunity have little influence on public opinion.

The theory and practice of community unionism has been central to discussions of alt-labor, union renewal, and revitalization, particularly in relation to union praxis at the urban or local scale. This comparative case study explores two labor-community campaigns to defend public child care services in the context of neoliberal austerity in urban/suburban space. While labor-community coalitions are a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for success, in urban/suburban contexts in which community allies are weak and municipal administrations hostile, public-sector unions must continue to play a leading role in campaigns despite the risk of being cast as defenders of sectional interests rather than of the public good. In such contexts, union involvement in community organizing is a necessary precursor to successful labor-community campaigns.

We use simulation methods and a detailed tax calculator to analyze the likely effects of two recent pro- posals aimed at reforming the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP): the federal proposal, eventually implemented throughout Canada, and the Quebec government’s December 2016 proposal. Accounting for education- adjusted life expectancy, earnings variability over the course of a career, and their interactions with the tax code and retirement income system, we find that internal rates of return (IRRs) for new QPP contribu- tions are similar under both reforms for individuals with lifetime average annual earnings of more than $40,000. Both reforms yield substantial IRRs for low-income individuals. Although the Quebec proposal offers higher IRRs for individuals earning less than $40,000, the federal proposal yields greater present value benefits for these same individuals. We show that if new QPP benefits were exempted from the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) clawback, and provided that the working income tax benefit and GIS were not enhanced, the two reforms would yield similar IRRs for individuals with average earnings of more than $15,000. The QPP reform would thus better focus on the middle-income earners originally targeted by reform advocates.

We investigate the post-layoff configuration of income sources and pathways of prime-age and older laid- off workers exhibiting a high degree of prior attachment. Using a unique Canadian administrative database that links the event of the involuntary layoff with detailed data on income receipt, we track all of their sources of income over an interval spanning five years after layoff. We conduct a multivariate statistical analysis of the incidence of relying on income from several alternative sources, specifically early retirement (both public and private), reemployment, self-employment, or reliance on social insurance benefits (other than pensions). The two most common states for laid-off workers who have not yet reached normal retirement age are early retirement and continued labour market activity. Our findings indicate that the older workers are at the point of layoff, the greater the likelihood is that they will rely on pension income as their primary income source. This incidence of reliance on pension income also increases with the number of years elapsed since the point of layoff.

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.

We address health capacity to work among older Canadian workers with a specific focus on differences by gender and region. We find that in 2012 men would have needed to work more than five additional years between ages 55 and 69 to keep pace with how much men worked in 1976, holding health capacity constant. For working women, the comparable result is only two years more work. Most of these gaps arose before the mid-1990s; since then, employment advances have offset mortality improvements. Regionally, more than half the Ontario–Atlantic employment difference among older men is rooted in health differences.

Analysis of amended data from a large-scale Canadian employment audit study (Oreopoulos 2011) shows substantial organization size differences in discrimination against skilled applicants with Asian (Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani) names in the decision to call for an interview. In organizations with more than 500 employees, Asian-named applicants are 20 percent less likely to receive a callback; in smaller organizations, the disadvantage is nearly 40 percent. Large organizations may discriminate less frequently because of more resources in recruitment and training, more human resources development, and greater experience with diversity. Anonymized résumé review may allow organizations to test hiring procedures for discrimination fairly inexpensively.

This article examines workers’ experiences with a union characterized by a social unionist framing and repertoire in the political realm and bureaucratic servicing of problems in the workplace realm. It analyzes interviews with members and officials about union strategies within privatized homecare predominately provided by immigrant women in Toronto. Workers report both consensual and tense relations with clients prompting them to praise their union’s political strategies yet criticize its limited workplace support. Findings indicate the importance of framing and repertoire that connect quality work with quality care, yet indicate a complex labor process that requires more conceptual and strategic attention.

English/French abstracts of articles in the Fall 2018 issue.

The Workers’ Action Centre (WAC) is a worker-based organization. We are committed to improving the lives and working conditions of people in low-wage and unstable employment. Thousands of working families are struggling to make ends meet, so we take action and organize for decent work. We believe that the leaders in the fight for decent work should be the workers directly affected by poor working conditions. Workers have firsthand experience of problems at work, and have the best insight into what will bring fairness and dignity to Ontario’s workplaces. Our members are workers in precarious jobs. We are recent immigrants, workers of colour, women, men, and youth. Most of us don’t belong to unions because we work in small workplaces, are temporary workers, on contract, independent contractors or unemployed. This month we may be juggling 2 or 3 jobs, but next month we might not have any work or income. When we are able to find full-time work, there is still little protection against unfair working conditions or employers who don’t pay us what we should be paid. --Website

Teaching staff in Ontario schools do not reflect the increasing diversity of the students who occupy Ontario classrooms today. School boards across Ontario have come under considerable scrutiny regarding the lack of diverse teacher representation that adequately reflects Ontario’s demographic composition (Childs et al., 2010; Ryan, et al., 2009; Turner, 2015). This thesis addresses the Ontario teacher diversity gap (James Turner, 2017; Turner 2015; Turner, 2014; Ryan, et al., 2009) in relation to provincial equity and inclusive educational policies, which have been created to address the dominance of white teachers in publicly-funded education in Ontario. However, findings from the research indicate that these policies have not had the desired results, and in some ways have contributed to perpetuating the status quo, and the ongoing overrepresentation of white teachers in schools. The thesis furthermore addressed the notion of bias-free hiring (Fine Handlesman, 2012; Hassouneh, 2013) practices through narratives of Ontario teachers themselves. The predominant assumption of bias-free hiring is that one can divorce themselves from their unconscious biases and preconceptions of groups who are dissimilar to them in order to recruit the so-called “most qualified applicant”. The narrative of the “most qualified applicant” is a term invoked when racialized people seek access to employment opportunities. School administrators have great influence on who is hired; therefore it is important for administrators to interrogate their own social locations and positions of power, and unconscious bias in terms of how they recruit teachers. Findings from the research indicate that teachers from racialized groups have different experiences when seeking employment as teachers in publicly-funded school boards in Ontario. In response to this the EHT Equity Hiring Toolkit for Ontario School Administrators has been developed to support school administrators to recruit more diverse teachers. The EHT provides a framework for school administrators to engage in antiracist praxis and action, by examining their social location, and ways that their positionality impacts the hiring decisions they make. School administrators can use the creation of the Toolkit based on the findings of the data that emerged from the research as a Creative Professional Activity (CPA). I consider this to be my contribution to the field of social justice education and leadership.

The article reviews the book, "Firms as Political Entities -- Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism," by Isabelle Ferreras.

Dans notre monde globalisé, l’aire de jeux des acteurs n’est plus circonscrite à la structure, mais elle est, désormais, élargie au territoire. Cet effacement des frontières organisationnelles tend à favoriser le développement d’une logique partenariale, y compris en matière de gestion des ressources humaines (GRH) au regard des bouleversements de l’environnement socio-économique. C’est dans ce contexte actuel qu’une nouvelle forme émergente de GRH apparaît, se situant dans une démarche de RSE (responsabilité sociétale des entreprises) étendue qui ne se restreint plus uniquement à certains aspects sociaux. L’objectif de cet article est d’étudier une approche alternative de la GRH qui se veut plus sociétale. Nous nous attachons à répondre à la problématique suivante : comment instaurer une GRH sociétale en PME ? Utilisant l’approche contextualiste de Pichault et Nizet (2013), nous soulignons l’importance pour le dirigeant de mobiliser des acteurs tant internes qu’externes pour atteindre cet objectif. À partir du cas d’une PME française du secteur de l’économie solidaire, nous explorons, grâce à des récits de vie, des entretiens semi-directifs, des observations participantes et non participantes, ainsi que des analyses documentaires, le processus de construction de cette nouvelle forme de GRH. Nos résultats mettent en lumière trois étapes-clés : 1- l’émergence de cette GRH autour de la création d’un pacte social; 2- son évolution source d’adhésion et de frustration; et, enfin, 3-la diffusion de cette GRH alternative auprès des partenaires externes.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau – radical progressive or unavowed socialist? Christo Aivalis argues that although Trudeau found key influences and friendships on the left, he was in fact a consistently classic liberal, driven by individualist, capitalist principles. Trudeau’s legacy is still divisive. Most scholars portray Trudeau’s ties to unions and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation as either evidence of communist affinities or as being at the root of his reputation as the champion of a progressive, modern Canada. The Constant Liberal traces the charismatic politician’s relationship with left and labour movements throughout his career. Trudeau worked with leftists in the 1950s to oppose right-wing Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis but against them as prime minister when workers and progressives were seen as obstacles to higher corporate profit margins. While numerous biographies have noted the impact of Trudeau’s engagement with the left on his intellectual and political development, this comprehensive analysis is the first to showcase the interplay between liberalism and democratic socialism that defined his world view – and shaped his effective use of power.The Constant Liberal suggests that Trudeau’s leftist activity was not so much a call for social democracy as a warning to fellow liberals that lack of reform could undermine liberal-capitalist social relations. Historians, political scientists, and political historians are the primary audience for this book, but it will also find readers among scholars of political economy, economics, industrial relations, and Canadian studies. It will appeal broadly to those interested in the life and thinking of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Canadian social democratic left, and liberalism/neo-liberalism. --Publisher's description

This study examines the emergence of the New Left organization, The New Tendency, in Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s. The New Tendency, which developed in a number of Ontario cities, represents one articulation of the Canadian New Left's turn towards working-class organizing in the early 1970s after the student movement's dissolution in the late 1960s. Influenced by dissident Marxist theorists associated with the Johnson-Forest Tendency and Italian workerism, The New Tendency sought to create alternative forms of working-class organizing that existed outside of, and often in direct opposition to, both the mainstream labour movement and Old Left organizations such as the Communist Party and the New Democratic Party. After examining the roots of the organization and the important legacies of class struggle in Windsor, the thesis explores how The New Tendency contributed to working-class self activity on the shop-floor of Windsor's auto factories and in the community more broadly. However, this New Left mobilization was also hampered by inner-group sectarianism and a rapidly changing economic context. Ultimately, the challenges that coincided with The New Tendency's emergence in the 1970s led to its dissolution. While short-lived, the history of the Windsor branch of The New Tendency helps provide valuable insight into the trajectory of the Canadian New Left and working-class struggle in the 1970s, highlighting experiences that have too often been overlooked in previous scholarship. Furthermore, this study illustrates the transnational development of New Left ideas and organizations by examining The New Tendency's close connections to comparable groups active in manufacturing cities in Europe and the United States; such international relationships and exchanges were vital to the evolution of autonomist Marxism around the world. Finally, the Windsor New Tendency's history is an important case study of the New Left's attempts to reckon with a transitional moment for global capitalism, as the group's experiences coincided with the Fordist accord's death throes and the beginning of neoliberalism's ascendancy.

This article explores the experiences of construction-industry workers commuting to major project sites with a view to broadening understandings of the meaning and impact of the development of extractive industries in Newfoundland and Labrador since the 1990s. Theoretically, the article draws upon and develops the concept of “mobilities regimes,” a formulation that locates relations of power and inequality in the co-constitution of mobility and institutional structures. The empirical findings are based on research conducted between December 2014 and June 2016 as part of the On the Move Partnership, a research initiative examining employment-related geographical mobility (e-rgm) in a variety of sectors and provinces across Canada. The focus is on mobility associated with projects that fall under the provincial Special Project Order (spo) legislation. A total of 60 interviews to date have been conducted with workers as well as with key informants, including government officials, employers, and labour organizations. The central argument is that a mobilities regime is discernible not only in policies and project documents produced by governments, employers, and labour organizations, but also in the experiences of workers. These gendered experiences reveal that Newfoundland and Labrador’s spo projects enable people who may otherwise commute interprovincially to work close to home, but this work has contradictory meanings for the men and women involved due to the mobility it entails. By making visible the experiences of workers in the mobilities regimes of much-celebrated projects, the article encourages reflection on the effects on workers and their families of the underlying capitalist imperatives driving Newfoundland and Labrador’s contemporary economic transition.

The article reviews the book, "Syndicalisme et santé au travail," edited by Lucie Goussard et Guillaume Tiffon.

Employment and working conditions having an impact on health and safety are some of the most important concerns of workers. Amongst the various means by which trade unions contribute to prevention, the contribution of Worker Safety Representatives (WSR) is well-established and the most studied, including their participation in joint occupational health and safety committees (JOHSC). However, there are surprisingly few studies examining the place of OHS as an issue of workers’ collective action. Conducted with a large Quebec Central Labour Body, this study aims to understand why and how local-level unions concentrate upon these issues, the repertoire of means that they employ and the context that supports or hindus such actions. The conceptual framework is based on previous realistic evaluations of OHS preventive interventions and includes Levesque and Murray’s (2010) trade union power resources and strategic capabilities. In phase I, eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted with union staff members and elected representatives from different sectors, covering a wide array of activities such as unionization, training, negotiation, OHS prevention and compensation. Results also refer to five case studies (phase 2) of local-level trade unions identified by phase 1 respondents as particularly active in relation to prevention. The process by which working conditions having a negative impact on OHS are framed (or not) as trade union issues is examined. Levers and barriers are also identified. Factors affecting the presence of resources for trade union autonomous action aimed at prevention (like the integration of WSR to the union core structure, release time for prevention, etc.) are highlighted. A widely diverse repertoire of workplace-level trade union means of action for OHS is also highlighted by the interviews and case studies, not limited just to those provided by the Quebec OHS regime. It includes the recourse to labour relations mechanisms (e.g. negotiation and strike) and is based on an autonomous agenda, including mobilization. The potential of OHS issues for union revitalization is discussed, as well as the barriers that must be overcome.