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This dissertation explores the claim that, in advanced capitalist countries like Canada, a powerful knowledge class is assuming increasing dominance within the social relations of production. Attached to such theories are claims of trends toward post-bureaucratic organizations, rising job complexity and autonomy, and increased power within operational and strategic decision-making processes. In my study I focus on Canadian “specialist” employees (professionals and semi-professionals) and managers. I present aggregated and disaggregated data from two Canadian surveys conducted in 1983 and 2004 and complement this with original interviews with information technology (IT) workers and engineers. I find a seeming paradox within the labour process of specialists and managers, with task-level autonomy declining even as job complexity and involvement in organizational decisions are rising. I provide evidence that imperatives for profit/cost effectiveness are leading to efforts to make specialist and managerial labour and knowledge more transparent, integrated, and manageable, but this is not the same as degradation or proletarianization. In contrast to my expectation, I find boundaries in the division of labour are durable despite this “socialization” of many labour processes. I argue that a specialist-and-managerial class (SMC) exists in Canada, and will continue to exist, though it is subordinate to and exploited by the capitalist elite even as it excludes and exploits the working class through occupational closure and credential barriers. The SMC is thus contradictory, internally heterogeneous and fraying at its borders, but simultaneously resilient. The resiliency comes via possession of specific strategic knowledge and consequent ability to secure rents and/or control specific organization assets via delegated authority. Resiliency is also structural, with management in many organizations retaining an interest in separating planning and design (“conception”), on the one hand, from process and completion (“execution”), on the other, in order to maximize efficiency and productivity through more centralized control.

This thesis challenges the historiography that asserts the waterfront strike in Vancouver in 1935 was a failed militant surge by a new radical leadership in an otherwise twenty-year period of dormancy among the city's longshoremen. Using union documents, employer records, and interviews with workers, the thesis presents the entire company era, between 1923 and 1944, as a period of developing solidarity and resistance. In this context the 1935 strike and the union's leadership were a product of, not a radical departure from that continuity. The thesis shows that despite two lost strikes in 1923 and again in 1935, the administrative structures the employers established produced a resilient culture of solidarity that was in place before Partiament acted in 1944 to provide longshorement with the legal framework for union representation.

In February 2011, a wave of creative direct action swept across postal depots in the city of Edmonton which saw rank-and-file workers organizing outside of the channels of formal-legal unionism. Fighting against management’s imposition of compulsory overtime as a staffing measure, Letter Carriers and other “outside” postal workers relied on solidarity and resistance at the point of production in a successful campaign to put an end to this practice. The relevance of this particular struggle to the Canadian labour movement is twofold. First, the intensified workloads of Edmonton postal workers reflect a wider shift in the nature of employment relationships away from the existence of employer support as part of the rise of neoliberal capitalism. Second, the choice of workers to organize at a distance from the historically militant Canadian Union of Postal Workers reveals both the predicament facing labour of a highly restrictive formal labour relations system as well as an alternative path of resistance. For Edmonton postal workers, this path was forged in large part as a result of the influence of IWW dual-carder organizers and, more specifically, their introduction of a mode of union praxis known as solidarity unionism.

In this thesis I address the question of sympathetic action - action by one group of workers designed to aid another group of workers in their struggle with an employer, manifested most obviously through refusals by workers to cross a picket line - through the lens of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As the law currently stands in Canada, undertaking sympathetic action collectively is invariably illegal as it is considered an illegal "strike" under Canadian labour legislation. Further, workers who undertake sympathetic action - whether collectively or individually - can be subject to discipline or discharge by their employer. I argue that workers who undertake sympathetic action can have numerous motivations, ranging from economic self-interest to deeply-held political or moral beliefs (the latter manifested through the concept of "solidarity"), and that when those motivations include expressive or conscientious interests, sympathetic action should be entitled to protection by the fundamental freedoms of conscience, expression, and association found in section 2 of the Charter. I further argue that a each of these freedoms represents a different aspect of the inherent dignity and worth of an individual, and that a right to sympathetic action promotes both those freedoms and Charter values. Finally, I argue that a constitutional right to sympathetic action is a free-standing right that can exist even in the absence of a constitutional right to strike. This thesis reviews the current and historical state of Canadian law (in both the statutory labour relations regimes and in common law) regarding sympathetic action, the potential application of the Charter freedoms of conscience, expression, and association to sympathetic action, and finally options for reform that reduce or eliminate restrictions on sympathetic action and therefore make our labour relations system more in keeping with Charter values.

Policymakers, politicians, and media outlets have declared an obesity epidemic. In doing so, they have named a variety of villains, including fast food. Despite the framing of fast food as being a leading contributor to weight gain and obesity, we have yet to understand the impact that fast food has on those who work with it every day. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the food choices, BMIs, and self perceived weights of the food service worker population. Using Pierre Bourdieu‘s concepts of habitus and field, I investigate the role of the workplace and external cultural influences, such as the family, in navigating an obseogenic workplace environment that is centered on selling highly caloric food to the Canadian public in a quick and cost effective manner. The first stage of this research addresses the question: Are food service workers more likely to be overweight or obese and perceive themselves as being overweight compared to the general population? In order to do this, I analyzed secondary survey data from the Canadian Community Health Survey cycle 5.1 (2009-2010). I used logistic regression techniques to construct models that analyze the likelihood of having high BMIs and high self perceived weights in both the food service worker and general Canadian populations. In addition to this, I sought to understand the food choices that contribute to weight gain in fast food workers. To do this, I conducted forty semi-structured qualitative interviews with workers from a variety of fast food chains. The results of my research disprove my original hypothesis that food service workers are more likely to be overweight or obese because of their frequent exposure to fast food. Instead, I found that they are less likely to be overweight or obese than the general Canadian population. Additionally, they are also less likely to perceive themselves as being overweight or obese. Through the qualitative interviews, I found that these individuals participate in a process of regulation where they monitor their food intake at work. Additionally, I found that their consumption patterns stemmed from habitus generated through cultural exposures in other areas of their lives. Pierre Bourdieu (1984) argues that we develop habitus through meaningful cultural exposure. We use our habitus, or engrained dispositions, to navigate hierarchical spaces or fields. Through this research, I found that workers viewed their jobs as being temporary and their cultural consumption patterns did not seem to change from their exposures to their workplaces. The majority were part time students, working in this industry to pay for living expenses and tuition. For the most part, they were raised in middle class homes where their mothers prepared food for their families from scratch on a daily basis. Fast food was viewed as a special treat and not an item to consume on a regular basis. I conclude that the meaningful exposures we have to food and cultural norms throughout life are more important in determining our food choices than our exposure to fast food restaurants.

The primary question for investigation throughout this research is how the environmental knowledges of settler-colonists and their descendants have been formed through processes of work and dwelling in place. This dissertation results from over a year of fieldwork in an aging community where retired loggers, semi-retired fishermen, and retired exurban migrants are actively renegotiating the meanings of local places and natures as the local economy shifts from a base in logging and fishing to one in recreational and retirement real estate development. Through archival research, life history interviews and participant-observation with loggers, fishermen, exurban retirees and other long-term residents I explored the complications and contradictions inherent in learning to value nature through processes of transforming and intervening in ecological processes for economic ends. Writing against hard social constructivism I examine the ways in which the life cycles of fish and fish populations, the contingencies of weather, topography and currents, and, the physical form of the land are active elements in the formation of labour and settlement patterns in coastal British Columbia. As a contribution to the underdeveloped field of first world political ecology this work maps environmental knowledges and values developed in tense complicity with regimes of natural resource management and accumulation by dispossession. Central to this process is how people become agents of the commodification of nature and place in their everyday lives and work, and, how private property has become naturalized as a prerequisite to "protecting" self, nature, and community from precarity in the era of late capitalism. This dissertation tracks the various ways, both historically and in the present, that settlers and their descendants on the BC Coast have attempted to simultaneously make a living and make a home of an occupied place-the imperialist nostalgia and (neo)liberal white guilt endemic to the process.

Focusing on a case study of a union organizing effort at the La Platosa mine in northern Mexico from 2009-2012, this paper studies the challenges facing labour activism at Canadian mining companies in Mexico within the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The positions of the Mexican and the Canadian governments in relation to contemporary workers’ struggles in Mexico’s mining sector are considered, particularly the latter’s adoption of a ‘corporate social responsibility’ approach to addressing the activities of Canadian extractive firms abroad. By studying the outcome of the request for mediation filed by La Platosa miners with the Canadian government’s Extractive Sector CSR office in 2011 and evaluating the evolution of this government’s policy approach to extractive companies abroad since 2009, we find that CSR as practiced by the Canadian government has been ineffective at mitigating abusive practices by Canadian mining companies in Mexico and that an alternate outcome is not to be expected under existing policy structures. The relative strengths and weaknesses exhibited during labour organizing at the La Platosa mine are evaluated to find both locally specific and more broadly applicable strategies which could be applied to union renewal, both by workers employed under NAFTA’s transnational sector, and by the general labour movement.

At the close of the American Revolution thousands of American Loyalists were forced into exile and made their way to British colonies beyond the United States. Most of the Loyalists landed in British North America, particularly the Maritimes. Along with the trauma and losses of the conflict, the Loyalists brought with them a way of doing things, an intense political history, and ideas concerning the imperial structure that framed their everyday lives. This dissertation is a study of the Loyalists. Specifically, it explores a prominent Loyalist and his journey from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia along with family members, servants, and labourers, including enslaved persons. A central objective of the dissertation is to illuminate the story of the enslaved and magnify their place in Nova Scotia’s eighteenth century colonial history narrative. The objective is addressed by adapting a holistic perspective that considers a single geography – the plantation. The holistic perspective, developed through an interdisciplinary methodology, explores the people, places and culture that formed the Loyalist plantation and were informed by it. The picture that emerges is one that puts into place the structure and organization of a Loyalist plantation in the late eighteenth century. This dissertation argues that an interdisciplinary approach is fundamental when exploring the subject of the plantation and its inhabitants in Nova Scotia. Through study of the slaveholder and the comparison of his plantation spaces, the dissertation argues for Loyalist continuity. Such continuity confirmed a slaveholding culture during the mass migration. Finally, this dissertation argues that the Loyalist period can be described as Nova Scotia’s Age of Slavery. The Loyalist migration represents an unprecedented arrival of enslaved persons to the province. Furthermore, the Loyalist migration represents the unprecedented arrival of a political and ideological framework that carried within it perceptions of race and seeds of discrimination that took root.

There has been a significant expansion in Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) over the past ten years. The Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training (PPORLLFT), a sub program of the TFWP, has been leading this expansion. Drawing upon testimony given to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, this thesis examines the development and expansion of the program, since its inception in 2002, and shows that it is connected to the ongoing process of neoliberalisation in Canada. One significant example of this connection is the program's support for increases in two-step immigration streams that involve employer sponsorship for successful transition to permanent residency; this increase represents a privatisation of citizenship decisions. More than this, the neoliberal aspects of the PPORLLFT have increased inequality and the ability of employers to have a more disciplined workforce. This has decreased the ability of working people to have influence in their workplace and over economic policy more generally.

The literature of British Columbia and the study of labour therein have been largely ignored in academic criticism. I address this deficiency by foregrounding labour in the prose literature of British Columbia as well as the significance of British Columbia literature itself. My introductory literature review demarcates the field, situates the authors and texts I take up, and points to the general importance of such a study. Chapter two begins by analyzing the male-dominant labour narrative in Bertrand Sinclair’s The Inverted Pyramid and Roderick Haig-Brown’s On the Highest Hill and Timber—each focused on the theme of logging. Rather than an overarching argument, the section on Sinclair addresses many concepts, including Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, a connection between environmental conservationism and loggers, and a cooperative economic model that opposes capitalism. Likewise, in Haig-Brown I focus on his treatment of danger in the logging industry, the oft-forgotten history of Canada’s national parks, the way that language connects people to nature, and the presence of homosocial and homosexual relationships in logging. My project shifts in chapter three from logging to orcharding and from novels to three works of creative non-fiction by Harold Rhenisch:Out of the Interior: The Lost Country, Tom Thomson’s Shack, and The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys through a Dark Century. Operating out of a site of tension and contradiction,Rhenisch resists what he sees as the dominant discourses in the Interior of British Columbia. In my fourth chapter I return to novels but move from a study of manual labour to white collar labour. Here the phrase “white collar” becomes an analytical lens to view labour stratification, exploitation, authorship, sexism, and agency in Douglas Coupland’s JPod, Robert Harlow’s Scann, and Jen Sookfong Lee’s the end of east. In chapter five, I conclude by using Daphne Marlatt’s novel Ana Historic as a way to reflect on the positions of chapters two through four. Marlatt’s criticism of male dominant conceptions of history and patriarchal systems of power illuminates the texts I have taken up and reveals possibilities for further analysis, debate, and discussion.

Why are class politics more prevalent in Canada than in the U.S., even though the two countries share similar cultures, societies, and economies? Many view this cross­border distinction as a byproduct of long­standing differences in political cultures and institutions, but I find that it is actually a relatively recent divergence resulting from how the working class was politically incorporated in both countries before, during, and after World War II. My central argument is that in Canada, this incorporation process embedded "the class idea"--the idea of class as a salient, legitimate political category--more deeply in policies, institutions, and practices than in the U.S.Out of the social and political struggles of that period emerged two working class movements that, although bearing a surface resemblance, were organized along different logics. In Canada, the working class was incorporated as a class representative, whereas in the U.S. It was incorporated as an interest group. That difference in political incorporation enabled or constrained labor's legitimacy and organizational capacity in different ways in both countries. Canadian labor's role as a class representative legitimized it and expanded its organizational capacity, while U.S. labor's role as an interest group delegitimized it and undermined its organizational capacity.I show this through a detailed analysis of trajectories of labor movement strength in both countries over the course of the twentieth century, as measured by unionization rates, or union density. Starting from the observation that union density was very similar in both countries until the mid-1960s, then diverged, I first examine competing explanations for this divergence. Having illustrated their strengths and limitations, I then develop an argument showing how the divergence in working class organizational strength was the outcome of struggles for political incorporation.I identify two key moments that shaped these different processes of political incorporation. The first was the restructuring of party-class alliances in both countries in the 1930s and 40s, where U.S. labor decisively abandoned the project of building an independent working class party in favor of an alliance with the Democratic Party, at the same moment that Canadian labor forged an independent class alliance with progressive agrarian forces under the banner of the CCF. The second was differences in the effects of postwar Red scares on the relationship between labor and the left in both countries. While anti-Communism took its toll on working class movements in both countries, the labor-left alliance was severed in the U.S., but only strained in Canada. The outcome of these processes was a U.S. labor movement that conceived of itself more as an interest group representing a specific constituency within the Democratic Party, and a Canadian labor movement that conceived of itself more as a class representative with closer ties to a broader social movement.Differences in labor's political incorporation also shaped the formation and development of the regimes governing labor-management relations in both countries. The Canadian labor regime was created as a result of working class upsurge from below, whereas the U.S. labor regime was created as part of an elite reform project from above. This original difference influenced the organizing logics of each regime. Whereas the Canadian labor regime was organized around recognizing the existence of class conflict and seeking to mitigate it, the U.S. regime was organized around protecting workers' individual rights. Although this created a more interventionist Canadian system that restricted labor's scope of action in important ways, it also reinforced a collective, oppositional class identity vis-à-vis both employers and the state. Meanwhile, the U.S. system's focus on rights led to a stronger focus on legalistic proceduralism and imposing a formal equality between labor and management that obscured the power imbalance inherent in the employment relationship. Additionally, labor drew different lessons from these different processes of regime formation. Whereas Canadian labor learned the value of winning gains through disruptive mass mobilization, U.S. labor learned the value of winning gains through sympathetic politicians and favorable legal precedents.The combination of a more protective and institutionally stable labor regime and a labor movement more accustomed to winning gains through mass mobilization, Canadian labor was better positioned to defend itself than its U.S. counterpart when employers began a counter-offensive beginning in the late 1960s. While U.S. labor spiraled into decline, Canadian labor proved more resilient, leading to the divergence in union density rates.

The Live-in Caregiver Program is a temporary foreign worker program that allows workers to come to Canada in order to labour as private caregivers for children, the elderly, and disabled individuals. This program allows caregivers to apply for permanent residency after the successful completion of 24 months of full time work. There are a number of scholars, advocacy groups, former caregivers, and other parties that have raised concerns about certain regulations of this program. For example, caregivers under this program have an employer-specific work permit, must live in the homes of the employers, and have no external monitoring of their work environments. Subsequently, the Live-in Caregiver Program has been seen as problematic because of the high number of abusive labour situations. This thesis is dedicated to an analysis of how the Canadian news print media represents the Live-in Caregiver Program. Although there has been much research done on migrant care work within Canada, and around the world, there are few studies on how the news media construct arguments that describe these transnational labour flows. The main topics that guided the research questions for this thesis were: temporary foreign worker programs; citizenship status; globalized, gendered, and racial stereotypes; the live-in regulation; employer specific work permits, and power relations in the labour relationship. This research was not geared to proving or disproving the main findings of key migrant domestic worker literature, rather it was focused on how these conclusions are interpreted, transferred and argued within a publically accessible format, Canadian news print media. This analysis revealed how journalists within Canadian news media construct important cultural narratives to persuade audiences to either reject the LCP as exploitative and problematic, or embrace it as economically beneficial.

This thesis explores the Canadian state's rationale for the creation and perpetuation of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker's Program (SAWP). Informed by and building on the writing of Canadian political economists, this thesis provides a composite history of the program from its creation in 1966 to its current-day incarnation. While many scholars have looked to neo-liberalism to analyze the program, SAWP existed long before the term entered the political lexicon and instead fits into a much longer history of racialized immigration and labour policies in Canada. Therefore, though we need to understand the changes wrought by neo-liberalism, we must also acknowledge the historical continuities inherent in SAWP: no matter who was in office, and what political ideology they subscribed to, migrant labour schemes have consistently been relied onto support the state's project of aiding the accumulation of wealth and filling the labour vacuum left behind by Canadians who gained safer, more secure, and more lucrative employment elsewhere.

Le Lord's Day Act interdit le travail le dimanche en 1906, mais autorise les travaux jugés nécessaires. Les compagnies papetières québécoises peuvent effectuer les travaux d'entretien et de nettoyage, mais ne peuvent pas produire le dimanche. L' industrie papetière exige la production continue et menace de freiner ses investissements au Québec si le gouvernement ne permet pas le fonctionnement des machines le dimanche. Le gouvernement Lesage instaure donc la Commission d'enquête sur l'observance du dimanche dans les usines de pâtes et papiers en 1964. Le jour du Seigneur fut essentiellement traité comme une question religieuse par les historiens, mais l'attachement pour la conservation du repos dominical déborde les questionnements sur le sécularisme ou la piété populaire. Cette commission instaurée pour régler un problème technique cache un profond conflit de valeurs entre les différents acteurs sociaux. Différentes façons de concevoir le bien commun et le progrès social y sont avancées. Aux séances de la commission, plusieurs groupes et individus font valoir leurs points de vue. Les représentants des compagnies papetières exigent unanimement la production le dimanche pour accroître la production. Pour les groupes religieux, la sanctification du dimanche est une manifestation collective vitale pour la cohésion de la famille, de la paroisse et de la société. Quant à eux, les travailleurs et leurs syndicats défendent l' idée d' un repos commun hebdomadaire et dénoncent le travail par rotation d'équipes. Les débats lors de la Commission Alleyn permettent de mettre en relief une confrontation culturelle à l' intérieur d'un rapport économique de production, tout en offrant un éclairage sur le bouleversement des nouveaux rapports sociaux en plein coeur de la Révolution tranquille.

This dissertation examines the intersection of gender, employment law and public health policies through an analysis of the federal government's efforts to regulate the work/leisure relationship. The study asks how and why, despite over 50 years of state interventions to regulate leisure and healthy lifestyle, concerns about 'work-life balance' have surfaced in labour policy arenas in recent years. The study builds a feminist political economy framework for understanding changes in policy developments over time. I use the concepts of social reproduction and time- and work-discipline as lenses with which to probe the relationship between the changing temporal dimensions of paid and unpaid work and efforts to manage the new realities of the labour market through the institutions of the state. The dissertation considers how the changes in the gendered organization of social reproduction, the nature and regulation of employment, and the power of organized labour to advocate on behalf of workers have influenced the types of policies used to manage the work/life interface. The empirical dimension of this study traces the emergence of a framework for regulating social reproduction through state-led management of the work/life relationship. Following the evolution of such frameworks through federal policy debates, policy papers and program materials, I trace the continuities and changes in dominant leisure discourses and policy mechanisms through four phases of federal policy development: early fitness policies (pre-1960); ParticipACTION (1960 to early 1970s); employee fitness experiments (mid-1970s to 1990); and the Work/Life Balance Strategy (1990s to mid-2000s). The central argument put forward in this dissertation is that the gender- neutral and individualized framework for regulating the healthy reproduction of workers, developed in Canadian law and policy since the 1950s, has produced highly gendered outcomes through its failure to address the changing dynamics of work and family life. By continuing to uphold the notion of a worker 'unencumbered' by familial and household responsibilities, 'new' work-life balance policies exacerbate the tensions between paid and unpaid work and contribute to the ongoing marginalization of women in the labour market.

Contemporary research on immigrant economic integration identifies growing economic disadvantages faced by immigrants and probes sources of the disadvantages by focusing on immigrants' pre-migration and ascriptive characteristics. However, little empirical evaluation exists on how immigrants overcome their initial economic disadvantages over time. This dissertation departs from previous research by studying the roles of two post-migration factors - schooling (formal education and language training) and the employment of female spouses - in the exits from low wages and low family income (poverty) among recent immigrants. The analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) - a three-wave survey of immigrants who arrived in Canada in 2000-2001 - produces three main findings. First, investing in host country formal education is beneficial for the economic advancement of new immigrants - especially highly educated ones. This finding confirms the role of skill upgrading programs for adult immigrants as an effective immigrant settlement policy, given that the majority of recent immigrants have postsecondary education but that their initial economic hardships are growing. Second, the benefits of English/French language lessons are real. This finding counters a common criticism that language lessons for adult new immigrants, which are often funded by the governments, are not helpful. Indeed, standard logistic regression analysis of the LSIC data shows that immigrants who enrolled in language lessons have no advantage in exiting poverty or low wages. However, the bivariate probit model demonstrates that this is because unmeasured characteristics of the language lesson participants confound the true benefit of language lessons. Third, this dissertation research highlights the role immigrant women play in lifting their families out of poverty when they work. This finding has an implication particularly for women of Arab and Middle Eastern origins as their notably lower labour force participation rates explain much of their high poverty rates.

Cette thèse propose une analyse de la production de munitions au Canada durant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale dans le but d'exposer les politiques mises de l'avant par le gouvernement canadien pour répondre aux exigences matérielles de la guerre. Afin de combler les besoins du ministère de la Défense et de ses alliés, le ministère des Munitions et Approvisionnements réussit un tour de force en transformant une industrie munitionnaire insignifiante en un vaste programme qui employait plus de 103 000 personnes à son apogée. L'analyse des politiques à l'origine de cette production montre que le gouvernement fédéral géra autant que possible sa contribution matérielle de manière à fournir une aide considérable à ses alliés tout en poursuivant ses objectifs de relance économique à long terme. Le Comité de guerre du Cabinet tenta également de limiter l'impact négatif de ses décisions sur la vie des Canadiens. La participation matérielle du Canada prit forme graduellement, restreinte par la volonté de limiter les dépenses militaires. Les projectiles ne figuraient pas parmi les priorités avant la chute de la France. À partir de l'automne 1940, les principaux ministères se montrèrent plus ouverts à la mise en place et au financement d'un vaste programme. Ils consolidèrent leur collaboration avec les gouvernements britannique et américain afin d'obtenir le soutien technique et financier nécessaire pour surpasser les faiblesses industrielles du pays, de manière à permettre une collaboration qui ne nuirait pas à long terme aux finances publiques. Ensuite, l'interventionnisme sans précédent pour stimuler ce secteur non traditionnel s'effectua, malgré l'ampleur des investissements, dans un esprit d'économie et mené par une volonté de ne pas disloquer inutilement les structures de l'économie civile. Le gouvernement misa sur une collaboration avec les entreprises compétentes qui dominaient déjà le marché. Les entrepreneurs jouèrent un rôle clé dans la stratégie fédérale de gestion des ressources humaines. L'élaboration d'une solution à la pénurie de travailleurs s'effectua autant que possible sans l'imposition de mesures coercitives, de manière à ne pas nuire à la relance de l'économie dans l'après-guerre et à ne pas saper le moral des citoyens. Le ministère des Munitions et Approvisionnements opta plutôt pour la mise en place d'un État-providence de guerre et d'un paternalisme industriel. Le secteur privé, appuyé par diverses initiatives du gouvernement fédéral, se devait d'imposer un encadrement strict du milieu de travail afin de maximiser la productivité, de diminuer l'absentéisme et de lutter contre les interruptions de production.

This dissertation is divided into three main components that each relate to the socioeconomic wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian labour market. Specifically, using data from the master file of the Canadian census for the years 1996, 2001 and 2006, the first section examines the wage differential for various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups, including a comparison of those living on-and-off-reserves. The study finds that, while a sizeable wage gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons still exists, this disparity has narrowed over the three census periods for those living off-reserve. The Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal wage differential is largest among the on-reserve population and this gap has remained relatively constant over the three census periods considered in the study. The second study in the dissertation uses data from the master file of the Canadian Labour Force Survey for 2008 and 2009 to estimate the probability that an individual is a labour force participant, and, conditional on labour force participation, the probability that a respondent is unemployed, comparing several Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups. The results reveal that Aboriginal men and women have lower rates of labour force participation and higher rates or unemployment in both periods as compared to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Aboriginal peoples were also disproportionately burdened by a slowdown in economic activity as measured by a change in the probability of unemployment moving from 2008 to 2009, as compared to non-Aboriginal people, who experienced a smaller increase in the probability of unemployment moving from a period of positive to negative economic growth. Finally, the third study examines the probability of high school dropout comparing Aboriginal peoples living on-and-off-reserve using data from the master file of the Aboriginal Peoples Survey for 2001. The findings reveal dramatically higher rates of dropout among Aboriginal people living on-reserve as compared to those living off-reserve. Limitations of all three studies as well as some possible directions of future research related to similar issues concerning Canada's Aboriginal population are discussed in the concluding chapter of the dissertation.

Labour landmarks are memorial sites, commemorations, plaques, and burial sites that provide access to the themes and meanings of workers' past experiences. They are instrumental in enshrining workers' "public memories," which are the separate experiences of groups within society, within the larger "collective memory" of the community. A general exploration of the commemorative landscape reveals a number of themes and allows a detailed discussion of several labour landmarks. In the course of this research, 21 separate labour landmarks were identified in the communities of industrial Cape Breton. The majority of these monuments are dedicated to workers in the coal and steel industries. The 1980s saw an expansion in the frequency of labour commemorations, which indicates increased attention to the experiences of workers in Cape Breton. Two monuments in the community of New Waterford reveal the many layers of historical memory in the town. The first is dedicated to victims of the 1917 mine explosion, while the second commemorates the man killed during the 1925 strike. The explosion monument, unveiled in 1922, inserts the public memory of coal miners into the collective memory of New Waterford. The William Davis monument, dedicated in 1985, reveals an existing working-class consciousness in the town and merges individual and public memories of Davis while reflecting on a major event in the town's history. Another monument, dedicated to Sydney's steelworkers, now rests on the site of the former steel plant, and commemorates a century of experience. This memorial is used as an example of how one might "read" a labour landmark to access its themes and meanings, as well as to reach an understanding of the past experiences of workers.

During the last decade, Canada experienced unequal economic growth. As result, the Canadian government expanded its Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which led to an essential change of its purpose, making it easier for employers to recruit temporary foreign workers for low-skilled jobs. In practice, TFWs are quite vulnerable without access to the same rights and privileges as Canadian citizens or permanent residents. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze whether the Canadian government respects the rights of TFWs through its domestic regulations and if such laws protect the rights of TFWs in practice. The thesis goal is to determine if the economic interest of the Canadian government and employers can be matched with international migrant rights' standards. It investigates international standards related to the protection of human rights, including covenants, international treaties, and human rights committees. This thesis also discusses similar programs governing TFWs in America, Germany, and Australia.