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The article reviews the book, "The Happiness of the British Working Class," by Jamie L. Bronstein.

This book brings together the vast research literature about gender and technology to help designers understand what a gender perspective and a focus on intersectionality can contribute to designing information technology systems and artifacts, and to assist organizations as they work to develop work cultures that are supportive of women and marginalized genders and people. Drawing on empirical and analytical studies of women's work and technology in many parts of the world, the book addresses how to make invisible aspects of work visible; how to recognize women's skills without falling into the trap of gender stereotyping; how to engage in improving working conditions; and how to defend care of life situations and needs against a managerial logic. It addresses challenges for design, including many overlooked and undervalued aspects, such as the complexities involved in human–machine interactions, as well as the need to create safe spaces for research subjects. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada's Cultural Diplomacy," by Eric Fillion.

L’étude cherche à contribuer à expliquer pourquoi les travailleurs et travailleuses continuent à être exposés à des conditions de travail pathogènes, malgré les législations en prévention en santé et en sécurité du travail. Elle examine pour cela le processus social de « régulation » de l’exposition au bruit, cas paradigmatique de risque pour la santé dont les effets et les éventuels coûts d’indemnisation sont différés et généralement pas perçus comme nuisant à la sécurité et la productivité. L’analyse s’appuie entre autres sur des données obtenues par demande d’accès à l’information auprès de la Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, dont des rapports d’intervention d’inspecteurs. Alors que les cas de surdité professionnelle reconnus sont en augmentation marquée, l’analyse met en évidence une série de déficits de régulation : déficit de protection par un seuil réglementaire d’exposition au bruit inchangé jusqu’à 2023; absence de couverture de la majorité des secteurs d’activité par le Réseau de santé publique en santé au travail, aussi par paralysie réglementaire, alors que ses signalements donnent lieu à la majorité des interventions de l’inspectorat; déficit d’application (très faible nombre d’interventions sur le bruit, particulièrement dans les secteurs à majorité féminine), même après la priorisation de ce risque, le nombre d’inspecteurs restant inchangé malgré l’augmentation marquée du nombre d’établissements; finalement, déficit de responsabilisation des employeurs par l’absence d’imputation directe à l’employeur des coûts d’indemnisation des cas de surdité professionnelle reconnus, d’abord encouragée par le mode de tarification, puis systématique. Ces déficits combinés participent à la « normalisation » d’atteintes à la santé qui peuvent pourtant être prévenues. L’étude conclut à l’échec de l’autorégulation de facto (absence de réglementation adéquate et de ressources conséquentes de soutien et de contrôle) comme à celle du marché (coûts d’indemnisation et tarification en fonction de l’expérience).

This doctoral thesis combines empirical research and theoretical innovations aimed at comprehending the dynamics of platform labour within advanced-capitalist economies. Through case studies in Paris, France, and Toronto, Canada, the thesis contributes to the evolving landscape of platform labour studies, migration studies, and labour geography. The over-representation of racialized immigrants engaged in platform food delivery has attracted significant attention from both academia and mainstream media, notably in Toronto with international students from India and in Paris with sans-papiers from Africa. Focusing specifically on migration and working conditions, this study unveils hyper-precarity in Euro-American cities. The primary objective of the thesis is to provide a new perspective that includes immigration and citizenship within current discourse on platform labour. Drawing inspiration from critical urban studies, migration studies, and science and technology studies, the research introduces two conceptual propositions: i) “citizen-rentier-ship”, designed to elucidate how various stakeholders benefit from precarious citizenship status, and ii) a “relational comparison” of platform labour resistance, offering insights into the evolution of the unrest against platform labour exploitation—a crucial facet of urban development. The thesis is based on extensive interviews with food riders, workers, spokespersons, and other key actors, shedding light on their capacity for self-organization within advanced capitalist societies. By exploring strategies, limitations, and the dimensions of resistance—both digital and physical—through interactions with riders and individuals who resisted deactivation, low wages, and algorithmic management, the research contributes to a nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by these workers. The case studies place emphasis on migrant workers’ perspectives. They reshape ongoing debates about global platforms by centering attention on the bottom ends of labour markets. In conclusion, the study contends that the struggles of migrant workers are deeply entwined with labour laws, immigration policies, misclassification practices, and urban policies in France and Canada.

This introductory human resource management (HRM) textbook provides students with an overview of the major domains of human resource management (the “how-to”) with a focus on the practical application of the most recent HRM research and best practices. Students will learn to understand, anticipate, and respond to how power, profit, and intersectionality shape the practice of HRM. Moving beyond the typical procedure-oriented textbook, Barnetson and Foster provide thought-provoking political analysis to better prepare students for the real-world practice of human resource management. --Publisher's description

In recent years, labour unrest in Canada and elsewhere has led to a resurgence in union organizing, job action and contract gains. This thesis sets out to understand how greater attentiveness to working-class affects or emotions might support this potentially revitalizing moment. Given the limited scholarship in this area, this study connects a literature review of affect theory with radical labour history to develop a framework for thinking about the affective dimensions of collective action within unions. Using that framework, the study then investigates the affective life of two Western Canadian unions through surveys and interviews. The thesis concludes that acknowledging and becoming more intentional in efforts to mediate the affective intensities that circulate, move people and organize life at the level of union membership represents an important focal point as a new cycle of class recomposition potentially takes shape.

This paper delves into the implications of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) through the lens of international human rights law (IHRL), spotlighting the nuanced effects on migrant agricultural workers' rights. Originating in 1966, the SAWP has been pivotal in recruiting labour from Mexico and the Caribbean to bolster Canada's agricultural sector. The paper critiques the program's core policies, notably the restrictive employment system that ties workers to specific employers and the significant barriers to obtaining permanent residency (PR) and citizenship. These policies are scrutinized for their potential violation of fundamental human rights, including the rights to equality, liberty and security, and access to justice, under both Canadian and international legal frameworks. A comprehensive analysis is presented, underpinning Canada's obligations under IHRL and the apparent discrepancies within its treatment of SAWP participants. The study proposes substantial policy reforms aimed at rectifying these discrepancies, advocating for a transition towards open work permits, and establishing clear pathways to PR and citizenship for SAWP workers. The research underscores the necessity for Canada to reconcile its labour demands within the agricultural sector with its human rights obligations, ensuring a fair and humane treatment of migrant workers who play a crucial role in the country's economy.

In this dissertation, I draw on Frantz Fanon’s concepts of cultural imposition and collective catharsis to examine how the colonized subject, like the incarcerated Black worker, undergoes a double process of dehumanization wherein they are perceived as both an invisible and hypervisible subject. I argue that the colonized subject is invisible insofar as they are subjected to various forms of dehumanization such as physiological and psychological abuse, lack of access to resources, and neglect. However, they are also perceived as hypervisible because they are viewed as existing in excess as hypersexual, hyper deviant, and hyper criminal creatures and therefore deserving of the treatment they endure. Similarly, the incarcerated worker is viewed as invisible and hypervisible because they are viewed as unskilled and subhuman beings undeserving of adequate pay and protections but are also perceived as best suited to work in poor conditions doing less skilled, undervalued, low-paying work. By tracing how this relationship between race, racialization and labour is underpinned by whiteness both historically and in a contemporary sense, I demonstrate how the use of prison labour within a Canadian multicultural context must necessarily be read through a normalizing white gaze, under the guise of public safety and rehabilitation; here the prison functions as a disciplinary site wherein Black and racialized prisoners are constructed as inferior beings in need of heightened control through labour. In doing so, I argue that the use of prison labour in Canadian prisons is a form of colonial violence that reproduces inferior and superior colonial identities.

Falling Short is the third community report released by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes Partnership. The report follows the publication of Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island in 2021 and Unfree Labour: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers in the Seafood Industry in New Brunswick in 2023. The report is based on desk research and worker interviews. Data was obtained from freedom of information requests to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Nova Scotia’s regulatory bodies responsible for work safety, employment standards, and housing. 15 interviews with migrant workers in Nova Scotia employed under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) were also conducted. Fourteen of these workers were employed under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) stream of the TFWP, and one worker was employed under the low-wage stream of the TFWP. Falling Short found that in Nova Scotia, migrant workers frequently encounter a lack of regulatory implementation. Rules exist, but governments are failing to adequately enforce them to create a safe and dignified work environment for migrant workers. The report provides recommendations to both the federal and provincial governments aimed at improving the working and living conditions of the temporary migrant workforce in the province. --Website description

With the advancement of science and technology and the improvement of social attitudes and mentalities, many Canadian women nowadays hold professions that have always been held exclusively by men. They have been able to integrate educational training, academic programs, and professional careers that have always been “masculine”, such as engineering, architecture, accounting, finance, military, trades, construction, and law enforcement, to name a few. Women in Canada have successfully performed and integrated these “masculine” professions. However, this integration was only a one-way street in many circumstances, not appreciated or accepted by men who considered it an invasion of their professional property and territory. Therefore, it unfortunately opens the door to bullying, discrimination, intimidation, and even sexual harassment. Sexual harassment of women in the workplace has always been persistent, especially in male-dominated industries. Not only does it harm women’s health, advancement, and career, but it also harms the organizations and their reputations. This research will investigate the impacts of sexual harassment on the overall health of women working in male-dominated industries in Canada.

The article reviews and comments on two books by John Kelly: "Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain" and "The Twilight of World Trotskyism."

The article reviews the book, "Travailler moins ne suffit pas," by Julia Posca.

Over the last few decades, collegial forms of organization guided by norms of professionalism and shared decision-making have given way in public organizations to more corporate organizational forms that prioritize efficiency and economy. A growing body of research has explored these conflicting institutional logics, and identified the challenges of professional workers as they attempt to reconcile them on the job. At times, however, conflicting logics may create ethical dilemmas for professionals faced with competing imperatives, such as efficiency and public safety, if choosing the ethical imperative threatens their job security or professional standing. Their responses to such dilemmas have been under-explored in the literature. In this paper, we examine such dilemmas, and the responses to them, using qualitative data from public-sector engineers in two Canadian provinces. Public-sector engineers are ideal for such analysis because they work in changing environments where the tension between professional and managerial logics may be keenly felt. We find that these professionals have a range of responses, sometimes resisting and sometimes marginally acceding to workplace pressures. Light is thus shed on the circumstances under which ethical tensions might escalate.

We examine the pivotal role of academic staff associations (ASAs) in advocating and influencing the adoption of vaccination mandates at Canadian universities in the run-up to the fall 2021 term. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with ASA leaders and staff, we delve into the factors behind ASA positions on such mandates. We demonstrate that the vast majority of ASAs advocated robust COVID-19 mitigation measures, including vaccination mandates, but their approaches varied because of regional differences and institutional and sectoral dynamics. Many ASAs actively promoted mandatory vaccination, unlike the case with the vast majority of other unions.

This article explores union responses to workplace-based covid-19 vaccine mandates in Canada. Specifically, the authors examine the complex interplay of factors that drove unions to adopt their respective positions on vaccine mandates and to frame those positions in particular ways for the benefit of their members and the wider public. Interviews with key informants, along with analysis of documents and arbitration decisions, reveal a disjuncture between the discursive quality of certain unions’ positions and their actual positions. In particular, media framing of unions as either “for” or “against” vaccine mandates oversimplified or misrepresented the actual positions adopted. In response, the article introduces a typology of union positions that distinguishes between support for mandatory-vaccination policies and support for voluntary-vaccination policies and reveals that the vast majority of unions favoured the latter. The authors further reveal that workplace vaccine mandates were both internally divisive and disorienting for unions, given the central role labour organizations play in managing workplace disputes and representing the interests of workers, both individually and collectively.

This chapter provides an extensive but not exhaustive overview of gender equality indices. Two key concerns emerge: frst, the conflation of measures of gender equality and assessments of women’s rights and status; and second, the focus on individual empowerment used in almost all international indices, the indicator for which is frequently political representation.The chapter proposes an alternative frame of collective agency as a measurable dimension that shifts attention from those institutions that reproduce gender inequality to those that promote gender equality. The second part of this chapter argues that trade unions are a key institutional vehicle for women’s collective agency and voice. Union membership increases women’s income and reduces the gender pay gap, a central dimension in all gender equality indices. It also improves the quality and conditions of working life. Union membership, then, helps progress women’s status, supports gender equality, and offers a valuable measure of women’s collective agency. --Introduction

This paper utilizes the job demands–resources (JD-R) model to examine how the neoliberal governance of Employment Ontario (EO) contributes to worker burnout. The work of Employment Ontario specialists is governed by neoliberal policies, which are an apparatus of austerity politics mechanized through New Public Management (NPM). NPM places a strong emphasis on performance management, quantitative targets and the marketization of public services. This paper demonstrates how these neoliberal policies contribute to worker burnout in public employment services (PES). EO specialists who deliver PES, are tasked with helping vulnerable jobseekers quickly re-enter the paid labour force regardless of systemic barriers, which this study has revealed as a largely unachievable pursuit within a neoliberal market environment. Utilizing data from thirty-two interviews, our analysis indicates that EO workers/specialists experience burnout due to unreasonable job demands and a lack of sufficient resources, which inhibit their ability to meaningfully support vulnerable jobseekers. Having identified time pressures, work overload, lack of training and development opportunities and job insecurity as some of the stressors experienced by EO specialists, we conclude that prolonged exposure to these stressors leads to burnout.

The article reviews the book, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture and Control in Cold War America," by Andrew C. McKevitt.

This thesis explored the potential use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based policing models in law enforcement anti-trafficking initiatives and examined potential impacts of expanding state surveillance through police use of AI-based policing models. Computer scientists aspire to develop AI to identify victims of trafficking through websites that host ads for sexual services. Little research has explored sex workers’ views on the proposed AI-based policing models and their likely impacts. To fill this gap, I conducted 21 semistructured interviews with sex workers, academics, and members of sex worker rights organizations to discuss the effects of AI-based policing models. Participants expressed concern that these models will continue a long history of anti-trafficking initiatives causing harm, particularly against racialized, migrant, and transgender sex workers. Findings also suggest developers should be cautious about creating AI-based policing models without input of sex workers and without a firm knowledge base of the sex industry.