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In a 2013 exhibition publication titled It’s the Political Economy, Stupid!, John Roberts made the observation that “Over the last ten years we have become witness to an extraordinary assimilation of art theory and practice into the categories of labor and production.” Whereas once art claimed for itself a critical capacity in relation to the larger system of capitalist domination by its status as a putatively ‘autonomous’ sphere of production from which it leveraged its difference and critique, today it is largely acknowledged that there is no longer any such ‘outside’ to be aspired to. If, in the recent past, the immaterial, informational, creative, experiential, and affective elements of conceptual art were seen as potential resistant forces, in our current climate, where these forms of labor have become the dominant mode of production for the capitalist economy, these potentialities are now being widely questioned. With these developments in mind, this dissertation consists of a series of integrated articles that focus on the increasingly diffuse and interconnected circuits of global exchange and labor as they interact with specific sites and interventions of contemporary artistic production. In this, they coalesce around a general binding inquiry: does artistic labor today have the capacity to function as a critique of the (transforming) mechanisms of control and exploitation characteristic of capitalism in the twenty-first century? And if not, what does that entail about the continued political viability, and persisting social functions of contemporary artworks? Drawing on autonomist Marxist thought, the sociology of work and labor, performance studies, and critical readings on the relationship between artistic labor and recent forms of capitalist production, the chapters are organized around exhibitions and artworks which represent, critique, or (re)produce the conditions of production in late capitalism, while situating these within a global economy characterized by an uneven network of productive relations. In so doing, they trace the trajectory of labor relations and production practices as they have transformed over the last half decade through artworks and exhibitions that engage specific emblematic sites of production—the factory, the prison, and the museum (or amalgams of these spaces), and attempts to tease out places where reflection on the relationship between ‘artistic’ and ‘non-artistic’ labor in each may lead to clarity regarding the socio-political efficacy of contemporary art in an increasingly saturated and complex economic infrastructure.

The article reviews the book, "Bad Faith: Teachers, Liberalism, and the Origins of McCarthyism," byAndrew Feffer.

his article examines rank-and-file organizing in Windsor’s automobile factories during the 1970s. In particular, I look at the history of two organizations: Workers’ Unity and the New Tendency’s Auto Worker Group. I demonstrate how these groups were part of the North American New Left’s broader turn toward Marxism and the working class that contributed to the emergence of radical rank-and-file movements that challenged both management and bureaucratized trade union leaders. In Windsor, New Left auto workers embraced forms of autonomist Marxist politics concerned primarily with working-class self-activity at the point of production, and these activists formed connections with influential theorists and organizations in Detroit and Italy. Putting these intellectual exchanges into action, the rank-and-file organizations in Windsor used direct action in an attempt to improve working conditions and develop a radical culture of democracy on the shop floor. Although these groups were relatively short lived, their history tells us much about the trajectory of the New Left in Canada and the ways that former student activists grappled with the radical potential of 1970s working-class militancy.

It is generally accepted that employment regulation offers mechanisms to generate orderly economic growth as well as provide for the protection of workers. Both these efficiency and equity arguments particularly pertain to developing country contexts. The evolution and impact of employment law and industrial relations institutions in large developing countries is of growing interest to western scholars, but small developing countries have been ignored. This lack of research inhibits understanding of the political economy of employment regulation in developing country contexts. This article explores developments in labour regulation in three small developing countries in the South Pacific—Nauru, Tonga, and Papua New Guinea—that have been impacted by globalization and international labour regulation in different ways. The comparative research adopts a stakeholder analysis approach based on programs of qualitative interviews and documentary analysis. The paper identifies a number of structural and agency constraints on the development and effective implementation of employment regulatory systems that primarily reflect political factors. These include disorganized employment relations, under-developed civil society institutions, concentration of power networks, the under-resourcing and compartmentalization of state institutions and a broader context of political change and instability. These factors, which are related to country size as well as stage of development, subvert the introduction, implementation and review of employment regulation even where efficiency and equity arguments may be accepted by policymakers. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications and need for future research.

Facing a global health pandemic and an uncooperative administration, the King's University College Faculty Association decided it was time to unionize. Now they're stronger than ever. --Editor's note

In the mid-1990s, the province of Ontario instituted a new model of “managed competition” to govern a significant portion of home care services delivery. The new model, based on competitive bidding for the delivery of home care services, deepened reliance on private and increasingly for-profit “service provider organizations.” In time, the outcomes of the transition to managed competition – particularly increased employment precarity and turnover – grew increasingly salient and became captured in prior literature. However, a series of subsequent responses to these outcomes also began to emerge, ostensibly aimed at improving work and employment conditions in this sector. This article provides a historical analysis of various responses to the heightened employment precarity wrought by the managed competition regime in Ontario home care, with a focus on personal support workers (psws) insofar as they have historically tended to experience the most precarious conditions among the primary home care occupations. The analysis suggests that the core institutional arrangement of fissured work and organizational relations, coupled with a hyperdecentralized bargaining structure, was a key constraint and mediating factor. The most dramatic policy measure aimed at employment precarity, the 2014 psw Wage Enhancement Initiative, constituted a major, ad hoc overriding of this structure that had until then delivered wage restraint so successfully that it challenged the government’s own health human resources objectives. This reliance on such an extraordinary ad hoc instrument, without addressing the core institutional structure, severely restricts the degree of improvement in psw employment outcomes capable of being produced by collective bargaining in Ontario home care.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise traite du rapport qu’entretiennent les grandes entreprises minières avec les collectivités locales, dans un contexte nordique. À partir du cas québécois de l’exploitation du minerai de fer, nous tentons d’apporter un éclairage nouveau à l’idée communément admise selon laquelle l’implantation, sur des territoires enclavés, de grands projets extractifs, constitue un vecteur de développement régional important. La démarche d’économie politique proposée prend pour objet les modes de gestion des ressources humaines et financières privilégiés dans le secteur minier de la Côte-Nord. Les données recueillies dans le cadre d’une analyse documentaire et d’une série d’entretiens semi-dirigés, menés à l’hiver 2019, convergent vers la thèse suivante : la diminution des retombées économiques constatée dans cette région est attribuable à la déterritorialisation de l’organisation contemporaine du travail dans les mines ainsi qu’à l’émergence de stratégies de restructuration épousant la dynamique du cycle de commodités.

The article reviews the book, "Améliorer la gestion du changement dans les organisations," edited by Martin Lauzier and Nathalie Lemieux.

The article reviews the book, "Petit traité de management pour les habitants d’Essos, de Westeros et d’ailleurs," by Marine Agogué, Stéphane Deschaintre, and Cyrille Sardais.

The article reviews the book, "Masters and Servants: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Its North American Workforce, 1668-1786," by Scott P. Stephen.

This literature review presents an overview of the existing academic research on workers’ experiences of sexual harassment in order to better understand the factors influencing workers’ responses to these forms of harassment. We focus on the understudied intersection of precarious work and sexual harassment to address and investigate the higher rates of unwanted sexual attention reported by workers engaged in precarious work. --From Introduction

En marge du modèle dominant de monopole de l’association majoritaire dans les rapports collectifs du travail, le pluralisme syndical s’est exprimé de longue date au Québec et nécessite un aménagement normatif approprié. Le présent article vise à identifier les enjeux d’un tel aménagement à partir d’une étude comparative de trois cas, soit : 1- la participation des associations accréditées aux comités d’équité salariale; 2- le traitement des plaintes relatives au maintien de l’équité salariale dans des entreprises où plus d’une association accréditée représente des salariés; et, 3- la participation des associations syndicales à la négociation des conventions collectives sectorielles de l’industrie québécoise de la construction. L’analyse des solutions retenues par le législateur dans ces trois cas permet de mettre au jour une tension entre efficacité et participation des salariés, ainsi que de discuter des conséquences de celles-ci pour la démocratie au travail.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the holes in our social safety net and the failures in our social infrastructure painfully obvious. A horrific example of these failures is the impact of the pandemic in long-term care (LTC) homes. This paper provides a cost estimate for adequately funded caregiving in Ontario long-term care homes, showing that it would cost about $1.8 billion to increase care levels and equalize wage rates across the sector in this fiscal year. This equates to just over 1% of overall provincial program spending in Ontario.

The article reviews the book, "Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics," by Eric Blanc.

The article reviews the book, "Prairie Fairies: A History of Queer Communities and People in Western Canada, 1930–1985," by Valerie Korinek .

Discusses back-to-work legislation, including the definition of essential services, with respect to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Supreme Court of Canada's 2015 decision that upheld the right to strike. Concludes that back-to-work legislation will continue to be the Canadian state's go-to option, although recent case law also supports "meaningful" alternative dispute resolutions.

Cet article s’intéresse au cheminement de carrière des agentes de services correctionnels, particulièrement aux facteurs qui ont une influence sur leur rétention et leur progression. Alors que les études antérieures réalisées sur la réalité des femmes qui exercent ce métier montraient de nombreux obstacles et révélait le fait que les établissements de détention véhiculaient une culture masculine et des stéréotypes bien ancrés vis-à-vis des rôles qui sont joués dans ce milieu, la progression de la situation des agentes de services correctionnels québécoises a été très importante depuis le début des années 1990 et leur taux de rétention en emploi est, de nos jours, excellent. Nous avons donc cherché à comprendre cette progression et cette rétention, tout comme quelles en furent les conséquences au plan organisationnel. Sur la base d’approches théoriques mobilisées de manière convergente, soit les approches sur la mixité au travail, les théories féministes, la théorie institutionnelle et la théorie du changement, des entretiens semi-dirigés ont été menés auprès d’agentes et d’agents de services correctionnels et de gestionnaires oeuvrant dans des établissements de détention québécois. Les résultats de notre collecte de données révèlent que la progression des femmes au sein des services correctionnels a pris la forme d’une réelle mixité au travail et a eu un impact significatif sur le milieu de travail. Le fait que les équipes de travail soient composés d’hommes et de femmes et que les tâches confiées aux membres du personnel, à l’exception des fouilles à nu, soient identiques et non tributaire du genre, ont permis aux femmes d’être perçues comme des membres à part entière de l’organisation. Nous avons également constaté des transformations et des changements importants dans tous les piliers de l’organisation, ainsi qu’une évolution de la culture organisationnelle. Enfin, notre recherche a aussi permis d’identifier quelques enjeux qui représentent toujours des obstacles à la progression et à la rétention des agentes de services correctionnels.

Over the past forty-seven years, thousands of temporary foreign migrant workers have been arriving in Canada annually, to labor in sectors of precarious work including farming, caregiving and the service sector given the demand from employers seeking cheaper sources of labor or for work that Canadians are not available to do or are unwilling to do. Given the context of 21st century neoliberal capitalist globalization which has transformed the international division of labor, there has been an increase in the demand for migrants as a flexible source of cheap labor. Canada’s dependence on migrant workers has been facilitated through bilateral and unilateral programs with countries of the Global South to provide a steady stream of workers for its workforce. The purpose of this research was to critically explore and develop an understanding of precarious migrant worker exploitation and concerns pertaining to the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) in Canada to inform advocacy undertaken by migrant organizations. Utilizing a race-gendered neo-Marxist perspective on capital and migrant labor a case study strategy was adopted and developed pertaining to the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and the Caregivers Program. Data collection included in-depth and focus group interviews with 17 farm and caregiver migrant workers and advocates, document reviews and analysis of web materials. Thematic analysis suggests temporary migrant work is marked by coercion, misrepresentation of contracts and bonded contractual arrangements. Migrant work and living in Canada are characterized by increasing levels of labor unfreedom experienced as domination, subordination, and race-gendered exploitation. Temporary foreign migrant workers are being driven further into debt, endure substandard working conditions and a social experience in Canada marred by prejudice, discrimination, and oppression. These preliminary critical exploratory findings inform advocacy work for migrant workers by contributing to new ways of "knowing and doing” and to challenge existing predatory precarious migrant work policies, processes, and experiences in Canada and internationally.

The article reviews the book, "Writing the Lives of the English Poor, 1750s–1830s," by Steven King.

This paper examines the effects of grid compression on gender-based salary gaps. In this case, the workplace setting is a large Canadian research university previously found to have both a positionally segregated cohort of academic staff and a persistent gender-based differential in their salaries. The annual salary grids at this institution underwent seemingly subtle compressions over the course of two decades, with within-rank compression largely confined to the first decade and across-rank compression confined to the second decade. We employ a simulation methodology to check whether the two types of compression reduce the salary gap to varying degrees. After deflating staff salaries back to the start of each decade, we project the salaries forward using the historical annual increases and grids in place in each year at the university. We compute the gap present in the salary distribution at the start and end of each decade in the simulation, and check whether the gap decreased more across one decade than the other. We find that across-rank compression of the institution’s salary grid during the second decade narrows the salary gap to a greater extent than the within-rank compression of the earlier decade. Our work demonstrates that employers using stated salary grids could use simulation to monitor the equity effects of their pay policies and shows that they could accelerate the closure of gaps through consciously altering relationships among pay levels at different points in the grid’s hierarchy.