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The article reviews the book, "Résister et fleurir," by Jean-Félix Chénier and Yoakim Bélanger.

In collective bargaining, General Wage Increases (GWI) are most normally framed and implemented as percentages, with each eligible member seeing a salary rise of X% on top of pre-existing salary. While this approach is not remarkable where salary grids are in place and union members start at the same rate, it can have significant effects where starting salaries vary, as is common in the university sector. Under these conditions, percentage increases over time contribute to the widening of intra-member salary inequity, exacerbating structurally gendered and racialized inequities of the academic labour market. This paper explores the impact of a flat rate increase approach to salary bargaining. Beginning with the context of collective bargaining in British Columbia, it examines how percentage-based and flat-rate increases would impact real salaries of faculty members at Simon Fraser University in order to better understand how faculty associations and unions could use flat rate approaches to begin to counteract the impact of differential starting salaries on the career earnings of faculty members. The paper finds that flat rate increases could be an effective tool against pay inequity even where that inequity is driven by forces outside the university.

This article examines the role of alcohol, specifically rum, in labour relations in the early staples trades. In the 18th-century colonies that would later form Canada, labour was generally scarce and therefore expensive. Employers had to offer high wages as they struggled to recruit and retain workers, but because their enterprises were typically undercapitalized and vulnerable to market fluctuations, they could not afford to pay the salaries in full at the end of the contracted period. Focusing on the fishing servants of Newfoundland and the voyageurs of the North West Company, the article shows how wages were systematically clawed back through the workings of a version of "truck." Payment was deferred to the end of the season, and in the interim, employers would supply their men with goods at inflated prices, ensuring that many ended up indebted beyond the value of their nominal wages and had to sign on for a further term to pay off their debts. Rum was a crucial element in this system, its addictive qualities making it the ideal instrument for absorbing earnings. Many fishing masters and fur traders actively encouraged consumption; drinking on the job, then, was not only allowed but, in some cases, practically mandatory.

Since the establishment of the Canadian Air Line Flight Attendants’ Association (CALFAA) in 1948 and the Airline Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in 1984, flight attendant unions have advocated for duty time limits, sufficient rest periods, and fair wages. Recently, CUPE’s Airline Division has focused their efforts on unpaid ground time – a vital but overlooked element of flight attendant labor. Despite the union’s efforts, the persistence of unpaid ground time illustrates a trend of systemic prioritization of corporate profit over workplace equity. Through an overview of academic and grey literature (e.g. news articles, government documents), this review details the history of Canadian flight attendant unions before and after neoliberal reforms in the 1980s to trace trends in labor relations. We argue that increased governmental intervention and corporate exemptions in employee-employer labor relations prioritize the industry’s financial stability, forming structural barriers that dilute unions’ change-making capacity. Ultimately, we contextualize unpaid ground time within these trends – where systemic prioritization of corporate interests trump unions’ labor concerns, leaving attendants’ workplace inequity unaddressed.

We illustrate the exploitation in the relationship between Uber and its drivers by aligning their work with the characteristics of neo-villeiny. Two different legal developments in response to irregulation (or the lack of effective regulation) in similar institutional contexts emerge. While Uber drivers in the United Kingdom now have worker status, dysregulation (by which we mean regulation that exacerbates the problem it seeks to resolve) in Ontario has established neo-villeiny in law.

Wage-earner funds (löntagarfonder) in Sweden and the Fonds de solidarité ftq in Québec, both founded in 1983, are two of the most significant examples of collective workers' investment funds run by unions. This article situates the political context of their emergence in the neoliberal turn of social democracy in the early 1980s. In Sweden, the wage-earner funds were initially proposed as a radical anti-capitalist project in 1975, but the Social Democratic Party leadership developed the idea into a qualitatively distinct plan aimed at increasing investment capital available for private firms, as part of its new market-accommodating program. In Québec, the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (ftq) proposed the solidarity fund as it moved toward concertation and away from the democratic economic planning and autogestion (worker self-management) that it had championed in the 1970s. In both cases, pro-market forces within organized labour proposed the funds so that workers' capital could be used to stimulate private, for-profit investment, while recuperating elements of earlier labour radicalism that had sought to enhance workers' power over capital. Built with an institutional orientation toward the incorporation of workers into financial capitalism, these collective workers' funds represent a neoliberal shift within organized labour in Sweden and Québec, two places where labour is comparatively well organized.

This article reviews the book, "Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918" by Zhongping Chen.

Using post-structural theories, this paper explores the public discourses of several Canadian teacher unions and grassroots teacher activist groups around the issue of school reopening plans in Canada amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to highlight the ways in which these two forces of teacher activism can influence and impress upon each other to create a different possible future for collective resistance to neoliberalism in education – an assemblage of union and grassroots activism intra-acting, shaping, and impressing upon one another.

The article reviews the book, "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor," by Hamilton Nolan.

This article reviews the book, "Conscripted to Care: Women on the Frontlines of the covid-19 Response" by Julia Smith.

This article provides a history of the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union (JCMWU), from its founding in 1920 until its dissolution during the World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Canadians. The JCMWU was, according to union organizer Ryuichi Yoshida, a “general union of all Japanese workers” that “could not be an ordinary labour union.” Organized along the lines of race rather than by trade or industry, the union fought struggles against bosses, business owners, state officials, and the Asian exclusion movement through a number of programs and activities. But perhaps more than anything else, the jcmwu was a political education project, centred around its newspapers, Rōdō Shūhō and Nikkan Minshū. Drawing on previously untranslated materials from these newspapers, this article takes up the extraordinary analysis and activities of the JCMWU to contribute to broader discussions about the relationship of race, labour, capitalism, and imperialism.

Intimate partner violence and coercive control can manifest in abusers’ attempts to sabotage their partners’ participation in employment. Work-related intimate partner violence (WRIPV) also implicates employers, governments, and society more broadly, challenging the individualizing frame often applied to IPV. However, the legal recognition of WRIPV has been slow and sporadic, disproportionately impacting women experiencing intersecting inequalities, who are more vulnerable to IPV and to work-related inequalities. This article examines how governments have responded to WRIPV, situating their responses in the continuing legacy of the public/private distinction. Using a rights-based framework, I evaluate the two newest Canadian reforms concerning WRIPV: occupational health and safety and employment leave legislation. Both reforms specifically attend to WRIPV, at least in some jurisdictions, and provide preventive potential and remedial support for the economic and other consequences of IPV. Yet they also have shortcomings, including lack of coverage of some forms of IPV and some workplaces, loss of pay, and verification requirements that draw on gendered myths and stereotypes. I conclude by identifying further government action needed to better address WRIPV.

This article examines how Asian migrant sex workers have continuously been targeted by the “carceral web” of Canadian laws and policies at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. A case study of Newmarket, Ontario’s municipal council’s recent “crackdown” on personal wellness establishments illustrates how systematic racism and “whorephobia” are embedded in the regulations targeting low-income Asian migrant women, particularly those who work in massage parlours and the sex industry. The article ends with a discussion of how Asian workers in massage parlours and the sex industry are actively working to resist, fight for their rights, and build solidarity to push back against racist oppressions targeting them.

In July 1962, Saskatchewan doctors went on strike in a refusal to work under the Medicare Care Act, which introduced universal health insurance in the province. The much-studied conflict between organized medicine and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government has been understood as a decisive moment in the history of public healthcare in Canada. Less studied, but equally important, the doctors were supported by a larger protest movement that set out to oppose the expansion of the welfare state. This article reveals that an alliance between maternal activists who started the Keep Our Doctors committee, businessmen who aimed to foster popular anti-statism through the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Operation Freedom and the Free Citizens Association, and doctors was an unplanned coalition, but not something that emerged entirely by chance. The agitation was a form of conservative populism resolved, in exaggerated fashion, against compulsion, increased taxation, and alleged communism. It was also part of a distinctive transnational moment of right-wing radicalization. Principles of democracy and freedom united opponents of Medicare in Saskatchewan and linked them with American radical right peers in ways specific to the early 1960s.

This paper exposes the falsity of a fundamental assumption of labour law—namely that there is such a thing as an “employee” or “employer” or “independent contractor” and that such legal entities can be “found” through an examination of the facts. As we shall demonstrate, once we have discarded the flawed assumption that “employees” or “employers” (or “independent” or “dependent contractors,” or “worker,” or any other legal creature) exist in the real world, we see that labour law’s purpose as it is currently widely understood is also fundamentally flawed. It is from this standpoint that a new conceptual framework for—and normative underpinning of—labour law emerges.

Disabled people often experience time in a manner that is distinct from able-bodied individuals. Disabled people may have shorter careers, have difficulty maintaining full-time employment, and may be forced to work part-time due to the impact of their impairments. Many disabled people face considerable barriers every day in accessing services to participate fully in the workplace, including accessible transportation and attendant services. These underfunded services are often late if delivered at all, wreaking havoc on the ability of workers with disabilities to plan their day and make firm commitments. Yet disability scholars have attempted to reclaim this experience as one that needs to be understood as one with liberating potential. Ellen Samuels and Alison Kafer have identified this phenomenon as “crip time.” In Canadian law, the duty to accommodate workers with disabilities up to the point of undue hardship has not typically engaged with how disabled people experience time differently. We develop a typology of what we call crip time from above to reflect the lived experiences of disabled people, and in particular, their experience of time. In this paper, we report initial findings from a multi-year qualitative research project exploring the relationship between disability accommodations and crip time. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, we undertook focus group interviews with disabled people to explore their experiences of time, followed by individual interviews. Influenced by the work of radical Greek–French philosopher, Cornelius Castoriadis, we argue that his notion of social imaginary time enriches the existing work of crip time and opens new possibilities to create a philosophy of accommodation that recognizes how disabled bodies experience the workplace. Our initial findings suggest that disabled people experience work differently because of a number of barriers relating to their experience of crip time. We conclude with some policy recommendations.

The diversification of the academic workforce is primarily the responsibility of management in most Canadian universities. However, the University of Victoria Faculty Association played a critical role in the last two bargaining rounds, successfully negotiating meaningful advancements concerning equity, indigenization and decolonization. In the 2019–2022 collective bargaining round, for example, an Indigenous hiring fund was negotiated. Empowered with a strong mandate from the membership, the faculty association sought in the next bargaining round to move beyond an “Indigenous inclusion” framework, which simply added more Indigenous people to the academy, towards bargaining for a more decolonized space in which, for example, Indigenous members faced fewer barriers in tenure and promotion processes, and were recognized for the additional decolonial work they do in and for the institution, and beyond. We discuss the challenges and successes for Indigenous members in this bargaining round and the crucial role of faculty association Indigenous members in shaping these bargaining successes.

Background: This study critically analyzes the impact of platform capitalism on elder care in British Columbia, focusing on Tuktu, an app-based tech startup that mediates care services through digital platforms. Analysis: Using feminist and intersectional theory, we explore how Tuktu’s business model commodifies care and exploits care workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors and stripping them of labour rights and protections.Conclusions and implications: We advocate for comprehensive policy reforms that ensure equitable labour standards, uphold the dignity of care recipients, and promote community-based care solutions. The study also calls for stronger regulation of digital platforms in the care economy, ensuring that the integration of technology enhances, rather than undermines, the quality of care and labour conditions.

Migrant agricultural workers employed through Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program face serious occupational health and safety hazards, with compounded difficulties in accessing workers’ compensation (WC) if they are sick or injured by the job. Little is known, however, about their ability to return to work (RTW) upon recovery—a fundamental right included in the conception of WC, but complicated by their restrictive work permits and precarious immigration status. Based on interviews with injured migrant workers in two Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario), our research suggests that workers’ RTW process is anything but straightforward. This article highlights three key issues—pressure to return to work prematurely, communication and bureaucratic challenges with WC agencies, and impacts of injury/illness and failure to return to work on workers’ long-term well-being. Consequences and opportunities for reform are discussed.