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Analyzes some of the practices that cause discontent within unions including weaknesses in equity, internal politics, and decision-making practices.

This chapter describes the multi-faceted dynamics of anti-unionism in Canada, and considers how the labour movement might respond. Authors Larry Savage and Stephanie Ross describe the history of anti-unionism in politics, law, and Canadian culture while paying special attention to employer union avoidance tactics and the influence of mainstream media on the public perception of unions. --Introduction

This chapter examines union avoidance strategies in Canada's growing casino gaming sector through a case study of six successive failed unionization drives at Niagara's casinos between 1996 and 2016. --Introduction

This chapter examines the concept of precariousness in work in relation to income and labour market polarization. Although there is growing interest in the separate but related notion of precarity in human geography, economic and labour geographers have engaged less with the literature on precarious work and the decline of the standard employment relation. This chapter provides a brief overview of how precarious employment is understood, before turning to focus on two particular dimensions: the role of labour market intermediaries, and the challenges of regulation in an era of flexible work.

Feminist theories of social reproduction are theories of the gendered nature of power and domination. This seems axiomatic, and the recent upsurge of interest in social reproduction in human geography (Casolo and Doshi, 2013; Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson, 2016; Hopkins, 2015; Jackson and Neely, 2015; Kofman, 2012; Pimlott-Wilson, 2015; Rioux, 2015) in part relates to the continuing urgency of the need to understand the relationship between social difference and the exercise of power in the contemporary space economy. The elision of reproductive relations and the gendered norms that undergird them from accounts of economic and political crisis, despite decades of feminist research and activism, continues almost unabated. This elision reveals as much as it obscures, shining a light on the politics of knowledge production inside and outside of the academy and bolstering the sense among proponents of the upsurge of feminist theory and social reproduction – myself included – that ‘theory as usual’ is not an option. The conjunctural crisis affecting political economic and ecological foundations of contemporary societies does not sit above the epiphenomena of social relations and related social infrastructures, although there is little to acknowledge their fundamental interrelationship in many accounts of crisis. At the same time, however, the landscape of what we might broadly characterize as ‘feminist theory’ is highly variegated, with ongoing tensions among those who identify with post-structuralist, radical and political economic traditions. Nancy Fraser has famously characterized these tensions as struggles over redistribution versus recognition, where the latter is identified with (oft-conflated) post-structuralism and identity politics. JK Gibson-Graham, on the other hand, has associated Marxian political economic approaches (including the concept of social reproduction) with capital-centrism and deep-seated androcentrism. Feminism is itself a house divided. These divisions are perhaps inevitable on a terrain as broad and uneven as feminism. Nor is a unified, monolithic feminism necessarily desirable. The conceptualization of power is itself a key site of differentiation within feminist theory and research. Fraser, a feminist theorist and political philosopher of the Critical Theory school, has received relatively little attention in human geography – far less than one of her main sparring partners and interlocutors, Judith Butler. But, as I argue in this chapter, her body of work is a rich, if not unproblematic, resource not only for feminist geographers but for all of us who are, or should be, interested in how power, inequality and justice are interrelated with reproduction of and through difference.

There is overwhelming evidence that less secure forms of employment are replacing the standard employment relationship. It is essential that we understand the occupational health effects and social implications of precarious employment. Drawing on data collected by the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research group, this chapter argues the effects of precarious employment are broader than low wages and irregular employment. Workers face increased health risks and households face increased anxiety.

This chapter explores the myriad of ways that Canadians use their status in Ontario to advance the labour agenda, and impact the lived experiences for migrant agricultural workers. It focuses on the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme (SAWP). The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' website lists the main agriculture in Ontario in 2016. The major fruit crops were grapes, apples, peaches and strawberries. There are two primary concerns that appear again and again within the advocacy movement regarding SAWP: membership status in Canada and inadequate health and safety standards. SAWP workers are entitled to health care but are often reliant on the farm operator to access that care. There are three groups operating in Ontario who are examples of working with, not for, this group of workers that have been marginalized and exploited through legislation and economics; they are the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; Justice for Migrant Workers; and the Migrant Workers Alliance.

The Canadian working class was emerging well before 1867. By Confederation one could say for the first time that the growth of the working class was now unstoppable. The creation of the Dominion of Canada took place precisely at that moment when widespread industrialization was visibly underway. In 1851, fewer than a quarter of Hamilton, Ontario’s workers laboured in workshops of ten or more employees; by 1871 the share was more than 80%.[1] In less than two decades, Hamilton had been transformed from a market town dominated by commerce into a powerful symbol of heavy industry. Significant and startling though this change was at the time, it was dwarfed by developments in the 1890s. In that decade, Canadian economic growth simultaneously intensified in the older cities and found new fields in which to flourish in the West. The population of Canada in 1901 was 5,371,315; ten years later it was 7,206,643 – an increase of 34%. At the same time, however, the labour force grew from 1,899,000 in 1901 to 2,809,000 in 1911, a phenomenal 50% increase.[2] To put this into some perspective, there were only 3,463,000 people in the Dominion in 1867 — by 1911 there were close to that many working, wage-earning Canadians. The working class were motivated and shaped by different factors in the various regions of the country, although common themes were quick to arise. --Introduction

The Westray mine exploded on May 9, 1992 killing all 26 miners who were working underground at the time. It quickly became apparent that the explosion was not an unforeseeable accident, but rather the predictable result of unsafe and unlawful mining practices, and lax regulatory enforcement. Inadequate ventilation allowed methane concentrations to reach explosive levels and coal dust had been permitted to accumulate. A spark, most probably from an underground mining machine striking a rock, ignited the gas, growing into a rolling methane flame that in turn ignited the coal dust, causing a coal-dust explosion. The mine inspectors knew of these hazardous conditions. During the summer of 1991, without making a formal order, they demanded that the company produce a stone-dusting plan to address the coal-dust hazard. By March 1992 nothing had been done. At that time the inspectors first became aware of dangerous levels of methane, but nothing was done. The next inspection took place on April 29, 1992. Finding that the coal dust problem still had not been addressed, the inspector finally issued a formal order requiring the company to clean up the hazard immediately and to produce a coal-dusting plan by mid-May. Ten days later, the mine exploded (Glasbeek and Tucker 1993; Jobb 1994; Richard 1997).

Prior to May 2015, the oil-rich jurisdiction of Alberta had, for over four decades, been a one-party state. During that time, the rule of the Progressive Conservatives essentially went unchallenged, with critiques of government policy falling on deaf ears and Alberta ranking behind other provinces in voter turnout. Given the province’s economic reliance on oil revenues, a symbiotic relationship also developed between government and the oil industry. Cross-national studies have detected a correlation between oil-dependent economies and authoritarian rule, a pattern particularly evident in Africa and the Middle East. Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada sets out to test the “oil inhibits democracy” hypothesis in the context of an industrialized nation in the Global North. In probing the impact of Alberta’s powerful oil lobby on the health of democracy in the province, contributors to the volume engage with an ongoing discussion of the erosion of political liberalism in the West. In addition to examining energy policy and issues of government accountability in Alberta, they explore the ramifications of oil dependence in areas such as Aboriginal rights, environmental policy, labour law, women’s equity, urban social policy, and the arts. If, as they argue, reliance on oil has weakened democratic structures in Alberta, then what of Canada as whole, where the short-term priorities of the oil industry continue to shape federal policy? In Alberta, the New Democratic Party is in a position to reverse the democratic deficit that is presently fuelling political and economic inequality. The findings in this book suggest that, to revitalize democracy, provincial and federal leaders alike must find the courage to curb the influence of the oil industry on governance.--Publisher's description.

In this case study, we examine why the use of Temporary Foreign Workers increased in Alberta, how the former Conservatives government of Alberta encouraged and justified the use of migrant workers, and how a petroleum-based economy affects labour markets and the democratic health of a region. This study also explores how Alberta’s use of migrant workers is consistent with labour-market dynamics in an oil-exporting economy. --Authors' introduction

Given the difficulty generalizing across countries about industrial relations and human resource management practices, the discussion in this chapter is restricted to the United States and Canada. The chapter focuses on the continuity and change in North American auto industry labour relations. It traces the evolution of the post-war labour relations system in the North American automotive industry prior to 2000. It discusses the development of the archetypal Fordist system in the 1930s and 1940s, which produced a highly uniform pattern of labour relations across the auto industry in the United States and Canada. In the 1980s, Japanese automakers and their key suppliers introduced key elements of Japanese production methods (JPS) to North America. By 2012, not only had differences in bargaining outcomes narrowed between the United States and Canada but there was a new reality in which ‘union and non-union work in the auto industry have been rendered indistinguishable’.

Trafficking, forced labour and related phenomena have been documented time and again in recent years by advocacy groups, the media and government agencies. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are 20.9 million people in some form of forced labour worldwide. The estimate is broken down regionally and sectorally: 11.7 million of these are thought to be in the Asia and Pacific region; and 18.7 million are believed to be in the private economy, among whom 14.2 million are involved in economic activities not related to sexual exploitation. Debt bondage appears to be the most common mechanism of forced labour (cf. ILO 2005; 2012; Andrees and Belser 2009). The prevalence of labour relations characterized by various forms of unfreedom raises critical questions about how the phenomenon fits into the contemporary economy, and therefore about how to address the issue(s) in ways that advance the interests of all exploited workers. --Chapter abstract at Durham Research Online

The argument of this paper is that a contractual framework obscures more than the inequality of bargaining power between the parties – it also obscures the proprietary basis of the exchange. The employment contract is a legal mechanism designed to transfer wages and rights of control over workers’ capacity to labour. Conceived of in this way, the employment relationship is fundamentally a contest for control over property (labour power) waged through contract. For this reason, analysing the property parameters of the employment relationship opens up another window for examining the strengths and weaknesses of regulating employment through contract. -- From author's introduction

"In the mid-1980s, the Abella Commission on Equality in Employment and the federal Employment Equity Act made Canada a policy leader in addressing systemic discrimination in the workplace. More than twenty-five years later, Employment Equity in Canada assembles a distinguished group of experts to examine the state of employment equity in Canada today

[Examines] the three main doctrinal approaches adopted by Canadian courts to determine the scope of freedom of association, suggesting that under each approach, there is strong support for the conclusion that the right to strike is constitutionally protected. --Introduction

...Dans le présent texte, nous nous intéressons aux Irlandais de la « troisième génération » (des années de 1880 à 1890), c'est-à-dire à ces travailleurs forcés de trouver une nouvelle voie pour affronter les problèmes du temps. En 1879, la hausse dramatique des trarifs douaniers relance en effet l'industrialisation et sa cohorte de défis : les entreprises se multiplient, leur taille s'accroît aussi, augmentant la puissance du capitale. Le système de relations industrielles, dans lequel les organisations patronales commencent à proliférer, s'affiche plus hostile que jamais aux syndicats. L'implantation de l'Ordre des Chevaliers du travail dans la province constitue alors la réponse la plus percutante des ouvriers. --Introduction

"Depicts...[the] labour environment at Louisiana State University and a stark difference in resolve between US and Canadian academic librarians with respect to unionization.." -- Editors' introduction.

"[D]iscusses the issues of gender and status at Carleton University in the broader context of the pursuit of equity in Ontario during the 1960s and 1970s." -- Editors' introduction.

[Explores] the ongoing push and pull over the meaning of the Charter's freedom of assocation guarantee for the labour movement. --Introduction