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We explored how company transparency, as measured by ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) disclosure, affected the employee turnover of 212 multinational corporations that were listed in the European capital market during the 2010-2017 period. We also examined the role of the business environment by looking at the company’s ESG reporting system and its economic sector. To analyze how ESG disclosure affected employee turnover at any point of its conditional distribution, we used a panel data quantile regression model. ESG disclosure was found to be negatively associated with employee turnover. Employee turnover, as well as the extent to which it is affected by ESG disclosure, was found to depend strongly on the conditional distribution of the turnover rate, the sector and whether ESG disclosure is mandatory or voluntary. Our findings were confirmed by a robustness check analysis. In conclusion, the relationship between company transparency and employee turnover depends strongly on the institutional context and, especially, on disclosure regulation. The more a company is scrutinized, the more it will try to be socially responsible to maintain and/or improve its reputation and thus reassure and satisfy its stakeholders.

En 2013, le gouvernement du Québec a introduit un nouveau régime forestier qui a transformé la dynamique dans la gouvernance de la forêt publique. Parmi les changements apportés, l’État est désormais chargé de planifier et de gérer les activités d’aménagement forestier. L’aménagement forestier comprend des activités commerciales et non commerciales. De 1986 à 2013, le gouvernement attribuait aux entreprises forestières des volumes de bois à long terme au moyen de « contrats d’approvisionnement et d’aménagement forestier » (CAAF). Ces entreprises avaient également la responsabilité d’assurer les travaux sylvicoles non commerciaux visant la régénération des peuplements forestiers. La Loi sur l’aménagement durable du territoire forestier, en vigueur depuis 2013, a transformé en profondeur l’organisation des activités dans ce secteur. Sur le plan des activités commerciales, l’octroi de CAAF est remplacé par des « garanties d’approvisionnement », lesquelles confèrent à leurs bénéficiaires un volume de bois de la forêt publique à des fins de transformation. Sur le plan des activités non commerciales, l’État assume désormais l’entière responsabilité de la planification et de la gestion des opérations, jadis confiée aux titulaires de CAAF. À partir de données empiriques, ce texte met en lumière la façon dont le régime forestier instauré en 2013 a permis l’émergence d’acteurs, exogènes au champ du droit du travail, dont les pratiques et les schémas d’action façonnent aujourd’hui les conditions de travail des ouvriers et des ouvrières sylvicoles effectuant des tâches non mécanisées. Cette main-d’oeuvre effectue des opérations d’éducation de peuplement au moyen d’une scie débroussailleuse ainsi que du reboisement. Les acteurs identifiés interviennent dans la dynamique d’attribution et de supervision des contrats de travaux sylvicoles non commerciaux et jouent un rôle de contrôle et de surveillance des conditions de travail, laissant aux parties à la relation d’emploi un pouvoir limité.

The article reviews the book, "Empreintes de résistance. Filiations et récits de femmes autochtones et racisées," by Alexandra Pierre.

Introduces the first issue of the journal that is solely available online.

Foodsters United, a work-place organizing campaign by Toronto food couriers, shows that, even in the gig economy, the classic organizing methods work. The Foodsters successfully challenged their misclassification as independent contractors, got over 40 per cent of a large workforce to sign union cards, and triggered a union vote that they won with 88.8 per cent support. These victories were tempered by a devastating setback: their employer, Foodora, exited from Canadian markets. Nevertheless, what Foodsters United achieved through work-place organizing sustained its transformation into Gig Workers United, which is organizing all delivery platform workers in Toronto. Although platform companies like Foodora promote the idea that the gig economy is unprecedented, its historical continuities are more important than its discontinuities. This is also true of the work-place organizing in the gig economy. Foodsters United achieved substantial victories, not because they invented new organizing methods but because they adapted the classic methods, in often ingenious ways, to their gig economy work-place. This article is based on interviews with the campaign organizers. It is organized thematically according to classic work-place organizing methods, particularly those developed in the industrial organizing tradition, including organizing conversations, mapping, charting, leader identification, issue identification, and the creation of democratic organizations.

Research has struggled with the task of distinguishing high from low-quality employment. Making the distinction between challenging and hindering job demands in a context of social exchange, our study develops a generalizable heuristic for employment quality research. Latent class analysis with mixture modelling was applied to a sample of 2,143 adults from a diversity of occupations. A two-factor model provided substantial support for the distinction between challenging and hindering employment. Challenging employment was characterized by hard and emotionally demanding work and by provision of greater resources. Hindering employment involved several hindering demands and fewer resources. As predicted, challenging employment was associated with better self-reported general health and less psychological distress. The positive associations between higher education levels and longer work experience and challenging employment also supported the challenging/hindering heuristic.

This study examines worker voice in the development and implementation of safety plans or protocols for covid-19 prevention among hospital workers, long-term care workers, and education workers in the Canadian province of Ontario. Although Ontario occupational health and safety law and official public health policy appear to recognize the need for active consultation with workers and labour unions, there were limited – and in some cases no – efforts by employers to meaningfully involve workers, worker representatives (reps), or union officials in assessing covid-19 risks and planning protection and prevention measures. The political and legal efforts of workers and unions to assert their right to participate and the outcomes of those efforts are also documented through archival evidence and interviews with worker reps and union officials. The article concludes with an assessment of weaknesses in the government promotion and protection of worker health and safety rights and calls for greater labour attention to the critical importance of worker health and safety representation.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, diamonds have been lauded as a "glistening" driver of the northern Canadian economy. Canadian diamonds are cast with an imagined purity as though they had emerged by magic. However, these diamonds are mined on Dene land, extracted by people who fly in from afar, separated from their families for long periods of time. Adopting a decolonizing and feminist approach to political economy, Refracted Economies analyses the impact of diamond mining in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The book centres Indigenous women's social reproduction labour--both at the mine sites and at sites of community, home, and care--as a means of understanding the diffuse impacts of the diamond mines. Grounded in ethnographic work, the narratives of northern Indigenous women's multiple labours offer unique insight into the gendered ways northern land and livelihoods have been restructured by the diamond industry. Rebecca Jane Hall draws on documentary analysis, interviews, and talking circles in order to understand and appreciate the--often unseen--labour performed by Indigenous women. Placing this day-to-day labour at the heart of her analysis, Hall shows that it both reproduces the mixed economy and resists the gendered violence of settler colonialism as exemplified by extractive capitalism. --Publisher's description

This article reviews the book, "Capital and Ideology," by Thomas Piketty. translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

Income inequality has risen in Canada with the decline in union density and, thus, in union influence. Both trends have occasioned various proposals to reform federal and provincial labour relations systems, especially those aspects concerning certification. However, most proposals have been based on minor modifications to the Wagner Model of exclusive, majoritarian representation. To realize the full potential of these reform proposals, including, importantly, the likes of ‘broad-based bargaining,’ we contend that union membership should be the default option for new workers. Such a change would enable these proposals to increase absolute and relative levels of union membership, thereby providing the organizing resources (financial, human) required for much higher levels of union influence. In this study, we show that those living in Canada generally support union membership by default and would not opt out afterwards. We believe this popular support justifies making union membership automatic for new workers.

On 3 February 1989, leaders of the British Columbia labour movement, members of the environmental movement, and representatives from the Nuu-chah-nulth-aht Tribal Council (ntc) gathered to meet at Tin Wis, the ntc meeting space, in Tofino, BC, to discuss an alliance around environmental issues on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. This article takes this meeting, and subsequent alliance, as a way to explore the impact, potential, and contested meanings of alliances forged among workers, environmentalists, and First Nations in British Columbia in the late 20th century and beyond. In this way, the article examines from a historical perspective what sociologists have framed as the period of new social movements.

Cet article démontre l’importance pour les travailleurs et travailleuses migrants et immigrés de s’organiser en fonction de leurs réalités. Pour ce faire, l’auteur s’appuie sur l’expérience du Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants (CTI) de Montréal. Beaucoup de ces travailleurs ont un statut d’immigration précaire, qui les rend vulnérables à une exploitation capitaliste poussée. On présume que leur besoin de rester au Canada et de gagner de l’argent les empêchera de parler des inégalités en milieu de travail et dans les pratiques patronales. Quand la COVID-19 a frappé, ce sont ces travailleurs, chargés des tâches reconnues « essentielles » par les gouvernements, qui ont permis à la société de fonctionner. Des promesses de régulariser leur statut d’immigration ont été faites. Mais deux ans après, ces promesses ne se sont pas réalisées et le statut des travailleurs demeure précaire. Toutefois, l’expérience acquise par la CTI dans sa lutte contre l’imposition de mesures néolibérales lui a permis de tenir bon face aux conditions de travail dictées par la pandémie. Les efforts pour régulariser le statut des travailleurs migrants s’intensifient. Il y a actuellement une mobilisation à l’échelle du Canada pour presser le gouvernement de tenir ses engagements, confortée par la reconnaissance croissante de l’importance de ces travailleurs pour le pays. L’article dépeint la réalité de nombreux travailleurs qui vivent et besognent à la confluence de la racialisation et du statut précaire de migrant, et révèle combien ces conditions sont essentielles au maintien du système capitaliste. / This article demonstrates the importance for migrant and immigrant workers to organize in ways that represent their realities. It draws on the experience of Montreal’s Immigrant Workers’ Centre (IWC) to do this. Many of these workers have a precarious immigration status, making them vulnerable to acute capitalist exploitation. The presumption is that since workers’ need to remain in Canada and earn their living, they would remain silent about workplace inequalities and labour practices. When COVID-19 hit, it was these workers, doing what governments recognized as ‘essential’ work that kept societies functioning. Promises were made about regularization of their immigration status. However, it has been two years since the imposition of pandemic restrictions and these promises have rung hollow, leaving them with a precarious immigration status. Yet the organising experience gained by the IWC in the struggle against the imposition of neoliberal measures, prior to the pandemic, held the IWC in good stead as it faced pandemic working conditions. The struggle to regularize migrant workers’ status is mounting and at this moment there is a Canadawide mobilization to hold the government to its promise, bolstered by the growing recognition of the importance of these workers to the country. This article demonstrates the realities faced by many workers who live and work at the intersection of racialization and an insecure migrant status and reveals that it is key to propping up the capitalist system.

For educators seeking to build anti-racism learning into Canadian history classes, this 8-book set of classroom materials is an invaluable resource. Each book addresses a major instance of official racism and discrimination spanning more than 150 years. ...Titles included: Righting Canada's Wrongs: The Komagata Maru; Righting Canada's Wrongs: The Chinese Head Tax; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Anti-Semitism and the MS St. Louis; Righting Canada's Wrongs: The LGBT Purge; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Africville; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Italian Canadian Internment; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Residential Schools; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Internment; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Resource Guide. --Publisher's description

Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighbourhood with a strong Irish and French presence, and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighbourhood that is home to the city's English-speaking Black community, face each other across Montreal's Lachine Canal, once an artery around which work and industry in Montreal were clustered and by which these two communities were formed and divided. Deindustrializing Montreal challenges the deepening divergence of class and race analysis by recognizing the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles, and racial inequality. Fundamentally, deindustrialization is a process of physical and social ruination as well as part of a wider political project that leaves working-class communities impoverished and demoralized. The structural violence of capitalism occurs gradually and out of sight, but it doesn't play out the same for everyone. Point Saint-Charles was left to rot until it was revalorized by gentrification, whereas Little Burgundy was torn apart by urban renewal and highway construction. This historical divergence had profound consequences in how urban change has been experienced, understood, and remembered. Drawing extensive interviews, a massive and varied archive of imagery, and original photography by David Lewis into a complex chorus, Steven High brings these communities to life, tracing their history from their earliest years to their decline and their current reality. He extends the analysis of deindustrialization, often focused on single-industry towns, to cities that have seemingly made the post-industrial transition. The urban neighbourhood has never been a settled concept, and its apparent innocence masks considerable contestation, divergence, and change over time. Deindustrializing Montreal thinks critically about locality, revealing how heritage becomes an agent of gentrification, investigating how places like Little Burgundy and the Point acquire race and class identities, and questioning what is preserved and for whom. -- Publisher's description

We are in an important technological moment in history, where experts in academia, research institutes, and non-governmental organizations posit that developments in artificial intelligence (ai) will lead to widespread disruptions in the labour market. This article addresses this claim by asking if organized labour sees ai as an equally imminent threat. Moreover, it asks how labour is preparing to challenge the power of capital as employers leverage automation in an age of neoliberal precarity. Online materials published by unions affiliated with the Canadian Labour Congress are reviewed here through discursive analysis. Our findings indicate that while no union has expressed opposition to technological change, many have questioned how employers leverage it in the workplace and its wider geopolitical and societal effects that affect their members and communities. We find that discussion around technological change emphasizes that technology makes work better and safer in a human-centred work environment. Overall, organized labour in Canada is attentive to issues within the political-economic context of automation, precarious work, community impacts, the role of government and regulation, skills and retraining, and job loss, among others. Given the view of technology held by organized labour, we challenge perspectives of both techno-pessimism and techno-optimism and highlight instead that labour unions are in a unique position to both respond and adapt to the evolution of work. Expanded strategic interventions around automation are needed to combat precarious work and the erosion of working conditions at present and in the coming decade(s), and we point to some notable efforts that are underway.

The article reviews the book, "The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism," by Jennifer Delton.

Prisons don’t work, but prisoners do. Prisons are often critiqued as unjust, but we hear little about the daily labour of incarcerated workers — what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and under which conditions. Unions protect workers fighting for better pay and against discrimination and occupational health and safety concerns, but prisoners are denied this protection despite being the lowest paid workers with the least choice in what they do — the most vulnerable among the working class. Starting from the perspective that work during imprisonment is not “rehabilitative,” this book examines the reasons why people should care about prison labour and how prisoners have struggled to organize for labour power in the past. Unionizing incarcerated workers is critical for both the labour movement and struggles for prison justice, this book argues, to negotiate changes to working conditions as well as the power dynamics within prisons themselves. --Publisher's description

This article examines the efforts to establish objective criteria in deciding on appropriate wage levels for non-professional service workers in Ontario's hospital sector during the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing from recent literature in cultural political economy and the politics of valuation, it shows how industrial relations specialists sought to reframe the field of struggle through the practice of interest arbitration. Through a comparative study of arbitration cases in this period, the article explores the complex displacement of expertise from local hospital boards and medical professionals to law professors and labour economists, who sought to establish an industrial jurisprudence that could avoid strikes and lockouts in such essential industries by assigning awards based on the probable outcomes of industrial conflict. No longer were disputes settled through the ideological obfuscations of "justice"; instead, expert arbitrators drew on the science of economics in asserting irrefutable labour market "realities." While pretensions to scientific expertise in the settlement of disputes remained hegemonic through the late 1960s, hospital workers in Ontario, through their unions and in alliance with New Left organizations, effectively reasserted "justice" as a highly contextualized unit of value through their militant struggles in the early 1970s. The article concludes by discussing the tensions and contradictions produced out of these struggles and the subsequent challenges in regulating public-sector labour disputes.

The article reviews the book, "Transgender Marxism," edited by Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O'Rourke.

This study examines the effects of demographic characteristics of arbitrators on arbitration outcomes in the Canadian university sector. More specifically, we attempt to explain whether five characteristics of arbitrators (their experiences in law, management, and union affairs as well as their age and gender) could significantly determine how they adjudicate in cases heard in labor relations tribunals. Therefore, we examine whether the five aforementioned characteristics, as the group of independent variables, could significantly determine the variations of two dependent variables, namely the outcome of the arbitration procedure and compensation of any damages- interests.