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The action of health and safety representatives (HSRs) has proven beneficial for workers’ occupational health, but a number of determining factors can diminish HSRs’ effectiveness. One understudied factor shaping HSRs’ effectiveness is the interaction that exists between workers and HSRs, that is, the relationship that workers and their representatives establish with each other throughout a wide range of processes. In this paper, we explore the workers’ knowledge and opinions of their interaction with HSRs and its determinants. We undertook a qualitative exploratory and descriptive-interpretative study by means of 22 semi-structured interviews with a theoretical sample of workers from Barcelona and Girona (Spain). Results show a vast unawareness of HSRs’ existence and functions among workers; only the few workers who know the HSRs personally describe interaction processes with them, mainly concerning hazard identification. Some of the workers mentioned processes of interaction with unions regarding health and safety at work. These processes consist mainly in raising issues with union representatives and, in a more limited way, in associating with occupational health mobilizations and participating in decision-making processes. Determining factors of the interaction between workers and -health and safety or union- representatives emerge strongly in relation to representatives and workers and, in a more diluted way, with regard to the context or the firm. The study contributes to the research concerning the building of relations of representativeness as a way to better understand (and represent) workers’ needs and provides strategic insight for collective representation bodies to regain their legitimacy.

Previous research has indicated the prevalence of customer violence towards workers in the service sector, but few studies have looked at the impacts of this violence for LGBTQ2S+ workers. Drawing from survey results (n=208) and interviews (n=11) with LGBTQ2S+ service sector workers in Windsor and Sudbury, Ontario, this thesis explores the rates and experiences of customer violence for these workers, using chi-square analyses to identify relationships between customer violence and independent variables related to workers’ identity and workplace. Further analysis was conducted on qualitative interview data to understand how this violence was experienced, as well as how workers resisted and perceived management’s response. Customer violence was found to be widespread among survey and interview participants, with participants who were racialized as non-white, union members, and in precarious work situations reporting higher levels of violence. Interviews also showed how participants often resisted customer violence through individual means, and perceived support from management to be lacking and contingent upon economic motivations.

Dans un monde globalisé marqué par le multiculturalisme et le pluralisme confessionnel, la place du religieux cristallise les débats médiatiques, politiques, intellectuels et juridiques dans beaucoup de pays occidentaux. Sur fond de difficultés d’intégration professionnelle de personnes de confession musulmane et de discriminations religieuses au travail, la question du fait religieux s’est invitée dans les entreprises où les manifestations des convictions religieuses se sont diversifiées et complexifiées. L’analyse de ce phénomène social se caractérise par une diversité d’approches et d’angles de vue. Elle illustre tout à la fois la richesse, mais aussi la complexité des enjeux soulevés par les études du lien entre religion et management.

At the current conjuncture, histories of Canadian Communism seem analytically stalled in a fruitless (if inadequately addressed) historiographic impasse, ordered by oppositions: Moscow domination vs. local autonomy; authoritarianism vs. the pursuit of social justice. We need to confront these experiences, not as dichotomies, but as related phenomena, developing our histories of Communism around more totalizing appreciations that encompass both sides of a seemingly divided logic of classification. Having myself tried to see beyond the limiting oppositions of the extant historiography, I will explore how certain historians seem unwilling to look past the conveniently counter-posed analyses of two existing schools of thought, labelled traditionalists/revisionists in the United States and essentialists/realists in the United Kingdom. As distortions of my own writing suggest, we have reached a point where it is both appropriate and necessary to be more rigorous and fair-minded in our characterization of the historiography. --Introduction

This essay is an attempt to outline recent trends in the criminalization of working-class lives. It casts the net broadly, both historically and geographically, situating capitalist austerity's recent turn to mass incarceration in the United States and Canada in early 19th-century poor law sensibilities. What is happening now differs from the workhouse regime of industrial capitalism's new poor law, of course, but it has undoubted connections to this older regime of regulation. The new new poor law of our times is part of a long history of how dispossession has been pivotal to capitalism's project of uninhibited accumulation and suppression of those driven to defiance and dissent. It reveals how, as profit declines in the productive sphere, incarceration itself can be made to pay. The new new poor law is fundamental to contemporary capitalist political economy as the politics of austerity, the dismantling of the welfare state, and an assault on working-class entitlements and trade unionism are complemented by the rise of a prison-industrial complex. Driven by class antagonisms and racialized scapegoating, the new new poor law inevitably draws into its sphere of influence public-sector workers employed in the criminal justice system. It also unleashes intensified grievances of the incarcerated, stimulating the birth of movements of protest in which prisoners and proletarians search out ways of making common cause.

The article reviews the book, "Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956," edited by Evan Smith and Matthew Worley.

Provides an illustrated overview of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and its significance today for working-class organizations and socialism. Contents: Introduction: Revisiting the workers' revolt in Winnipeg / Sean Carleton and Julia Smith (p. 23) -- 1919: Recovering a a legacy / Bryan D. Palmer (pp. 24 - 31, 40) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/1919-recovering-a-legacy] -- 1919: A graphic history of the Winnipeg General Strike [reproduction of the cover and illustrations from the book by the Graphic History Collective and David Lester] (pp. 32, 36-37) --  Red flags: Reflections on racism and radicalism / Owen Yoews (pp. 33-35, 40) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/red-flags-reflections-on-racism-and-radicalism] -- From 1919 to the fight for $15: Working-class organizing in Winnipeg today / Emily Leedham (pp. 38-30) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/from-1919-to-the-fight-for-15-working-class-organizing-in-winnipeg-today].

A relatively recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) publication is not the only voice that suggests the possibility of achieving prosperity and growth in the modern age without the need to have a strong manufacturing base. Like agriculture before the industrial revolution, “making things” appears to take the back seat as services, and in particular knowledge intensive services that determine “how to make things”, take over as growth drivers. Of course, the trends of progress are irreversible, and “making things” will constitute a shrinking part of employment and, possible value created. The latter will most likely be even truer if one cannot separate perfectly the value of incorporated services, as the knowledge content of the “things made” and the incorporated services build their own complex interactions and grow exponentially. However, as we argue here, there will always be a need to make things (including the occasional spacesuit taking a drive in its interstellar Tesla car). Even as the relationship between physical manufacturing, knowledge and services becomes more blurred, manufacturing will remain an indispensable ingredient of the final product. As pointed out in the literature, the role of manufacturing is and will never be the same for developing and developed countries, performing different roles in both. For developing countries, it will still contribute towards the rapid development of key skills that will complete the skills set of the country, and for developed countries, it will have a mature and symbiotic relationship with services, ensuring the proximity of the know-how and the production of goods that incorporate it, seamless cooperation, and design and service development at the frontier. --Introduction

This study concerns the social and emotional dimensions of Mexican migrant workers’ temporary labour migration experience as they relate to precarity and unfreedom within the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). My principle inquiry centers around understanding migrant workers’ subjective and emotional experiences of being away from home and family. This study makes the case that migration and family separation, as requirements of SAWP employment, are precarious labour conditions that result overwhelmingly in distressing emotional experiences that go unseen in workers’ daily lives. I draw on a deeply qualitative methodological approach and theories of precarity, emotion and practice to explore the ways that SAWP workers navigate their labour migration experience through a series of practices in their daily lives. I conclude by sharing my participants’ recommendations for a more dignified and humanized labour experience and with their insistence that they are not maquinas (machines).

The article reviews the book, "Introduction to Workplace Safety and Health Management," by Goh Yang Miang.

Cet article porte sur un type de travail trop peu étudié : le travail gestionnaire. À la suite de Braverman, nous considérons qu'il s'agit là d'un travail à part entière. Ses caractéristiques sont cependant différentes de celles du travail ouvrier. Si ce dernier relève de la biopolitique par le travail qu'il produit sur les corps, le travail gestionnaire relève d'une psychopolitique destinée à forger un nouvel individu défini par des habiletés, techniques, cognitives et surtout psychologiques. Assumant une position éducative, le journal Les Affaires publié au Québec à partir de 1928 entreprend, entre autres projets, de définir le travail gestionnaire et de produire ainsi un discours qui permet de légitimer la transformation capitaliste.

Les organisations sont confrontées de manière croissante aux enjeux de reconnaissance au travail comme l’actualité française récente a pu le montrer. Les salariés s’attendent à être reconnus dans le cadre de leur activité professionnelle et les chercheurs, archétypes des professionnels du savoir, ne font pas exception. Étudier la reconnaissance des chercheurs semble d’autant plus nécessaire que de plus en plus de personnes s’engagent dans l’économie de la connaissance en général et que le métier de chercheur en particulier connait des évolutions qui tendent à modifier leur rapport au travail. Par ailleurs, le concept de reconnaissance au travail, pourtant facteur de motivation important, reste insuffisamment étudié ce qui limite la compréhension de ses enjeux et les réponses possibles aux attentes des salariés.

Diminishing returns and advances in telecommunications have prompted large video game firms to seek new locations, outsource production, and develop niche studios, including on Canada's East Coast. In this paper, we examine emerging occupational cultures and trace the origins and evolution of video game production in Canada's Atlantic provinces—a critical yet peripheral space economy in the gaming sector. Our findings are drawn from 30 interviews with gameworkers, studio managers, government officials, and other industry experts. We find this industry to be driven by the confluence of three major factors: (i) provincial governments have supported video game development as a strategic industry via financial incentives; (ii) firms are benefiting from a return migration effect and are repatriating Atlantic Canadian talent from media hubs by selling “home,” work‐life balance, and an alternative to the punishing gamework culture associated with Silicon Valley; and (iii) post‐secondary institutions in the region have improved their talent pipelines through computer science, digital media, and video game development programs.

Despite the popular representation of the masculine hero migrant (Ni Laoire, 2001), rural youth scholars have found that young men are more likely to stay on in their communities, while young women tend to be more mobile, leaving for education and better employment opportunities elsewhere (Corbett, 2007b; Lowe, 2015). Taking a spatialized approach (Farrugia, Smyth & Harrison, 2014), we contribute to and extend the rural youth studies scholarship on gender, mobilities and place by considering the case of young Newfoundlanders’ geographical mobilities in relation to male-dominated resource extraction industries. We draw on findings from two SSHRC-funded research projects, the Rural Youth and Recovery project, a subcomponent of the Community-University Research for Recovery Alliance (CURRA) and the Youth, Apprenticeship and Mobility project, a subcomponent of the On the Move Partnershi We argue that the spatial coding of gender relations in rural Newfoundland makes certain kinds of mobilities more intelligible and possible for young men, while constraining women’s. In other words, gender relations of rural places are “stretched out” (Farrugia et al., 2014) across space through the mobility practices of young men and women in relation to work in skilled trades and resource extraction industries. These “stretched out” gender relations are reproduced by the organisation of a sector that relies on a mobile workforce free from care and domestic work and familiar with manual work.

This report describes experiences of extreme employment precarity and impacts on health and well-being among South Asians in Toronto. In 2018, community advocates from the South Asian Women’s Rights Organizations (SAWRO), Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic (IWC), and researchers from McMaster University came together to develop a health and safety workshop for South Asian workers. The initiative grew from a need identified at the community level for more information and advocacy around health and safety in the South Asian community, and among South Asian women in particular. It was funded by a Multicultural Community Capacity Grant from the Government of Ontario. Advocates and researchers developed a 2-hour training workshop on precarious employment, employment rights and workers’ compensation. They trained 10 outreach workers from SAWRO on these topics, and the outreach workers went into their community to share the knowledge they gained and advertise the workshop. The workshop, held in February 2019, was attended by 53 men and women. In March 2019, researchers held two focus groups with a total of 20 South Asian men and women to discuss and document experiences of work and health. This report is ased on the stories shared with us during the training session for outreach workers, the workshop, and the focus groups. --From Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Agir sur la santé au travail. Acteurs, dispositifs, outils et expertise autour des enjeux psychosociaux," edited by Arnaud Mias et Cyril Wolmark.

The article reviews the book, "A Worker’s Economist: John R. Commons and his Legacy from Progressivism to the War on Poverty," by John Dennis Chasse.

The article reviews the book, "Reducing Inequalities in Europe: How Industrial Relations and Labour Policies Can Close the Gap," edited by Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead.

International teaching assistants (ITAs) in North American English-medium universities often work with an accent. In one sense, to work with an accent entails doing one’s work while having an aural stigma. This is due to the increased likelihood that students and other university stakeholders perceive ITAs’ foreign-accented English as difficult to understand. The purported problem of their foreign accents can thus create additional facets in working with an accent such as working with the idea of how to change an accent and performing (around) it in order to be viewed as effective workers. All of this work can be considered a type of aesthetic labour in that ITAs need to develop the right sound for their professional duties. Based on a narrative inquiry of the experiences of 14 ITAs working in various universities in Ontario, Canada, this thesis explores how they conceptualize and execute aesthetic labour. Specifically, it details their perceptions of a satisfactory aural aesthetic for work as well as the extent to which they incorporate this aesthetic in discussions about their professional practices. Regarding the first research objective, the ITAs understood a satisfactory accent in linguistic, racial, and professional terms. Indeed, an accent could sound “native” or “nonnative,” become “whitened” or remain racialized, and match or not match one’s work (environment). In terms of taking up these perceptions in their professional practices, which took the general form of working on or around an accent, the ITAs’ prior views on aural aesthetics were upheld and/or tempered by contextual factors in their universities. On the immediate level, the above findings provide suggestions for changes to existing forms of ITA training, which tend to ignore the knowledge of ITAs and fail to prepare them to effectively communicate according to the specificities of their work environments. More broadly, the findings are useful in highlighting how accents are not stable individual traits, but rather, malleable tools that help workers negotiate intercultural encounters in a range of professional settings. Therefore, this study counters research that frames the ITA accent as an inherent problem needing to be rectified for a homogeneous audience.