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Despite the severe and widespread concerns with algorithmic transparency and the opacity of AI-driven automation, their arrival has made one thing quite clear: our present-day society is not ready, and it has nothing to do with the new technologies themselves. Increasing income inequality, undervalued and unrecognized labour, a growing wealth gap, the erosion of workers’ rights, widespread work precarity, policies systemically favouring capital at the expense of labour, and an outdated social safety net are the natural result of capitalist logic and its institutions set up to govern Canadian society. They are old problems, albeit now with a robotic twist. If we do not address these problems directly for what they are, independent of the technology that brought them into sharper relief, we risk sorely misdirecting the future of work in Canada. But more than that, we risk squandering the current political momentum, popular interest and ethical self-awareness to bring about the free, equitable and democratic society we should already inhabit. -- From author's conclusion

Describes how large numbers of society’s most vulnerable organized and won a historic victory.

With the federal government celebrating flexible employment there’s an obvious lack of political will to ensure that disabled Canadians are able to pursue meaningful careers. It’s not enough to shrug off this marginalization of disabled workers as the cost of innovation. Over a million Canadians are waiting for the employment equity measures of the last century to take hold and for a guarantee that the coming churn won’t leave them in tatters. --Author's conclusion.

Describes how pension funds often invest in enterprises that undermine the interests of workers. From a union perspective, leveraging financial power gained from investing in this way is therefore con- tradictory, even morally questionable.

Abridged version of Stanford's lecture on on the theory and practice of progressive trade policy given on the occasion of his award of the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize at the Canadian Economics Association's meeting in Montreal in June 2018. Presents a 10-point plan that includes making market access conditional on human and labour rights.

This report provides updated living wage calculations for families living in Atlantic Canada. Covering the costs to raise a family in the Maritimes requires two adults to be working full-time earning a living wage of $19 an hour in Halifax, $18.18 in Saint John and $17.75 in Antigonish. Since 2016, the living wage rate in Halifax decreased very slightly from $19.17, increased slightly in Antigonish from $17.30. The wages did not change very much because of the full year inclusion of the Canada Child Benefit and its indexation to inflation, which covered all or most of the expense increases.

Using International Social Survey Program data, we explore the relationship between economic context and attitudes with respect to the distribution of incomes in 20 modern societies, including Canada. Our findings demonstrate that economic inequality has an enduring influence on attitudes. Consistent with the economic self-interest thesis, preferences for equality are strongest among those in working-class occu- pations. Moreover, independent of one’s own social class, one’s father’s social class has a similar enduring impact on attitudes later in life. These relationships are relatively similar across the 20 societies we explore. Still, significant differences in attitudes can be explained by national economic context. We find a strong positive relationship between national-level inequality and opinions on how much inequality there ought to be in the income distribution. In contrast to previous research, however, our findings suggest that national-level economic prosperity and equality of opportunity have little influence on public opinion.

The theory and practice of community unionism has been central to discussions of alt-labor, union renewal, and revitalization, particularly in relation to union praxis at the urban or local scale. This comparative case study explores two labor-community campaigns to defend public child care services in the context of neoliberal austerity in urban/suburban space. While labor-community coalitions are a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for success, in urban/suburban contexts in which community allies are weak and municipal administrations hostile, public-sector unions must continue to play a leading role in campaigns despite the risk of being cast as defenders of sectional interests rather than of the public good. In such contexts, union involvement in community organizing is a necessary precursor to successful labor-community campaigns.

We use simulation methods and a detailed tax calculator to analyze the likely effects of two recent pro- posals aimed at reforming the Quebec Pension Plan (QPP): the federal proposal, eventually implemented throughout Canada, and the Quebec government’s December 2016 proposal. Accounting for education- adjusted life expectancy, earnings variability over the course of a career, and their interactions with the tax code and retirement income system, we find that internal rates of return (IRRs) for new QPP contribu- tions are similar under both reforms for individuals with lifetime average annual earnings of more than $40,000. Both reforms yield substantial IRRs for low-income individuals. Although the Quebec proposal offers higher IRRs for individuals earning less than $40,000, the federal proposal yields greater present value benefits for these same individuals. We show that if new QPP benefits were exempted from the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) clawback, and provided that the working income tax benefit and GIS were not enhanced, the two reforms would yield similar IRRs for individuals with average earnings of more than $15,000. The QPP reform would thus better focus on the middle-income earners originally targeted by reform advocates.

We investigate the post-layoff configuration of income sources and pathways of prime-age and older laid- off workers exhibiting a high degree of prior attachment. Using a unique Canadian administrative database that links the event of the involuntary layoff with detailed data on income receipt, we track all of their sources of income over an interval spanning five years after layoff. We conduct a multivariate statistical analysis of the incidence of relying on income from several alternative sources, specifically early retirement (both public and private), reemployment, self-employment, or reliance on social insurance benefits (other than pensions). The two most common states for laid-off workers who have not yet reached normal retirement age are early retirement and continued labour market activity. Our findings indicate that the older workers are at the point of layoff, the greater the likelihood is that they will rely on pension income as their primary income source. This incidence of reliance on pension income also increases with the number of years elapsed since the point of layoff.

In times of economic growth, it is fair to expect that wages and job quality will improve with positive benefits being experienced throughout society. But between 2011 and 2017—a period when Ontario’s economy experienced significant gains—our research found that these expectations did not come true: the adage that a rising tide will lift all boats proved to be false in Ontario.

We address health capacity to work among older Canadian workers with a specific focus on differences by gender and region. We find that in 2012 men would have needed to work more than five additional years between ages 55 and 69 to keep pace with how much men worked in 1976, holding health capacity constant. For working women, the comparable result is only two years more work. Most of these gaps arose before the mid-1990s; since then, employment advances have offset mortality improvements. Regionally, more than half the Ontario–Atlantic employment difference among older men is rooted in health differences.

Analysis of amended data from a large-scale Canadian employment audit study (Oreopoulos 2011) shows substantial organization size differences in discrimination against skilled applicants with Asian (Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani) names in the decision to call for an interview. In organizations with more than 500 employees, Asian-named applicants are 20 percent less likely to receive a callback; in smaller organizations, the disadvantage is nearly 40 percent. Large organizations may discriminate less frequently because of more resources in recruitment and training, more human resources development, and greater experience with diversity. Anonymized résumé review may allow organizations to test hiring procedures for discrimination fairly inexpensively.

This article examines workers’ experiences with a union characterized by a social unionist framing and repertoire in the political realm and bureaucratic servicing of problems in the workplace realm. It analyzes interviews with members and officials about union strategies within privatized homecare predominately provided by immigrant women in Toronto. Workers report both consensual and tense relations with clients prompting them to praise their union’s political strategies yet criticize its limited workplace support. Findings indicate the importance of framing and repertoire that connect quality work with quality care, yet indicate a complex labor process that requires more conceptual and strategic attention.

While post-secondary institutions are places of learning, they also employ thousands of people across a broad spectrum of job classifications. This report explores the extent to which workers in Canada’s post-secondary institutions are experiencing precarity. More precisely, it asks whether employment on university and college campuses in Ontario is becoming more precarious, for whom and for what reasons. This report combines quantitative analysis of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data with qualitative accounts of the lived experience of precarity from post-secondary employees. Overall, the LFS data analysis suggests that 53% of post-secondary education workers in Ontario are, to some extent, precariously employed. Specifically, the report identifies a rise in work categories that are more precarious (e.g., research assistants and teaching assistants) alongside a decline in others that have traditionally been less precarious (e.g., librarians).

English/French abstracts of articles in the Fall 2018 issue.

The Workers’ Action Centre (WAC) is a worker-based organization. We are committed to improving the lives and working conditions of people in low-wage and unstable employment. Thousands of working families are struggling to make ends meet, so we take action and organize for decent work. We believe that the leaders in the fight for decent work should be the workers directly affected by poor working conditions. Workers have firsthand experience of problems at work, and have the best insight into what will bring fairness and dignity to Ontario’s workplaces. Our members are workers in precarious jobs. We are recent immigrants, workers of colour, women, men, and youth. Most of us don’t belong to unions because we work in small workplaces, are temporary workers, on contract, independent contractors or unemployed. This month we may be juggling 2 or 3 jobs, but next month we might not have any work or income. When we are able to find full-time work, there is still little protection against unfair working conditions or employers who don’t pay us what we should be paid. --Website

Teaching staff in Ontario schools do not reflect the increasing diversity of the students who occupy Ontario classrooms today. School boards across Ontario have come under considerable scrutiny regarding the lack of diverse teacher representation that adequately reflects Ontario’s demographic composition (Childs et al., 2010; Ryan, et al., 2009; Turner, 2015). This thesis addresses the Ontario teacher diversity gap (James Turner, 2017; Turner 2015; Turner, 2014; Ryan, et al., 2009) in relation to provincial equity and inclusive educational policies, which have been created to address the dominance of white teachers in publicly-funded education in Ontario. However, findings from the research indicate that these policies have not had the desired results, and in some ways have contributed to perpetuating the status quo, and the ongoing overrepresentation of white teachers in schools. The thesis furthermore addressed the notion of bias-free hiring (Fine Handlesman, 2012; Hassouneh, 2013) practices through narratives of Ontario teachers themselves. The predominant assumption of bias-free hiring is that one can divorce themselves from their unconscious biases and preconceptions of groups who are dissimilar to them in order to recruit the so-called “most qualified applicant”. The narrative of the “most qualified applicant” is a term invoked when racialized people seek access to employment opportunities. School administrators have great influence on who is hired; therefore it is important for administrators to interrogate their own social locations and positions of power, and unconscious bias in terms of how they recruit teachers. Findings from the research indicate that teachers from racialized groups have different experiences when seeking employment as teachers in publicly-funded school boards in Ontario. In response to this the EHT Equity Hiring Toolkit for Ontario School Administrators has been developed to support school administrators to recruit more diverse teachers. The EHT provides a framework for school administrators to engage in antiracist praxis and action, by examining their social location, and ways that their positionality impacts the hiring decisions they make. School administrators can use the creation of the Toolkit based on the findings of the data that emerged from the research as a Creative Professional Activity (CPA). I consider this to be my contribution to the field of social justice education and leadership.

The article reviews the book, "Firms as Political Entities -- Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism," by Isabelle Ferreras.

Dans notre monde globalisé, l’aire de jeux des acteurs n’est plus circonscrite à la structure, mais elle est, désormais, élargie au territoire. Cet effacement des frontières organisationnelles tend à favoriser le développement d’une logique partenariale, y compris en matière de gestion des ressources humaines (GRH) au regard des bouleversements de l’environnement socio-économique. C’est dans ce contexte actuel qu’une nouvelle forme émergente de GRH apparaît, se situant dans une démarche de RSE (responsabilité sociétale des entreprises) étendue qui ne se restreint plus uniquement à certains aspects sociaux. L’objectif de cet article est d’étudier une approche alternative de la GRH qui se veut plus sociétale. Nous nous attachons à répondre à la problématique suivante : comment instaurer une GRH sociétale en PME ? Utilisant l’approche contextualiste de Pichault et Nizet (2013), nous soulignons l’importance pour le dirigeant de mobiliser des acteurs tant internes qu’externes pour atteindre cet objectif. À partir du cas d’une PME française du secteur de l’économie solidaire, nous explorons, grâce à des récits de vie, des entretiens semi-directifs, des observations participantes et non participantes, ainsi que des analyses documentaires, le processus de construction de cette nouvelle forme de GRH. Nos résultats mettent en lumière trois étapes-clés : 1- l’émergence de cette GRH autour de la création d’un pacte social; 2- son évolution source d’adhésion et de frustration; et, enfin, 3-la diffusion de cette GRH alternative auprès des partenaires externes.