Search

Precarious Employment (PE) is characterized by job, income, and benefit insecurities. Studies surrounding PE and well-being have been predominantly quantitative, leaving a gap in rich descriptions of employment experiences. We recruited a sample of 40 adults aged 25-55 who were involved in PE during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic or lost employment due to the pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were administered. Employment and income insecurities were common and had negative impacts on the well-being of participants and their families. Uncertainty about future employment prospects and job and income loss resulted in chronic distress. Other insecurities—access to benefits, violation of worker rights, worker safety—was also reported as impacting well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened insecurities, hardships, and distress among workers with PE conditions. Given the myriad insecurities experienced by those engaged in PE, the focus of precarious work research should also include working conditions, violation of worker rights, and managerial domination.

The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, Tomoya Obokata, visited Canada from 23 August to 6 September 2023. During his visit, he travelled to Ottawa, Moncton, Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver.

The article reviews the book, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: Living the British Empire in Jamaica, 1756," by Sheryllynne Heggerty.

In December 2021, the Ontario government passed into law Bill 88, the Working for Workers Act, 2022. Among other developments, the Working for Workers Act, 2022 introduced the Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act, 2022, establishing a number of rights for platform workers. This Article is a brief, non-exhaustive evaluation of the provisions of the Act, with particular emphasis on how it impacts the salient issues associated with the regulation of platform work. The article concludes that, notwithstanding its limitations, the Act is a major step in the right direction towards effective regulation of the working conditions for platform workers.

As discourse on transnational labor migration continues to highlight the influence of structures on the experiences and existence of caregivers, Canada’s economic immigration and status regularization programs are not excluded from the discussions. Particularly, the Canada (Live-in) Caregiver Program (henceforth LCP) introduced in 1992 has gained attention from popular and scholarly cycles despite being the only economic immigration program that guarantees permanent residency status to applicants after fulfilling the mandatory program requirements. Drawing from 19 empirical studies, this systematic literature review discussed some emerging themes from the LCP. From the studies reviewed, it was found that both current and former caregivers continue to bear the direct brunt of caregiving given their positionality as mostly racialized women from low-income countries. Moreover, among the range of issues discussed, homelessness, food insecurity, and the deteriorating health conditions of care workers are some pressing issues that need urgent scholarly and policy attention. These findings underscore the need for periodic reassessments of the LCP to understand the intersectionality of current and emerging issues—as the program has greater potential to meet rising care needs in Canada, but only if the living conditions of caregivers are addressed.

Responds to hagwil hayetsk/Charles Menzie's paper, "Capitalism and Colonialism," published in the same issue.

At the "Challenging Labour" / «Le défi du travail» conference held at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, in October 2022, two plenary sessions invited scholars to engage in a dialogue on important historical and theoretical issues in the field of labour and working-class history/studies. One of these, on the entanglement of capitalism and colonialism, featured a paper delivered by Bryan D. Palmer and a response from hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies). These presentations are revised for publication here along with a rejoinder from Palmer in what is Labour/Le Travail's first "Forum" section. The aim of this section is to foster conversation, with scholars meaningfully engaging with each other's work across disciplinary, methodological, theoretical, or other kinds of differences in approach and understanding. The merit of this kind of dialogue is well demonstrated here by Palmer and hayetsk, and the editors would invite more such conversations for publication in this section in future issues. --Editors' introduction

En raison de leur statut prééminent, les droits fondamentaux se sont introduits dans le droit du travail. Les regards se sont vite tournés vers la confrontation normative qui résulte de l'assemblage de ces deux domaines du droit aux logiques distinctes. Les droits de la personne ont alors été appréhendés davantage dans un rapport de confrontation plutôt que de complémentarité avec le corpus du droit du travail. Cette étude historico-juridique cherche à démontrer que le construit du droit du travail recoupe pourtant les trois traits structurants des droits de la personne, soit la fondamentalité, l'universalité et l'inaliénabilité. Cette complémentarité devrait être prise en compte dans l'interprétation des droits fondamentaux au sein de la relation d'emploi, ce qui devrait accentuer le degré de protection de la personne au travail.

Advertising tools used by sex workers for solicitation and client screening have been identified as supporting occupational health and safety (OHS); however, sex work legislation continues to criminalize advertising by third parties. We explored how the criminalization of third-party advertising and online censorship shapes indoor sex workers’ access to OHS measures such as client screening, and negotiation of prices and services, in addition to income security.

This thesis investigates the role of Kelowna’s public transit union (the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1722 – ATU 1722) and a youth-led environmental group (Fridays for Future Kelowna) in the formation of the Okanagan Transit Alliance (OTA). The OTA is a grassroots movement for better public transit in the Central Okanagan. The central research question is, "how can transit unions engage in climate activism?". A participatory activist methodology is employed to study the joint campaign for more accessible, publicly managed, and community-driven transit. The findings are organized into three themes. The first theme is ecosocialism – a political ideology which centers ecological concerns in socialist thought – because the campaign advocates for an ecosocialist goal of ending the private management of Kelowna’s transit. The findings in this area highlight the importance of organizing around people’s basic needs, uncertainty about the role of the government in the campaign, and that engaging in collective struggle is important for developing working-class power. The campaign was co-led by the ATU 1722, and so the second theme, unions, examines their role in the campaign. Under this theme are the findings that the two leading organizations developed a mutually beneficial collaboration, and that the public facing role of bus drivers helped the union build connections with the community. At the same time, contemporary union challenges impacted the ATU 1722’s ability to engage in effective advocacy. Finally, under the third theme of organizing, the research broadly explores organizing tactics to develop the climate justice movement. We found that a welcoming environment and co-creation led to high participation levels, and that relationships were fundamental to the campaign. This thesis highlights the potential of unions to play a pivotal role in climate activism, bridging the gap between labor and environmental concerns. The case of ATU 1722, Fridays for Future Kelowna, and the OTA serves as an inspiring example of how labor organizations can actively contribute to the broader movement for environmental justice and ecosocialist transformation. This study not only informs the ongoing discourse on the intersection of labor and climate activism but also inspires future collaborations for anti-capitalist climate justice.

Discusses the efforts of the Sudbury local of the Mine-Mill union in the post-World War II era to develop a distinct political-cultural community including through a multi-purpose union hall, dance school, and theatre company. Concludes that Mine-Mill's social and cultural programming was eclipsed by Cold War anti-Communism and the bitter battle with the United Steelworkers of America to represent the workers.

The article reviews the book, "Désobéir : le choix de Chantale Daigle," by Daniel Thibault et Isabelle Pelletier.

Despite new immigrants having higher educational attainment and an immigrant selection policy that admits “the best and the brightest,” one of Canada’s major social policy concerns is the continued deterioration of immigrants’ economic outcomes. This paradox is illustrated by data showing immigrants suffer from higher unemployment, earn less than similarly educated Canadian-born workers, face skill underutilization, and are relegated to the secondary labour market made up of low-wage, unstable jobs, lacking protections such as unemployment benefits. The underutilization of immigrant skills is economically disastrous; it costs the Canadian economy $50 billion yearly. While many studies discuss immigrants' poor labour market integration, offering explanations such as immigrant human capital factors or macroeconomic condition factors, few explore the role of meso-level organizational social actors who decide which immigrants are recruited, shortlisted, and ultimately hired. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap by exploring the role of Human Resource Management (HRM) professionals in immigrant labour market integration in Alberta. Using interviews and critical discourse analysis of HRM textbooks and course outlines, I examine HRM professional's decision-making policies, processes, considerations and constraints when evaluating immigrant applications for jobs. The study reveals that immigrants, particularly racialized immigrants, face barriers to employment in the primary labour market because of the professional and institutional logic of strategic human resource management (SHRM). SHRM promoted in HRM professional education recommends that HRM professionals prioritize business objectives over equal treatment, consideration, and fairness in hiring. SHRM enables unequal power relations between hiring managers (team supervisors) and HRM professionals, which enables cultural racism to go unchecked in hiring. SHRM justifies organizational discriminatory and social closure practices as well as enables the denial of immigrant claims for employment. This is based on the perception that immigrants pose administrative burdens and financial risks stemming from the misidentification of immigrants as temporary migrants and possessing human capital and cultural deficiencies. Hiring decision-makers often do not rely on objective assessments like work sampling tests when making hiring decisions. Instead, when evaluating immigrant job applicants, they rely on racial cultural stereotypes and signals of White Canadian cultural competency as the basis for callbacks and selection.

Due to their status, it is difficult for temporary foreign workers to report grievances related to instances of discrimination, exploitation, harassment, abuse, and health and safety violations. While the subject of temporary migrant work and legal action has been studied before, available research focuses on the impacts of high-profile cases at the Supreme Court. As such, there is limited research about the tribunals that handle the grievances of TFWs most often. This thesis fills that gap by presenting a comparative analysis of the fortunes of temporary foreign workers in human rights tribunals and labour tribunals in Ontario and Alberta. This analysis shows the nature and outcome of these hearings have important differences that depend on the tribunal type. More specifically, human rights tribunals seem to be better equipped to assess the grievances of TFWs despite there being a higher volume of TFWs using labour tribunals.

This study traces the mid-twentieth century history of the Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union (NSTU), with particular focus on the union’s democratic, professional, and bargaining structures. Traditionally underrepresented in labour union histories, teachers’ unions are a keystone public occupation with extremely high industrial density and a complex relationship with numerous levels of government. In the period studied, teachers were paid both by provincial and local governments but were technically only allowed to bargain with the former; this relationship was instrumental in keeping teachers’ demands depressed but was too unstable to contain teacher militancy effectively. Following an interrogation of the union’s restrictive legislative and organizational foundation, the thesis analyzes the adoption of professionalism as a status-raising strategy, but with severe exclusionary tendencies. The thesis continues with a chronological recounting of provincial and local-level negotiations, the contention of which forced the union and the provincial government to renegotiate their bargaining mechanisms.

This Handbook addresses the changing nature of academic labour markets, as they respond to moving university goals and developments in the measurement of research and teaching. Experts examine case studies from across the Global North and South and consider key issues such as equity, diversity, cross-border employment, and the precarity of academic labour. The Research Handbook on Academic Labour Markets highlights how national university systems interact with international policies. Chapters include in-depth research on the decline in permanent, tenured employment and the increase in temporary, insecure work, culminating in uncertain or non-existent career paths for many academics. Contributing authors discuss intersectional initiatives to increase the gender and ethnic diversity of academic staff, as well as complex topics such as third space work, for-profit institutions, online education, entrepreneurial gig research, work-life balance and the role of trade unions. Ultimately, this Handbook argues for new approaches to organising academic work, reinforcing the priority of serving the public good. Comprehensive and innovative, this Research Handbook is a crucial read for scholars of higher education leadership and management, education policy, labour policy, and sociology of work. It will also benefit university staff and researchers considering and reflecting on their own careers. --Publisher's description

Amid the proliferating scholarship and often sensational public campaigns, Trafficking Harms offers fresh insights and critical analyses. The collection’s four thematic areas — Discourses and Representations; Law and Prosecutions; Policing and Surveillance; Migrant Labour Exploitation — examine an array of issues, including the contested definitions of human trafficking, the application of trafficking law and policy, the conflation of sex work and trafficking, the impacts of anti-trafficking frameworks on racialized communities, questions around “victims” and “traffickers” and much more. Showcasing a mix of scholarly research, public advocacy and first-person narratives, this book is the first of its kind in Canada. The authors include a diverse group of academics, legal advocates, frontline activists who work with migrant and sex-working communities, individuals who have been charged and/or convicted of trafficking offences and those who are directly impacted by trafficking law and policing, such as domestic and migrant sex workers. --Publisher's description

In this book, independent experts analyze the performance of Justin Trudeau's years in power in over 20 important areas of government policy. The record of what has been done-and what hasn't-will surprise even well-informed readers. The focus is on six policy areas: Indigenous rights, governance and housing; the environment and energy; taxes and spending; healthcare and social benefits; foreign policy, immigration, and trade; and social policy including drug reform, labour rights, and racism. Editors Katherine Scott, Laura Macdonald, and Stuart Trew of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have recruited Canada's most knowledgeable experts in their areas to contribute to this volume. --Publisher's description

In the decades following the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labour movement. Their union urged members to rally in the streets and use the ballot box to effect change for all working-class people. But by the turn of this century, the Canadian Auto Workers union had begun to pursue a more defensive political direction. "Shifting Gears" traces the evolution of CAW strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships as relationships between the union, employers, and governments were refashioned. This new approach was maintained when the CAW merged with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union in 2013 to create Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union. Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics, offering a critical perspective on the current state of working-class politics. -- Publisher's description

This report provides an assessment of Canada’s progress in meeting the goals for gender equality set out in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Adopted unanimously by 189 countries including Canada in 1995, the Beijing Declaration is the most progressive global blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights. The report examines Canada’s progress over the last 30 years in areas ranging from reproductive health to women’s economic standing and the status of marginalized women in Canada. The report was produced by the Beijing +30 Network which represents more than 70 women’s rights and equality-seeking organizations, trade unions and independent experts representing millions of members from across the country.