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This collection includes reflections about the precariousness of academic employment for non-tenured professionals across Canada. It includes articles from those who have taught in post-secondary education across Canada, as well as as from those some who have experienced precarity as student and union organizers. It also includes voices of students working and teaching in the higher education system. The texts are both in the form of critical engagement with the academic discourse and research as well as reflective memoirs on experiences of educational precarity from numerous social locations. They highlight precarity at all levels of employment in the Canadian higher education system and offer suggestions on how to improve this long-standing and damaging reality affecting tens of thousands of the precariously employed. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction / Ann Gagné -- Manufactured Precarity: Some Solutions to Help Mitigate the Impacts of Precarious Employment of Canadian Sessional Instructors / Amber Diaz -- The Tensions of Tenure and Allyship: On Becoming, Speaking, and Listening / Veronica J. Austen -- Reflections of Precarity from a Student and Student Representative / Gayle McFadden -- Immigrant Precarity in the Academe: The Quebec Version / Cristina Artenie -- Towards Best Practices in Canadian Higher Education: A Precarious Memoir in Miniature / Ann Gagné.

The Subjectivities and Politics of Occupational Risk links restructuring in three industries to shifts in risk subjectivities and politics, both within workplaces and within the safety management and regulative spheres, often leading to conflict and changes in law, political discourses and management approaches. The state and corporate governance emphasis on worker participation and worker rights, internal responsibility, and self-regulative technologies are understood as corporate and state efforts to reconstruct control and responsibility for Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) risks within the context of a globalized neoliberal economy. Part 1 presents a conceptual framework for understanding the subjective bases of worker responses to health and safety hazards using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and the sociology of risk concepts of trust and uncertainty. Part 2 demonstrates the restructuring arguments using three different industry case studies of multiple mines, farms and auto parts plants. The final chapter draws out the implications of the evidence and theory for social change and presents several recommendations for a more worker-centred politics of health and safety.The book will appeal to social scientists interested in health and safety, work, employment relations and labour law, as well as worker advocates and activists. --Publisher's description. Contents: 1. Introduction and Research MethodsPart 1: Risk Subjectivities and Practices2. Identifying Hazards and Judging Risk3. Taking Risks or Taking a Stand: Interests, Power and IdentityPart 2: Case Studies of Health and Safety in Hard Rock Mining, Family Farming and Auto Parts Manufacturing 4. Transforming the Mining Labour Process: Transforming Risk and its Social Construction5. Reconstructing Miner Consent: Management Objectives and Strategies6. The Transformation and Fragmentation of Canadian Agriculture7. Health and Safety in Farming8. The Transformation of Production and Health and Safety in Auto Parts Manufacturing.9. Participation and Control in a Non-Union Auto Parts Firm10. Conclusion and Implications for Change.

In The Canadian Labour Movement, historian Craig Heron and political scientist Charles Smith tell the story of Canada's workers from the midnineteenth century through to today, painting a vivid picture of key developments, such as the birth of craft unionism, the breakthroughs of the fifties and sixties, and the setbacks of the early twenty-first century. The fourth edition of this book has been completely updated with a substantial new chapter that covers the period from the great recession of 2008 through to 2020. In this chapter, Smith describes the fallout of the financial crisis, how Stephen Harper's government restricted labour rights, the rise of the "gig economy" and precarious work, and the continued de-industrialization in the private sector. These pressures contributed to fracturing the movement, as when Unifor, the largest private sector union, split from the Canadian Labour Congress, the established "house of labour." Through it all, rank-and-file union members have fought for better conditions for all workers, including through campaigns like the fight for a $15 minimum wage. --Publisher's description

Work, Industry, and Canadian Society provides a sociological introduction to the history, nature, organization, and management of work in Canada. The eighth edition expands and adds new coverage on the biggest work challenges faced now and in the future, such as Canada’s aging and increasingly diverse workforce, the work experiences of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, the rise of the app-based “gig” economy, and how technology will continue to impact future jobs and work organization. The new edition continues to incorporate recent empirical findings, review new and ongoing theoretical and policy debates, and provide a more international perspective. As the world of work continues to change rapidly, all trends and statistics have been updated. These authors are well regarded for their teaching and research, and their years of experience are evident in this comprehensive volume on the past, present, and future of work in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Historical perspectives on work -- Contemporary debates and issues -- Canadian employment trends -- Good jobs, bad jobs, no jobs -- Labour markets: opportunities and inequality -- Gender and paid employment -- Household, family, and caring work -- Organizing and managing work -- In search of new managerial paradigms -- Conflict and control in workplace -- Unions and industrial relations -- Alternative approaches to organizing work -- Work values and work orientations -- Job satisfaction, alienation, and work-related stress.

On November 26, 2018, General Motors announced a number of plant closures in North America, the largest of which was in Oshawa, Ontario. The Oshawa facility, once the largest auto complex on the continent, was to end all its assembly operations by the end of 2019. ...This pamphlet provides background material on Oshawa and joins Green Jobs Oshawa in encouraging workers elsewhere to prepare now for the threats to their jobs and productive capacity that will inevitably come. --From introduction

From mining to sex work and from the classroom to the docks, violence has always been a part of work. This collection of essays highlights the many different forms and expressions of violence that have arisen under capitalism in the last two hundred years, as well as how historians of working-class life and labour have understood violence. The editors draw together diverse case studies, integrating analysis of class, age, gender, sexuality, and race into the scholarship. Essays span the United States and Canadian border, exploring gender violence, sexual harassment, the violent kidnapping of union organizers, the violence of inadequate health and safety protections, the culture of violence in state institutions, the mythology of working-class violence, and the changing nature of violence in extractive industries. The Violence of Work theorizes and historicizes violence as an integral part of working life, making it possible to understand the full scope and causes of workplace violence over time. --Publisher's description, Contents: Introduction: Accounting for violence / Jeremy Milloy -- The perils of sex work in Montreal: seeking security and justice in the face of violence, 1810-1842 / Mary Anne Poutanen -- The rules of discipline: workers and the culture of violence in progressive-era reform schools / James Schmidt -- The "new solution": anti-labour kidnapping, D.B. McKay, and the legacy of the second Seminole War / Chad Pearson -- Billy Gohl: labour, violence, and myth in the early twentieth-century Pacific Northwest / Aaron Goings -- Slow violence and hidden injuries: the work of strip mining in the American west / Ryan Driskell Tate -- The murder of Lori Dupont : violence, harassment, and occupational health and safety in Ontarion / Sarah Jessup -- "By the nuimbers" : workers' compensation and the (further) conventionalization of workplace violence / Robert Storey -- Gender violence in the hospitality industry: panic buttons, pants, and protest / Emily E. LB. Twarog.

Le 6 février 1920, un petit groupe d’employés de la fonction publique se réunit pour la première fois afin de former une association professionnelle. Un siècle plus tard, l’Institut professionnel de la fonction publique du Canada (IPFPC) est un agent négociateur représentant près de 60 000 travailleurs du secteur public dont les efforts pour le bien collectif améliorent la vie de chaque Canadien. Publié à l’occasion du 100e anniversaire de fondation de l’IPFPC, À l’avant-garde du progrès dresse le portrait complet de son évolution, de 1920 à aujourd’hui, et lève le voile sur un pan souvent négligé de l’histoire syndicale nord-américaine. L’auteur, Jason Russell, s’appuie sur une abondante collection de sources, dont des documents d’archives et des témoignages de dizaines de membres actuels et passés de l’IPFPC. Marquée par des réussites et semée d’embûches, l’histoire est complexe et racontée avec clarté et modération. Après des décennies de changements démographiques et générationnels, de booms et de crises économiques et de bouleversements politiques, les membres de l’IPFPC entament les cent prochaines années guidés par la même mission importante que celle qui les a inspirés jusqu’à présent : militer pour une justice sociale et économique pour le bien de tous les Canadiens et Canadiennes. --Résumé de l'éditeur

On February 6, 1920, a small group of public service employees met for the first time to form a professional association. A century later, the Professional Institute of the Public Service Canada (PIPSC) is a bargaining agent representing close to 60,000 public sector workers, whose collective efforts for the public good have touched the lives of every Canadian. Published on the centennial of PIPSC’s founding, Leading Progress is the definitive account of its evolution from then to now—and a rare glimpse into an under-studied corner of North American labour history. Researcher Dr. Jason Russell draws on a rich collection of sources, including archival material and oral history interviews with dozens of current and past PIPSC members. The story that unfolds is a complex one, filled with success and struggle, told with clarity and even-handedness. After decades of demographic and generational shifts, economic booms and busts, and political sea change, PIPSC looks toward its next hundred years with its mission as strong as ever: to advocate for social and economic justice that benefits all Canadians. --Publisher's description

Economic inequality is one of the great issues of our era. But what is inequality? Eric Sager argues that inequality is more than the distribution of income and wealth. Inequality is the idea that there are wide gaps between rich and poor, that the gaps are both an economic problem and a social injustice, and that the problem can be either eliminated or reduced. This idea arose in a transatlantic world, in the long evolution of political economy in Britain and the United States from classical economics to the emerging welfare economics of the twentieth century. Within this transatlantic frame inequality took a distinct form in Canada. It appeared among radical reformers and republicans in the 1830s. It arose in a critique of wealth among Protestant thinkers and their moral imperatives. The idea appeared among labour radicals and reformers who interpreted the conflict between capital and labour as a problem of distribution. For social gospelers inequality was a simplifying frame that made sense of an alien modernity of industry, urbanism, and class conflict. A tradition of idealist thought persisted in the twentieth century, sustaining the idea of inequality despite deep silences among Canadian economists. The idea appeared forcefully in social Catholicism in Quebec, and then waned in the political and intellectual justifications of the social security state. In the new era of inequality in our century, a political solution may rest upon the recovery of an older ethical idealism and in a historically-informed egalitarian politics."-- Publisher's description

Poppy used to be an optimist. But after a photo of her dressed as Rosie the Riveter is mocked online, she's having trouble seeing the good in the world. As a result, Poppy trades her beloved vintage clothes for a feathered chicken costume and accepts a job as an anonymous sign waver outside a restaurant. There, Poppy meets six-year-old girl Miracle, who helps Poppy see beyond her own pain, opening her eyes to the people around her: Cam, her twin brother, who is adjusting to life as an openly gay teen; Buck, a charming photographer with a cute British accent and a not-so-cute mean-streak; and Lewis a teen caring for an ailing parent, while struggling to reach the final stages of his gender transition. As the summer unfolds, Poppy stops glorifying the past and starts focusing on the present. But just as she comes to terms with the fact that there is good and bad in everyone, she is tested by a deep betrayal. -- Publisher's description

Named one of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020, and featuring stories that have appeared in Harper's, Granta, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, this revelatory book of fiction from O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa establishes her as an essential new voice in Canadian and world literature. Told with compassion and wry humour, these stories honour characters struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary "grunt work of the world." A young man painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A father who packs furniture to move into homes he'll never afford. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas. In her stunning Giller Prize-winning debut book of fiction, Souvankham Thammavongsa focuses on characters struggling to make a living, illuminating their hopes, disappointments, love affairs, acts of defiance, and above all their pursuit of a place to make their own. In spare, intimate prose charged with emotional power and a sly wit, she paints an indelible portrait of watchful children, wounded men, and restless women caught between cultures, languages, and values. As one of Thammavongsa's characters says, "All we wanted was to live." And in these stories, they do—brightly, ferociously, unforgettably. A daughter becomes an unwilling accomplice in her mother's growing infatuation with country singer Randy Travis. A former boxer finds a chance at redemption while working at his sister's nail salon. A school bus driver must grapple with how much he's willing to give up in order to belong. And in the title story, a young girl's unconditional love for her father transcends language. Tender, uncompromising, and fiercely alive, How to Pronounce Knife establishes Souvankham Thammavongsa as one of the most important voices of her generation. --Publisher's description

The nature of employment is changing: low wage jobs are increasingly common, fewer workers belong to unions, and workplaces are being transformed through the growth of contracting-out, franchising, and extended supply chains. Closing the Enforcement Gap offers a comprehensive analysis of the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario. Adopting mixed methods, this work includes qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with workers, community advocates, and enforcement officials; extensive archival research excavating decades of ministerial records; and analysis of a previously untapped source of administrative data collected by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour. The authors reveal and trace the roots of a deepening "enforcement gap" that pervades nearly all aspects of the regime, demonstrating that the province’s Employment Standards Act (ESA) fails too many workers who rely on the floor of minimum conditions it was devised to provide. Arguably, there is nothing inevitable about the enforcement gap in Ontario or for that matter elsewhere. Through contributions from leading employment standards enforcement scholars in the US, the UK, and Australia, as well as Quebec, Closing the Enforcement Gap surveys innovative enforcement models that are emerging in a variety of jurisdictions and sets out a bold vision for strengthening employment standards enforcement. -- Publisher's description.

Comme toutes les grandes villes occidentales, Montréal fourmille de taxis qui parcourent les rues, font la navette entre l'aéroport et le centre-ville, attendent près des stations de métro, des hôpitaux et des grands hôtels. Trains, tramways, autobus, métros et vélos de Montréal ont eu droit à leur histoire, mais pas les taxis. Le monde du taxi est pourtant un sujet riche et complexe, un carrefour où se rencontrent plusieurs spécialisations de l'histoire : urbaine, politique, économique, sans oublier le travail et l'immigration. Depuis sa voiture, le chauffeur ou la chauffeuse est témoin des rapports tendus entre le travailleur et l'État, la ville et les citoyens, les quartiers excentrés et le centre-ville, le peuple et les élites. Il est aussi témoin des luttes entre la majorité francophone et les minorités culturelles, des mutations technologiques et de l'essor du transport en commun. Le monde du taxi, c'est aussi et surtout des travailleurs qui forment une catégorie sociale unique et qui pratiquent un métier rempli de paradoxes. Au fil de son enquête, faite de recherches sur l'industrie et d'entretiens avec ses acteurs, Jean-Philippe Warren en est venu à la conclusion que le chauffeur de taxi est la dernière incarnation du cowboy : libre de ses mouvements, de son emploi du temps, mais prisonnier de quantité de facteurs. Il peut arrêter de travailler quand il veut et travaille sans cesse. Il a toujours de l'argent dans ses poches, mais est pauvre. Il veut que l'État intervienne pour le protéger, mais exècre les régulations. Il pratique un métier monotone, mais rempli d'imprévus. Il est à la fois entouré de monde et seul. S'ajoutant à la diversité ethnique des membres de la profession, ces paradoxes créent une sous-culture absolument fascinante où se jouent des luttes de pouvoir économique et de contrôle territorial. Une sous-culture tout aussi difficile à intégrer qu'à quitter. En utilisant les ressources combinées de l'histoire et des sciences sociales, en mêlant l'examen des archives et l'enquête de terrain, cette première histoire du taxi à Montréal débouche sur un portrait inédit de la ville. Elle se veut aussi une contribution à la compréhension d'un monde qui cultive les extrêmes et qui, s'il veut se transformer pour le mieux, pour le bien-être de ses travailleurs, de leurs familles et des usagers, doit s'appuyer sur des données tangibles et une histoire critique. --Publisher's description

In Canadian Political Economy, experts from a number of disciplinary backgrounds come together to explore Canada's empirical political economy and the field's contributions to theory and debate. Considering both historical and contemporary approaches to CPE, the contributors pay particular attention to key actors and institutions, as well as developments in Canadian political-economic policies and practices, explored through themes of changes, crises, and conflicts in CPE. Offering up-to-date interpretations, analyses, and descriptions, Canadian Political Economy is accessibly written and suitable for students and scholars. In 17 chapters, the book's topics include theory, history, inequality, work, free trade and fair trade, co-operatives, banking and finance, the environment, Indigeneity, and the gendered politics of political economy. Linking longstanding debates with current developments, this volume represents both a state-of-the-discipline and a state-of-the-art contribution to scholarship. -- Publisher's description

The most important primary document from the Winnipeg General Strike now back in print with a new introduction on the occasion of the strike's 100th anniversary On May 15, 1919 workers from across Winnipeg, ranging from metal workers to telephone operators, united to spark the largest worker revolt in Canadian history. Even the Winnipeg police voted to join the strike, although they remained on duty at the request of the strike committee in order to prevent martial law. Approximately 30,000 workers walked off the job over the next six weeks, and the city was overtaken by lively demonstrations and marches in what the media, the city's leaders, and the federal government called a "Bolshevik uprising." The clash ended violently when RCMP on horseback charged and shot into a crowd of striking workers resulting in deaths, beatings, and arrests. The strike was called off and workers returned to their jobs without having earned the rights to higher wages and collective bargaining. Following the strike, union leaders published this account of the events leading up to and during the strike. Their volume is the most significant primary source describing the workers' experience of the strike. This book offers the full document in its original format along with an introduction to the 1974 edition by labour historian and activist Norman Penner. His essay has had a major impact on later research. This volume also includes a new introduction by historian Christo Aivalis discussing how the lessons learned in 1919 remain relevant today. Also included in this book are the key documentary photographs of strike events, including a minute-by-minute sequence showing the final RCMP fatal assault on the strikers. --Publisher's description

Adelle Blackett tells the story behind the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention No. 189, and its accompanying Recommendation No. 201 which in 2011 created the first comprehensive international standards to extend fundamental protections and rights to the millions of domestic workers laboring in other peoples' homes throughout the world. As the principal legal architect, Blackett is able to take us behind the scenes to show us how Convention No. 189 transgresses the everyday law of the household workplace to embrace domestic workers' human rights claim to be both workers like any other, and workers like no other. In doing so, she discusses the importance of understanding historical forms of invisibility, recognizes the influence of the domestic workers themselves, and weaves in poignant experiences, infusing the discussion of laws and standards with intimate examples and sophisticated analyses. Looking to the future, she ponders how international institutions such as the ILO will address labor market informality alongside national and regional law reform. Regardless of what comes next, Everyday Transgressions establishes that domestic workers' victory is a victory for the ILO and for all those who struggle for an inclusive, transnational vision of labor law, rooted in social justice. --Publisher's description

The third instalment in Jim Blanchard's popular history of early Winnipeg, 'A Diminished Roar' presents a city in the midst of enormous change. Once the fastest growing city in Canada, by 1920 Winnipeg was losing its dominant position in western Canada. As the decade began, Winnipeggers were reeling from the chaos of the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But it was the divisions exposed by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike which left the deepest marks. As Winnipeg wrestled with its changing fortunes, its citizens looked for new ways to imagine the city's future and identity. Beginning with the opening of the magnificent new provincial legislature building in 1920, A Diminished Roar guides readers through this decade of political and social turmoil. At City Hall, two very different politicians dominated the scene. Winnipeg's first Labour mayor, S.J. Farmer, pushed for more public services. His rival, Ralph Webb, would act as the city's chief 'booster' as mayor, encouraging U.S. tourists with the promise of 'snowballs and highballs.' Meanwhile, promoters tried to rekindle the city's spirits with plans for new public projects, such as a grand boulevard through the middle of the city, a new amusement park, and the start of professional horse racing. In the midst of the Jazz Age, Winnipeg's teenagers grappled with 'problems of the heart, ' and social groups like the Gyro Club organized masked balls for the city's elite. --Publisher's description

The Embassy of Italy, the Consulate General of Italy in Toronto and Villa Charities join together with authors Paola Breda and Marino Toppan to present a ground-breaking new history of the Italian-Canadian immigration experience, finally including the previously untold story of the thousands of Italian Fallen Workers who died building this beautiful country — a story that’s destined to become a new piece of Canadian History. Compiled after decades of research by Toppan, this epic new volume includes countless contributions from across the country, from scholars of Italian-Canadian history and the families of the fallen themselves. This ground breaking new book includes profiles of those in the Italian community in Canada who triumphed with incredible successes, those who died in tragic circumstances, as well as in-depth studies on immigration patterns, labour history, socio-adaptive patterns, labour action, strife and hardships experienced, and many more themes in the Italian-Canadian identity. It even coins a new phrase: Canadianità! --Publicity release, May 23, 2019

Revealing how Canada's first Prime Minister used a policy of starvation against Indigenous people to clear the way for settlement, the multiple award-winning Clearing the Plains sparked widespread debate about genocide in Canada. In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics—the politics of ethnocide—played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Indigenous people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream. " It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day. This new edition of Clearing the Plains has a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Fenn, an opening by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, and explanations of the book’s influence by leading Canadian historians. -- Publisher's description.