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Universities commonly engage Employee Assistance Programs to help workers with their problems. In this institutional case study of neoliberalism in action, I analyze the EAP newsletters from one Canadian institution I call “Corporate U” for their impact on full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty. I show how their messaging counterproductively amplifies pressures in today’s university to be resilient and perform and be accountable. I take the EAP to be an agent of the university, and as such, their newsletters demonstrate the rise of neoliberal managerialism in academic life. Of particular concern is their individualising tendency to construct “the responsible professor” as an ideal to which all academic workers must now aspire.

There is now a vast scholarship that explores union decline and renewal in various economic sectors and workplaces. To date, however, there is little understanding of how union decline has impacted unionized retail environments in Canada. Using a feminist political economy framework, this dissertation explores dynamics of union decline and renewal through a case study of labour standards in Ontarios unionized supermarket sector. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 28 union representatives and an analysis of collective agreements, this study examines the decline and trajectory of labour standards in unionized supermarkets, explores the unions perspectives and responses to changing standards, assesses how changing labour standards reflects the problem of union decline, and assesses how the case of Ontarios unionized supermarkets informs union renewal research and strategy. Findings suggest that the decline and trajectory of labour standards in Ontarios unionized supermarkets reflects a shift towards increasing precariousness in this sector. While there have been some wins for supermarket workers, unions have been largely unable to secure substantial improvements through collective bargaining. The precariousness associated with supermarket work is both contractually negotiated, as evidenced by provisions in collective agreements that ensure low wages and minimal and infrequent wage increases, demanding availability requirements, and limitations to the number of hours of work, as well as experiential, as indicated in workplace dynamics such as competition between workers, high turnover, and reduced health and safety measures. During the period under study, several factors have contributed to the increase in precariousness in this sector. While unions have implemented a variety of strategies in an effort to mitigate precariousness in unionized supermarkets, the persistence of deeply ingrained business union cultures and practices make improving labour standards through collective bargaining difficult. Continued precariousness in unionized supermarkets and the persistence of business unionism point to the need for an interrogation of the cultures and practices within unions that may contribute to the ongoing precariousness in unionized supermarkets and the challenges facing unions in this sector. The complex nature of union decline in this sector also suggests that multiple forms of union action are required to improve labour standards in unionized supermarkets and the strength of unions more broadly.

Defines business and social unionism. Argues that the distinction between the two is not air tight, rather they intermingle. However, social unionism is essential for global solidarity. A revised version of the essay published in the first edition (2012).

[The authors] explore the state of labour politics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, they argue the pandemic created an unprecedented opening for organization labour to build broader forms of solidarity around class-wide demands for the expansion of universal social protections like paid sick days, universal public child care, basic income and pharmacare, and to integrate gender and racial justice into these demands in new and important ways. On the other hand, they make the case that the differential impact of of the pandemic on various sections of the working class saw some unions eschew more universal strategies in favour of a more politically expedient defensive unionism aimed at protecting a narrow community of interest from the negative effects of the pandemic. --From editor's introduction.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to re-establish the labour movement’s political capacity to exert collective power in ways that foster greater opportunity and equality for working-class people has taken on a greater sense of urgency. Understanding the strategic political possibilities and challenges facing the Canadian labour movement at this important moment in history is the central concern of this second edition of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada. With new and revised essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of Canadian labour politics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their potential impact on the future of labour in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1: Contextualizing Labour and Working-Class Politics. Canadian Labour and COVID-19 / Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage -- Business Unionism and Social Unionism in Theory and Practice / Stephanie Ross. Part 2: The Challenge of Electoral Politics. Struggling to Survive: The New Democratic Party and Labour in the Neoliberal Era / Alan Ernst and Bryan Evans -- Labour and Politics in Quebec / Peter Graefe -- Anybody but Conservative: Canadian Unions and Strategic Voting / Larry Savage. Part 3: The Prospects of Extra-Parliamentary Activism. Interrogating the Union Politics of Equity, Inclusion and Diversity / Winnie Ng and Carol Wall -- Which Side Are You On? Indigenous Peoples and Canada’s Labour Movement / Suzanne Mills and Tyler McCreary -- The Politics of Migrant Worker Organizing in Canada / Karl Gardner, Dani Magsumbol and Ethel Tungohan -- Community Unionism and Alt-Labour in Canada / Simon Black -- Canadian Labour and the Environment: Addressing the Value-Action Gap / Dennis Soron -- Class Struggle Goes to Court: Workers’ Rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms / Charles Smith and Alison Braley-Rattai.

This article explores the relationship between unionization and academic freedom protections for sessional faculty in Ontario universities. Specifically, we compare university policies and contract provisions with a view to determining whether unionized sessionals hired on a per-course basis have stronger academic freedom protections than their non-union counterparts. We then explore whether particular kinds of bargaining unit structures are more conducive to achieving stronger academic freedom provisions. Finally, we consider whether academic freedom can be exercised effectively by sessionals, whether unionized or not. We conclude that unionization does help to produce stronger academic freedom protections for sessional faculty and that faculty association bargaining unit structures are most likely to help deliver this outcome. We further conclude that academic freedom is difficult to exercise for sessional faculty, regardless of union status, but that unionization offers greater protections for sessionals facing repercussions as a result of asserting their academic freedom.

During the depths of COVID-19, Laurentian University, a small Canadian postsecondary institution located in the mid-sized city of Sudbury Canada, declared that it was insolvent and was legally allowed to terminate one-third of its faculty and cut almost one-half of its academic programmes. This historically unprecedented attack on a Canadian public institution utilized a Federal corporate court process, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), a piece of legislation akin to the US Chapter 11 process. The result of the still-ongoing process saw the university Administration and Board of Governors working against the interests of the community, targeting the arts, Indigenous, Francophone and working-class communities. This article poses the question ‘to whom do universities belong, and at what point does a publicly funded university stop being a collective “social good” – responsible to the society that spawned it – and start being a stand-alone organization that serves private interests?’

The article reviews the book, "Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism," by Betsy Wood.

A deep exploration of the experience of work in Canada, Canada, A Working History describes the ways in which work has been performed in Canada from the pre-Colonial period to the present day. Since the time of European colonization, the need to obtain and ensure a steady supply of workers to drive Canada's economic growth has been a key objective for policy makers. This book argues that there are key themes found in the history of work in Canada that persist to the present day. Work is shaped by a wide array of influences including gender, race, ethnicity, geography, economics, and politics. It in turn shapes us when we perform it. Work can be paid or unpaid, meaningful or alienating, and always essential. The work experience led people to form unions, aspire to management roles, pursue education, form professional associations, and seek self-employment. It has been the subject of much theoretical research and academic inquiry. Work is often in our cultural consciousness while being pondered in song, lamented in literature, celebrated in film, and preserved for posterity in other forms of art. It has been driven by technological change, governed by laws, been the cause of disputes, and the means by which people earn a living in Canada's capitalist economy. Engaging in work is common in all modern societies, and that there are distinct aspects to the history of work in Canada that will continue into the country's future. Ennobling, rewarding, exhausting, and sometimes frustrating, work has helped define who Canadians are as people. --Publisher's description.

Mining has a significant presence in every part of Canada - from east to west coasts to the far north. This book tells the stories of the people and companies who pushed mining into new territories, created new towns and generated jobs by the thousands. It highlights the experiences of those who lived and worked in mining settlements across the country, as well as the rise of major mining companies and the emergence of Toronto and Vancouver as centres of global mining finance. It also addresses the effects these developments have had on Indigenous communities and the environmental changes and challenges that have accompanied mining at every step. Mining Country is richly illustrated with more than 150 photos drawn from the well-recorded history up to the present. The story begins with the development of copper mining and trading networks among pre-contact Indigenous groups in Canada. Industrial scale mining of iron and coal emerged in Quebec and Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century. The book describes the growth of mining towns in northern Ontario, Quebec and western Canada in the nineteenth century, and the famous Cariboo and Klondike Gold Rushes. Demand for strategic minerals and metals during the Second World War and the Cold War pushed development into remote northern regions. The most recent period embraces the North West Territories diamond rush and controversial expansion into Ontario's "Ring of Fire" region. Much has been written about the history of individual mining towns, mine unions and mining companies. This book offers a readable account of the full scope of this key industry's story, in words and a collection of carefully researched and selected visuals. --Publiher's description

For one hundred years women fashioned different dreams of equality, autonomy, and dignity; yet what is Canadian feminism? In Demanding Equality, Joan Sangster explores feminist thought and organizing from mid-nineteenth-century, Enlightenment-inspired writing to the multi-issue movement of the 1980s.She broadens our definition of feminism, and – recognizing that its political, cultural, and social dimensions are entangled – builds a picture of a heterogeneous movement often characterized by fierce internal debates. This comprehensive rear-view look at feminism in all its political guises encourages a wider public conversation about what Canadian feminism has been, is, and should be. --Publisher's description. Contents: Spreading the word of women's emancipation -- The origins of socialist and labour feminism -- Women, democracy, and suffrage -- Reform feminism and women's right to work -- Agrarian, labour, and socialist feminism after the Frist World War -- Feminism and the party question -- Feminism, war, and peace -- Feminism in a Cold War climate -- Liberating feminism -- Feminist organizing in the 1970s and 1980s -- Afterword: Feminist challenges of the 1990s and beyond.

Considers the human and financial cost of the 1918-19 flu pandemic versus the Covid-19 pandemic. Pays tribute to the late Leo Panitch, to whom the volume is dedicated. Comments on articles in the issue and notes that they emphasize the importance of all forms of work and organization. Deplores the rise of market-driven universities and the cuts at Laurentian University. Welcomes Kirk Niergarth as co-editor, which helps pave the way for Joan Sangster's retirement as co-editor.

Introduced by editors Sangster and Smith, this roundtable offers papers by former students of Panitch on his multifaceted legacy. Themes include Panitch as organic intellectual (Warskett), the fall and future of social democracy (Blanc), money and the critique of capitalism between political sociology and political economy (Konings), Panitch and the practice of socialist mentorship (Maher), and Panitch as a transformative teacher (Ross).

Discusses union-backed strategic voting (most often, endorsement of Liberal rather than NDP candidates) to defeat the Conservatives. Concludes that such campaigns have been divisive and do not advance the labour movement. A revised and expanded version of the essay published in the first edition (2012).

This article begins with a broad overview of the scholarly literature on labour politics in Canada before focusing more specifically on the relationship between organized labour and the NDP. The article is organized thematically, focusing on three key features of the party-union relationship: (1) institutional ties between labour and the NDP; (2) the ideological impact of labour on the politics of the NDP: and (3) labour's (in)ability to deliver votes to the party. Each dimension of the party-union relationship reveals factors that contributed to a loosening of ties over time and sets the stage for a final concluding section exploring the implications of a weakened NDP-union link for the future of labour and working-class politics in Canada. --From author's introduction

Demand for home and community care services has continuously increased in Canada and elsewhere in the last few decades due to aging of the population and healthcare policy changes shaped by budgetary limitations. As a result, home and community care organizations are having trouble hiring adequate numbers of healthcare workers to meet the escalating demand, the result being increased workload on these workers. Another stream of literature has shown that care recipients and their family members, frustrated with the limited ability of healthcare workers to provide adequate care because of increased workload, might resort to violence and harassment. Bringing these two streams of literature together, we examined the relationships among three variables : workload ; workplace violence and harassment ; and well-being of personal support workers (PSWs). Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed a 2015 Ontario-wide survey of 1,347 PSWs employed in the home and community care sector. The results indicate that workload is negatively associated with extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction, and this relationship is mediated by violence and harassment and by stress. Specifically, workload is positively associated with violence and harassment at work, which in turn is positively associated with stress, which in turn is negatively associated with extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction. Our study contributes to the literature by examining the impact of a work environment factor, workload, on the well-being of PSWs. This approach makes it possible to expand the current literature’s focus on psychological processes at the individual level to a more contextual approach. Furthermore, the results have important implications for home and community care organizations as well as for the healthcare sector in general. The well-being of PSWs is critical to retaining them and to ensuring the quality of care they provide their clients. Thus, their workload should be lowered to a more manageable level to help minimize the violence and harassment they experience.

This report looks at the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economic security of women in Canada and the current efforts to respond to urgent economic need in the short- to medium-term, as well as demands for fundamental systemic change moving forward. ...The study focuses on three areas: it examines the impact of COVID-19 on women’s participation in the labour market since the pandemic struck in spring of 2020; it assesses the impact of federal and provincial government programs and income supports through a gendered and intersectional lens; and it examines gaps in the system and proposes measures to help women get through the COVID crisis and ensure their speedy return to the labour market once the worst of the crisis is over.

Canada’s continuous reliance on temporary foreign workers to address its labour shortage and maintain its competitive advantage has resulted in a seasonal transnational workforce characterized by its precarious living and working conditions, cumulative legal disenfranchisement based on the lack of permanent status, and vulnerability to the ongoing pandemic. Despite the common portrayal of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) as a ‘model for migration management’ by governments and growers, a large body of academic publications has studied their precarious conditions in an attempt to explain the seeming contradiction between a highly-exploited workforce and the steady growth of willing participants. This project examines the exploitative practices embedded in the cycles of transmigration through a series of individual interviews with SAWP participants, scholars, and government officials. The central argument is that the differential treatment of migrant and citizen workers lies at the heart of the former’s precarity. It stems from the paradoxical promotion of human rights at the macro-level, while relying on an exploited workforce at the micro-level. The program creates mechanisms that keep workers in a state of continuous marginalization despite decades of participation in the program. The legal, subtle, and overt mechanisms that maintain workers in a continuous state of control and competition are among the key findings of this project. This project challenges the idealization of the SAWP by analyzing the main beneficiaries, its shortcomings, and its projected future. It presents a unique opportunity to reimagine temporary foreign worker programs and methodological nationalism in a globalized context.

The article reviews the book, "Balayons les abus : expérience d’organisation syndicale dans le nettoyage," by Marielle Benchehboune.

The article reviews the book, "Change and Continuity: Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium," edited by Mark P. Thomas, Leah F. Vosko, Carlo Fanelli, and Olena Lyubchenko.