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This article examines the unionization of local government workers in Ontario during the 1940s and 1950s. While these workers played a central role in consolidating a standard employment relationship across the public sector, the advancement of collective bargaining rights, regular hours of work, and wages and benefits was fractured and spatially uneven. Bringing together theories of state formation with recent debates in labour geography, this article explores the politics of scale in the unionization of local government workers. Through the 1950s, it is argued that local government workers were able to effectively mount campaigns for recognition, develop shared bargaining capacities and establish federated labour organizations across the province, building from their embeddedness in a rapidly expanding metropolitan environment. Moreover, it is shown that the ‘scaling up’ of collective bargaining in this way provoked civic officials to establish new governance structures with the aim of containing the explosive growth of public sector unions. This entailed both the professionalization of labour relations practices and the development of more centralized administrative capacities. In this sense, it is argued that state formation through the 1950s and 1960s advanced through the efforts to normalize the demands of local government workers within a wider economy of service.

Historians have analyzed working-class masculinities from multiple perspectives, but few have examined how these masculinities were viewed and experienced by working-class women. Ida Martin (nee Friars), a working-class diarist from Saint John, New Brunswick, commented on the work-related activities and social behaviours of her husband, Allan Robert Martin (AR), a longshoreman and odd-jobber. Ida’s diaries reveal that older forms of working-class masculinity persisted in the postwar period in Saint John, including participation in a homosocial recreational culture; risk-taking behaviour; and a commitment to direct action as a form of labour unrest. Moreover, Martin’s diaries illustrate that AR’s participation in these forms of masculinity threatened the stability of the family economy. By documenting AR’s various injuries, the diaries also highlight the impact that physically demanding and dangerous work had on working-class male bodies.

This study examines Metro Vancouver working poverty trends by neighbourhood pre- and post- the 2008 recession. We are often told that the solution to poverty is for the poor to “get a job” or for various sectors to create more jobs. But this study finds that a job is not a guaranteed path out of poverty. Over 100,000 working-age people in Metro Vancouver were working but stuck below the poverty line in 2012, not counting students and young adults living at home with their parents. Contrary to stereotypes about poverty being concentrated mainly in Vancouver and Surrey, this study finds the growing ranks of the working poor are spread out across the Metro Vancouver region. The study explores the economic and public policy contributing to working poverty and develops recommendations for change. The study is a co-publication of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office, the United Way of the Lower Mainland, and the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition.

The article reviews the book, "Welcome to Resisterville: American Dissidents in British Columbia," by Kathleen Rodgers.

Theoretical developments and case studies have started to explore the complexity and intricacies of new forms of labour regulation in Global Value Chains (GVCs). This paper builds on these to integrate what we know into a coherent framework that can guide practice and future research. We bring together existing knowledge on new forms of labour standards regulation—such as Private Social Standards (PSSs) and International Framework Agreements (IFAs)—into a framework that integrates and disentangles the contextual determinants, processes, regulatory mechanisms, and outcomes of such regulation in GVCs. Of special significance is the distinction between regulatory processes—vicarious voice, workers’ voice, coordinated international campaigns—, and regulatory mechanisms—IFAs and PSSs. Extant literature tends to deal with existing forms of regulation without much clarity on their respective roles. Our framework identifies two pathways from regulatory processes to regulatory mechanisms: the labour power and the customer power pathways. Our framework also establishes clear connections between concepts, underlining links of causality and moderating effects. We explore the impact of value chain structure, and specifically, the connections between workers’ and vicarious voice, on regulatory outcomes. With regard to the structure of supply chains, we examine the coupling of operations and the sensitivity of value chain participants to reputational risk and drive within value chains. We add the significant dimension of ‘internal drive’ to existing understandings of drive to capture the possible internal discrepancies leading managers in multinational companies (MNCs) to apply mixed incentives to their suppliers to comply with labour standards. Additionally, we introduce the concept of ‘vicarious voice’, which we define as a situation where workers’ voice is substituted by that of actors who, unlike local unions or activist unionism, do not have a close representative link with workers. Vicarious voice may be composed of ethical consumerism, social advocacy, and international union federations. // Certains développements théoriques et des études de cas récentes ont commencé à explorer la complexité et les subtilités des nouvelles formes de régulation du travail dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales (CVM). À partir de ces analyses, le présent article cherche à intégrer ce que nous savons déjà dans un cadre cohérent qui puisse guider la pratique et la recherche à l’avenir. Nous y intégrons les connaissances actuelles sur les nouvelles formes de régulation du travail — telles les normes sociales privées (NSP) et les accords-cadres internationaux (ACI) — dans un cadre cohérent qui intègre, tout en les démêlant, les déterminants contextuels, processus et mécanismes de régulation, ainsi que les résultats de cette régulation dans les CVM. S’avère particulièrement importante la distinction entre les processus de régulation — tels la voix du salariat (workers’ voice en anglais), la voix par procuration (vicarious voice), les campagnes coordonnées au niveau international — et les mécanismes de régulation — tels les NSP et ACI. La littérature existante a tendance à traiter ces diverses formes de régulation sans grande nuance quant à leurs rôles respectifs. Notre cadre identifie deux avenues permettant de passer des processus de régulation aux mécanismes de régulation : le pouvoir des travailleurs et le pouvoir des consommateurs. Il établit également des connexions claires entre concepts, liens de causalité sous-jacents et effets modérateurs. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à l’impact des structures des chaînes de valeur, des connexions entre voix du salariat et voix par procuration, sur les résultats de la régulation. En ce qui ce qui a trait aux structures des chaînes de valeur, nous examinons le couplage des opérations, la sensibilité des participants à l’intérieur de ces chaînes au risque à la réputation, ce qui procure une influence (drive en anglais) à l’intérieur de ces chaînes de valeurs. Nous ajoutons la dimension significative de « l’influence interne » aux termes déjà convenus du sens de l’influence, cela afin de mieux pouvoir saisir les divergences internes possibles pouvant conduire les gestionnaires principaux dans les multinationales à mettre en place divers types d’incitatifs pour leurs fournisseurs afin de satisfaire aux normes du travail. De plus, nous introduisons le concept de voix par procuration (vicarious voice en anglais), que nous définissons comme une situation dans laquelle le moyen traditionnel qu’est la voix du salariat — tel le syndicalisme local ou l’activisme syndical en tant qu’agent de représentation des travailleurs — se voit remplacé par des acteurs qui n’ont pas de lien de proximité avec les travailleurs. La « voix par procuration » peut s’exprimer par le consumérisme éthique, les groupes de pression sociale, ou les fédérations syndicales internationales.

Discusses the conflict between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Describes the union's vision of the postal service (in particular, postal banking) in "Delivering Community Power: How Canada Post Can Be the Hub of Our Next Economy," released on the website, deliveringcommunitypower.ca, on Feb. 29, 2016.

SummaryUsing the large-scale Korean Workplace Panel Survey, this study examines the interplay between international diversification, labour flexibility, and workplace-level performance in the context of advanced emerging markets. Filling the gap in the literature on the international diversification-performance (IDP) relationship, which focuses primarily on firm-level characteristics and overlooks the role of labour factors as contingent variables, we draw attention to the workplace level dynamics by exploring how the two types of labour flexibility—functional and numerical flexibility—moderate the impact of international diversification on performance. The results show that when workplaces invest in training for job enlargement and employee involvement programs that lead to the enhancement of functional flexibility, the link between international diversification and performance can be strengthened.This finding supports the assertion in the international HRM literature that, in the ever-globalized business environment, investment in human capital is a better strategy for improving financial performance in the long run. Furthermore, we find that numerical flexibility, as measured by in-house subcontracting arrangements, has a negative impact on the IDP relationship. Overall, our study suggests that the quality of human resources and a well-designed workplace configuration may still help improve performance in the context of international diversification, whereas excessive dependence on employment externalization for cost reduction is likely to hurt not only financial performance but also long-term sustainability. We also believe that our findings on the advanced emerging market economy complement insights from previous studies, which are largely based on Western developed economies, thus enriching current theories on labour flexibility. // En s’appuyant sur une enquête à grande échelle, le « Panel d’enquête coréen sur les milieux de travail » (Korean Workplace Panel Survey), la présente étude examine l’interaction entre diversification internationale, flexibilité du travail et rendement au travail en contexte de marchés avancés émergents. Afin de combler les écarts dans la littérature sur la relation entre rendement et diversification internationale — laquelle met principalement l’accent sur les caractéristiques de l’entreprise et néglige le rôle des facteurs liés au travail comme variables conditionnelles —, nous attirons l’attention sur les dynamiques en cours au niveau du milieu de travail en explorant comment les deux types de flexibilité du travail, soit la flexibilité fonctionnelle et la flexibilité numérique, atténuent l’effet de la diversification internationale sur le rendement. Les résultats montrent que lorsque, dans les milieux de travail, on investit dans des programmes de formation en vue de l’élargissement des tâches et la participation des salariés afin d’accroître la flexibilité fonctionnelle, le lien entre diversification internationale et rendement devrait se renforcir.Ces résultats appuient l’assertion de la littérature internationale sur la gestion des ressources humaines à l’effet que, dans un environnement commercial sans cesse globalisé, l’investissement en capital humain constitue une meilleure stratégie pour améliorer la performance financière à long terme. De plus, nous constatons que la flexibilité numérique, telle que déterminée dans les ententes de sous-traitance internes, a une influence négative sur la relation entre rendement et diversification internationale. Globalement, notre étude suggère que la qualité des ressources humaines et une configuration bien conçue du milieu de travail peuvent aider à améliorer la performance dans un environnement de diversification internationale, tandis qu’une dépendance excessive à l’égard de l’externalisation de l’emploi dans le but de réduire les coûts est susceptible de plomber non seulement la performance financière, mais aussi le développement à long terme. Nous pensons également que nos résultats relatifs à une économie de marché émergente avancée ajoutent aux observations rapportées dans d’autres études qui portaient principalement sur les économies occidentales avancées, constituent un enrichissement des théories actuelles sur la flexibilité du travail.

Existing literature in the sociology of sport largely omits any discussion of the relation between the spectator and athlete in professional and high performance sport. This dissertation explores that relation, demonstrating that exploitation in athletic labour and the enduring allure of sport as spectacle are inextricably linked as part of a broader political economy. The labour of professional athletes is theorized as a form of social reproductive labour that offers affective/subjective renewal for fans. Spectators who experience isolation and alienation in their day-to-day lives as capitalist subjects come to sport seeking a sense of meaning, connection, and community. Athletic labour in professional sport provides this to them and enables them to continue to function as productive capitalist subjects by serving as an armature upon which an imagined athletic community of fans can be built. However, for social reproduction to occur for fans, athletes must sacrifice their bodies completely in the performance of their labour. It is only through this sacrifice that the imagined athletic community becomes concretized as something tangible and real and spectators become willing to spend their money on sports fandom. This theoretical understanding of athletic labour and spectatorship is explored through semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight former professional hockey players and eight spectators of sport. The testimony of former players consistently links the political economy of professional sport and the harm and exploitation they experienced in the course of their work. The testimony of spectators, on the other hand, typically fails to acknowledge that the meaning and pleasure derived from watching professional sport is predicated on the destruction of athletic bodies. This study ultimately suggests that a form of alienation exists between athletes and spectators. The spectator grasps for an elusive sense of community within a society structured to deny that form of connection by placing vicarious investment in the bodies of athletes. Yet, this act of investment instrumentalizes and commodifies the athlete. Athletes understand this process as it occurs because it denies them their humanity by transforming them into something both more (the heroic vessel) and less (the abject failure) than human.

Announces the appointment of Charles Smith and Joan Sangster as co-editors of the journal.

Announces Sean Cadigan's resignation as editor. Bryan Palmer and Gregory Kealey to be interim co-editors until a new appointment is made. Takes note of the Canadian Labour Studies database, an open access bibliography of labour studies resources produced by Laurentian University librarians Desmond Maley and Dan Scott.

As a concept that has increasingly been invoked in discussions of social and political food systems dynamics, food sovereignty calls for the holistic consideration of human and ecological aspects of agricultural systems with a focus on power and political dynamics. We investigated an export-oriented agricultural production system as a case study to understand how and to what extent food sovereignty principles can be enacted in the context of agriculture in the Global North. The blueberry industry in British Columbia, Canada, is socially and economically significant within a regional food system, and is globally integrated through export and trade. This study employs the framework of food sovereignty by drawing on principles of equity, empowerment and ecology as a methodological tool for assessing food systems, and examines how local producers in the BC blueberry industry are responding to pressures, constraints and opportunities in the global food system. I identified and operationalized key principles and processes for food sovereignty in the form of indicators. I conducted 33 structured interviews with blueberry growers representing a range of scales and modes of production. Significant themes and dynamics related to food sovereignty discussed by growers were: high demands for seasonal labour leading to mechanization; blueberry production as a means to attain a farming lifestyle while supplementing with significant off-farm income; and a perceived lack of power among growers relative to other actors in the food system. Participants expressed reduced decision autonomy through resource constraints and economic pressures. The combination of economic forces and social dynamics that have most growers locked into an industrial production cycle represent a barrier to achieving food sovereignty principles. On the other hand, there were several important institutions in the industry that support and empower growers through democratic participation opportunities, knowledge translation, and field expertise. A significant re-orientation of food systems governance and policy combined with economic re-structuring and social empowerment mechanisms would be needed to approach the realization of food sovereignty principles in the BC food system.

We examine the effects of the Universal Child Care Benefit on the labour supply of mothers. The benefit has a significant negative effect on the labour supply of legally married mothers, reducing their likelihood of participation in the labour force by 1.4 percentage points and hours worked by nearly one hour per week. In contrast, the likelihood of participation by divorced mothers rises by 2.8 percentage points when receiving the benefit and does not affect hours worked. Moreover, the benefit does not have a statistically significant effect on the participation of common-law married mothers or never-married mothers.

Bergman and Jean (2016) include freelancers as one of the categories of workers who are understudied in the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology literature. This neglect is particularly striking given the attention paid by the popular media and by politicians to the rise of the “gig economy,” comprising primarily short-term independent freelance workers (e.g., Cook, 2015; Kessler, 2014; Scheiber, 2014; Warner, 2015). This may be due in part to challenges involved in accessing and researching this population, as discussed by Bergman and Jean, but it may also arise from complexities in defining and conceptualizing freelance work, as well as from misunderstandings about the nature of the work now performed by many people who are considered freelancers. Major topics of interest to I-O psychologists such as organizational attraction, job satisfaction, and turnover may seem at first glance to lack relevance to the study of workers who are officially classified as self-employed. But there is substantial opportunity for I-O psychologists and other behaviorally oriented organizational researchers to contribute to our understanding of the growing number of people who earn all or some of their income by freelancing.

The article reviews the book, "Generation Rising: The Time of the Québec Student Spring," by Shawn Katz.

The article reviews the book, "Swedes in Canada: Invisible Immigrants," by Elinor Barr.

The article reviews the book, "The Workers' State: Industrial Labor and the Making of Socialist Hungary, 1944–1958," by Mark Pittaway.

The article reviews the book, "The Raids: The Nickel Range Trilogy, Volume 1," by Mick Lowe.

Les micro-données de l’Enquête sur la population active de Statistique Canada sont utilisées dans le cadre d’une approche centrée sur les professions, qui repose elle-même sur l’approche des régimes d’emploi. Les auteurs construisent une typologie des professions en huit classes. Sur la base de la part relative des classes professionnelles dans l’emploi salarié, il appert que les professionnels et les techniciens, tant dans les sciences naturelles et dans les nouvelles technologies de l’information et des communications que dans les sciences sociales et dans les sciences de la santé, ont enregistré la croissance la plus importante ; les employés faiblement qualifiés dans les services interpersonnels ont également connu une croissance, tandis que les cols bleus et les cols blancs ont subi un déclin alors que les cadres supérieurs et les professionnels de la finances se sont enlisés dans la stagnation. Toutefois, ces derniers se sont avéré être les véritables gagnants de la répartition des revenus au cours de la période. Sur le plan de la qualité des emplois mesurée par la croissance relative des professions regroupées en quintiles de revenus, on observe un phénomène de polarisation asymétrique : les quintiles supérieurs regroupant les bons emplois, ont connu une croissance plus élevée que le quintile inférieur, associé aux mauvais emplois, alors que les quintiles intermédiaires ont régressé. On enregistre également une croissance des inégalités salariales, en ce sens que les salaires du quintile supérieur se sont accrus plus rapidement que ceux des autres quintiles de revenus. Enfin, le Québec et le Canada appartiennent au régime néolibéral. Le Québec est, certes, une société plus égalitaire, mais, contrairement aux pays du modèle social-démocrate, ce caractère « distinctif » n’est pas le résultat de politiques sociales plus progressistes et d’un syndicalisme davantage inclusif qui auraient rehaussé les salaires du quintile inférieur ; il s’explique plutôt par la stagnation, voire le déclin, de l’emploi dans le quintile supérieur et des salaires dans le quatrième quintile.

The article reviews the book, "Le Capital au XXIe siècle," by Thomas Piketty.

Director Min Sook Lee's award-winning documentary follows the story of migrant workers who come to labour in Ontario greenhouses as part of Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Many are women recruited by brokers who illegally charge fees upwards of $7,000, with greenhouse owners complicit in the scam. The film examines the lives of a group of strong, vibrant migrant women who resist systemic oppression and exploitation. --TV Ontario website description