Search

Objective. We sought to document pathways between under/unemployment and health among racialized immigrant women in Toronto while exploring the ways in which gender, class, migration and racialization, as interlocking systems of social relations, structure these relationships. Design. We conducted 30 interviews with racialized immigrant women who were struggling to get stable employment that matched their education and/or experience. Participants were recruited through flyers, partner agencies and peer researcher networks. Most interviews (21) were conducted in a language other than English. Interviews were transcribed, translated as appropriate and analyzed using NVivo software. The project followed a community-based participatory action research model. Results. Under/unemployment negatively impacted the physical and mental health of participants and their families. It did so directly, for example through social isolation, as well as indirectly through representation in poor quality jobs. Under/unemployment additionally led to the intensification of job search strategies and of the household/caregiving workload which also negatively impacted health. Health problems, in turn, contributed to pushing participants into long-term substandard employment trajectories. Participants’ experiences were heavily structured by their social location as low income racialized immigrant women. Conclusions. Our study provides needed qualitative evidence on the gendered and racialized dimensions of under/unemployment, and adverse health impacts resulting from this. Drawing on intersectional analysis, we unpack the role that social location plays in creating highly uneven patterns of under/unemployment and negative health pathways for racialized immigrant women. We discuss equity informed strategies to help racialized immigrant women overcome barriers to stable work that match their education and/or experience.

This dissertation traces the reoccurrence of logics which attempt to justify white settler occupation and the extraction, theft and harm of Indigenous lands and life in the Athabasca region and in relation to the extraction, transportation and marketing of bitumen. By tracing the entrenchment of notions of white entitlement to land and life in this context, the repetitiveness of normalized epistemic and ontological colonial violence comes into view as just as much a part of the contemporary neoliberal moment as it was during the founding of the nation-state. The Athabasca region is home to the worlds second largest deposit of oil and is being aggressively extracted despite being an unconventional oil source that requires massive amounts of energy, water, toxic chemicals and irreversible environmental damage to extract. Herein, historical narratives of empire and nation-building are examined and linked to extractive industries over time, first within a colonial mercantilist economy, then within a capitalist economic structure and finally within the contemporary neoliberal context. The relationships between private capital and the white settler government are explored as deeply interconnected and as mutually involved in the creation and maintenance of normalized white settler colonialism. Furthermore, the dissertation examines the extractive practices of white settler colonialism as always already informed by logics of white supremacy, and develops the concept of racial extractivism as a theoretical lens through which race, racism and racialization as well as colonialism may be centered in studies of resource extraction and nation-state building. Influenced by Cedric Robinsons (1983) theorization of racial capitalism, racial extractivism contributes to studies of political economy, settler colonialism, and to cultural studies and is utilized in analyzing the more regionally specific context of tar sands extraction and the contemporary discursive strategies supporting it and marketing it domestically and internationally. Lastly, the project examines neoliberalism and the securitization of the industry and attempts to think about racial extractivism intersectionally, as white settler state power combines with the forces of private oil and gas companies to discursively and affectively normalize ongoing colonial violence.

In May 1919, businessman and former munitions manufacturer Thomas Russell was brought before the Royal Commission on Industrial Relations (Mathers Commission) to provide insight into the largest collection of strikes in Canadian history. Russell was one of Canada’s pioneering automakers, first employed as general manager of the Canada Cycle and Motor Co. (CCM) and later as vice-president when the company was reorganized to become the Russell Motor Car Co. (RMCC). Russell had been actively engaged in business and political discourse for nearly two decades and played a leading role in implementing industrial reforms during the First World War. The RMCC became the largest private producer of shell fuses in Canada and employed one of the country’s largest female workforces. While these progressive reforms increased the productivity and profitability of munitions manufacturers, they had been implemented with little regard to their dramatic transformation of wartime labour conditions. As the war came to a close, Russell suspended his seemingly “progressive” program in favour of protecting his companies’ enormous late war profits. When asked what he believed to be the cause of labour unrest, he told the Mathers Commission that the strikes were not the fault of employers’ wartime industrial policies, but rather an unavoidable “natural desire for betterment” among dissatisfied workers and the unemployed. Contrary to Russell’s testimony, employers were very much responsible. This project explores the origins of progressive ideals in Canadian business at the turn of the 20th century and their impact on industrial reform during the First World War. As war manufacturers, business progressives failed to address the devastation their industries caused in the post-war period. Their post-war factory closures and reluctance to compromise with the growing labour movement substantially contributed to the outbreak of the 1919 labour revolt and fueled future advocacy for government intervention in the Canadian economy.

This edited collection introduces and explores the causes and consequences of precarious employment in Canada and across the world. After contextualizing employment precarity and its root causes, the authors illustrate how precarious employment is created amongst different populations and describe the accompanying social impacts on racialized immigrant women, those in the non-profit sector, temporary foreign workers and the children of Filipino immigrants. --Publisher's description. Contents: Preface: The PEPSO Story -- Part 1: Precarity in Canada. Origins of Precarity: Families and Communities in Crisis / Wayne Lewchuk, Stephanie Procyk and John Shields -- Part 2: Creating Precarity and its Social Impact. “No One Cares about Us”: Precarious Employment among Racialized Immigrant Women / Yogendra B. Shakya and Stephanie Premji -- Precarious Undertakings: Serving Vulnerable Communities through Nonprofit Work / John Shields, Donna Baines and Ian Cunningham -- Sacrificing the Family for the Family: Impacts of Repeated Separations on Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada / Aaraón Díaz Mendiburo, André Lyn, Janet McLaughlin, Biljana Vasilevska, and  Don Wells -- Precarious Students and Families in Halton, Ontario: Linking Citizenship, Employment and Filipino Student Success / Jennilee Austria, Philip Kelly and Don Wells -- Part 3: Resisting Precarity. $14 Now!: Voices of the Minimum Wage Campaign / Serene K. Tan -- Re-scripting Care Work: Collaborative Cultural Production and Caregiver Advocacy / Philip Kelly and Conely de Leon -- Cleaners Against Precarity: Lessons from a Vulnerable Workforce / Sean Patterson, Jenny Carson and Myer Siemiatycki -- Austerity, Precarity and Workers’ Voice: Representation for Precarious Workers in Non-Unions Social Services / Ian Cunningham, Donna Baines and John Shields -- The Immigrant Discount: Working on the Edges of the Labour Market / Diane Dyson and Nasima Akter -- Part 4: What To Do About Precarity? Workers’ Precarity: What to Do about It? / Wayne Lewchuk.

In this study, we examine the predictors of unmet demand for unions in non-union workplaces, using the Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey (AWRPS). Unmet demand is defined here, as those employees in non-union workplaces who would be likely to join a union if one were available. We argue that this is the first study in Australia to examine the predictors of unmet demand in non-union workplaces, and, that this is an important line of inquiry given a rise in non-union workplaces and never members in Australia, alongside declining union density and membership numbers. Drawing on three strands of existing literature, namely the individual propensity to unionize, the rise and characteristics of non-union workplaces and alternative forms of representation, and, managerial responsiveness to employees and unions, we develop and test four hypotheses.Our results show, controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, that there are two significant predictors of the willingness to join a union in non-union workplaces: perceived union instrumentality (Hypothesis 2) and perceived managerial responsiveness to employees (Hypothesis 4), whereby employees who perceive that managers lack responsiveness are more likely to want to join a union if one were available.These results show that unions must try to enhance their instrumentality in workplaces and could be more effective in recruiting if they targeted never members. The results also show that unions need to have some gauge (measure) of how responsive managers are to employees, and that they can leverage poor responsiveness of managers for membership gain and the extension of organizing. In the final analysis, an understanding of the predictors of unmet demand for unions in non-union workplaces has implications for Australian unions’ servicing and organizing strategies, and for their future growth prospects. // Cet article cherche à identifier les prédicteurs de la demande non comblée pour la syndicalisation dans les milieux de travail non syndiqués, en ayant recours à l’Enquête sur la participation et la représentation des travailleurs australiens (Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey-AWRPS). La demande non comblée correspond ici au désir des employés de milieux non syndiqués d’adhérer à un syndicat si une telle possibilité leur était offerte. Nous croyons que c’est la première étude sur ce sujet en Australie et qu’elle est d’autant d’intérêt qu’on assiste actuellement à une croissance du nombre de milieux non syndiqués ou de milieux où les syndicats sont absents, parallèlement au déclin de la densité syndicale et du nombre de personnes membres d’un syndicat. En s’appuyant sur trois axes de la littérature existante, soit la propension individuelle à joindre un syndicat, la montée et les caractéristiques des milieux non syndiqués et les formes alternatives de représentation, ainsi que les réactions des directions face aux employés et aux syndicats, nous développons et testons quatre hypothèses.Nos résultats, après avoir contrôlé une variété de caractéristiques des individus, des emplois et des milieux de travail, font ressortir deux prédicteurs significatifs du désir d’adhérer à un syndicat en milieux non syndiqués : la perception de l’instrumentalité de la syndicalisation (Hypothèse 2) et la perception de la réaction managériale envers les employés et les syndicats (Hypothèse 4), à savoir que les employés qui perçoivent que les gestionnaires n’apportent pas de réponses satisfaisantes à leurs besoins seront plus enclins à vouloir adhérer à un syndicat lorsque cette possibilité leur est offerte.Ces résultats suggèrent également que les syndicats devraient chercher à mieux faire valoir leur utilité dans les milieux de travail et ils pourraient devenir plus efficaces dans leur recrutement de nouveaux membres s’ils ciblaient davantage les travailleurs qui n’ont jamais été membres d’un syndicat. Ils montrent aussi que les syndicats devraient jauger (mesurer) à quel point les directions répondent aux besoins des employés, et qu’ils pourraient bâtir sur une faible réponse managériale afin d’effectuer des gains en terme de recrutement de membres et d’expansion de l’organisation syndicale. En dernière analyse, la compréhension des prédicteurs de la demande non comblée pour la syndicalisation dans les milieux de travail non syndiqués comporte des implications pour les stratégies d’organisation et d’offre de services des syndicats australiens, ainsi que pour la croissance future des organisations syndicales.

First published in 1974, this best-selling book was lauded by Choice as 'an important, ground-breaking study of the Assiniboine and western Cree Indians who inhabited southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan' and 'essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Canadian west before 1870.' Indians in the Fur Trade makes extensive use of previously unpublished Hudson's Bay Company archival materials and other available data to reconstruct the cultural geography of the West at the time of early contact, illustrating many of the rapid cultural transformations with maps and diagrams. Now with a new introduction and an update on sources, it will continue to be of great use to students and scholars of Native and Canadian history. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Worker Voice: Employee Representation in the Workplace in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US, 1914–1939," by Greg Patmore.

This study considers the travel patterns, practices and conditions that shape how migrant farmworkers circulate in rural southwestern Ontario. While migrants in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) do not exercise occupational mobility and are housed in employer-provided accommodations, they are otherwise legally entitled to circulate freely in Canada. In practical terms, however, most experience significant mobility barriers. The study investigates the mechanisms by which migrant farmworkers are confined and immobilized to farm spaces on systemic levels, contributing to a vein of research on the immobilities that pervade everyday life for transnational, low-wage labour migrants. I show how localized mobility controls placed around migrants as well as inadequate transportation create a “mobility fix” for farm operators and state actors. Technologies of confinement that immobilize migrant farmworkers are justified through racial and sexual ideologies about migrants being a threatening presence in rural Canada, while permitting high levels of value to be extracted from migrants’ labour. The dissertation is organized as three empirical journal articles which are preceded by a chapter on research methods. In the first article I document how a purported problem with transient farm labour migration to Ontario from Quebec and Atlantic Canada was constructed in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In response, the Canadian government devised the SAWP as an institutional mechanism to undercut transnational migrants’ constitutional and practical mobility rights, rights that transients harnessed. This chapter reveals how enacting controls around migrants’ local mobilities has been crucial to the “making” of migrant agricultural workforces in Canada. In the second article I identify how systemic immobilities for SAWP workers are enacted by Canadian family farm operators. I show how Canadian family farms benefit from high levels of personal and intimate interaction with SAWP employees. I identify how operators impose high limitations and constraints as to when, where, and how migrants can travel beyond formal work hours. Finally, the third article examines how migrants have forged bicycling geographies in rural places and how migrant bicyclists are perceived in Canadian communities. Migrants are more vulnerable as bicyclists, do not bike out of choice, and have become subjects of bike safety education. I argue that racial and economic forms of exploitation as well as socio-spatial exclusions inflect actually existing bicycling geographies.

This article reviews the book, "From Left to Right: Maternalism and Women's Political Activism in Postwar Canada," by Brian Thorn.

[This book] opens with a former prisoner's story of reintegration employment experiences. Next, relying on a combination of research interviews, quantitative data, and literature, contributors present an international comparative review of Canada's evolving criminal record legislation; the promotive features of employment; the complex constraints and stigma former prisoners encounter as they seek employment; and the individual and societal benefits of assisting former prisoners attain "gainful" employment. A main theme throughout is the interrelationship between employment and other central conditions necessary for safety and sustenance. [The] book offers suggestions for criminal record policy amendments and new reintegration practices that would assist individuals in the search for employment. Using the evidence and research findings of practitioners and scholars in social work, criminology and law, psychology, and other related fields, the contributors concentrate on strategies that will reduce the stigma of having been in prison; foster supportive relationships between social and legal agencies and prisons and parole systems; and encourage individually tailored resources and training following release of individuals. --Publisher's description. Contents: Section I – The Employment–Re-entry Enigma/Dilemma. Work after prison: one man's transition / James Young [pseudonym] -- Employment and desistance from crime / Kemi S. Anazodo, Christopher Chan, and Rose Ricciardelli -- Employment and criminal offenders with mental illness / Krystle Martin. Section II – Criminal Histories, Employment Prospects, and Moving Forward. Job search, suspended: changes to Canada's Pardon Program and the impact of finding employment / Samantha McAleese -- Vulnerabilities and barriers in post-release employment reintegration as indicated by parolees / Rose Ricciadelli and Taylor Mooney. Section III - Employment reintegration programming: supportive strategies and related outcomes. Is criminal history at the time of employment predictive of job performance? : A comparison of disciplinary actions and terminations in a sample of production workers / Mark G. Harmon, Laura J. Hickman, Alexandra M. Arneson, and Ashley M. Hansen -- Transforming rehabilitation: a critical evaluation of barriers encountered by an offender rehabilitation program for South Asian/Muslim offenders within the new probation service model / Christine Victoria Hough -- Promoting employment opportunities through mentorship for gang-involved youth reintegrating into the community / Adrienne M.F. Peters -- Barriers to community reintegration: the benefits of client-centred case management and pre-employment skills training / Ashley Brown. Section IV - The employment reintegration of unique populations. "Between a rock and a hard place": how being a "convict" hinders finding work in the neo-liberal, late-capitalist economy / Dale C. Spencer -- Does the "wrongful" part of wrongful conviction make a difference in the job market? / Kimberley A. Clow -- Conclusion. Employment reintegration / Rose Ricciardelli and Adrienne M.F. Peters.

The article reviews the book, "Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle," edited by the Graphic History Collective .

Ce livre propose une analyse historique des discours féministes sur le travail ménager et des débats entourant sa reconnaissance, à travers trois avenues : la socialisation, le salaire au travail ménager et les réformes gouvernementales. Rendre visible un travail qui ne l'est pas et réinscrire au sein des luttes féministes les enjeux liés à la reproduction sociale, tel est le but de cet ouvrage documenté et rigoureux. --Description de l'éditeur

This article reviews the book, "Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality," by Marcia Walker-McWilliams.

Canada's labour laws do not adequately protect non-union forms of concerted action - a problematic gap in the legislation, given the increase in alternative models of collective organizing. This article proposes the adoption in Canada of broader protections similar to those found in the United States, where section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act extends protection to concerted action by employees regardless of whether they are unionized or even seeking to unionize. Beginning with a comparison of the current legislative schemes in the two countries, the authors argue that because the limitations to concerted action in Canadian labour law are similar to those in the U.S., the proposal is unlikely to disturb settled law beyond its intent. The positive impacts of adopting section 7-like protection in Canada are canvassed, which include encouraging stronger employee "voice," allowing for increased realization of the constitutional guar- antee of freedom of association, and enabling experimentation with non-union forms of collective representation. These changes would help to balance work- place power dynamics, and allow workers more flexibility in choosing how to advocate for themselves.

Quebec has established special "exemption regimes" to govern the labour relations of two groups of precarious workers: home-based care workers and farm workers. Those regimes give the workers in question limited rights of rep- resentation and collective bargaining but otherwise exclude them from the gen- eral scheme of labour relations set out in the Labour Code. This paper reviews the history of efforts to unionize home care and farm workers in Quebec as well as the ensuing constitutional litigation, which in each case forms the immediate background to the creation of the exemption regime. In the case of home-based care workers, the regime gives workers certain associative rights, including the right to conclude "group agreements" with the responsible Minister respecting terms and conditions of employment, while maintaining an irrebuttable pre- sumption that the workers are self-employed. The author notes that although the unions representing various groups of home-based care workers have made some important gains, the constitutionality of individual elements of the scheme (e.g. restrictions on the permissible scope of bargaining) is open to question and is currently the subject of a challenge in the courts. With respect to farm workers in Quebec - mostly migrants - the applicable legislation gives employees' associations only minimal rights to make representations to the employer, and to discuss those representations with the employer in good faith. In the author's view, the scheme is highly unlikely to permit a meaningful process of collective bargaining, and is therefore also vulnerable to Charter challenge, particularly in the face of the Supreme Court of Canada's 2015 labour trilogy. Ultimately, the author argues, the piecemeal proliferation of exemption regimes is no answer to the emergence of precarious work, and a fundamental reconsideration of the principles of collective representation is necessary.

This article reviews the book, "Black Labor, White Sugar: Caribbean Braceros and their Struggle for Power in the Cuban Sugar Industry," by Philip A. Howard.

Les syndicats internationaux prennent de l'expansion dans l'industrie de la construction au Québec, entre 1887 et 1930, et en viennent à dominer le paysage syndical. Ces années sont aussi celles où les syndicats parviennent parfois à faire passer les relations de travail de rapport brut avec les employeurs à la négociation et à la signature de contrats collectifs de travail.</p><p>Comme dans le reste de l'Amérique du Nord, les syndicats internationaux de la construction apportent un modèle de relations de travail qui comporte des différences par rapport à celui qui domine dans l'industrie manufacturière. Comme les syndicats dans ces industries, ceux de la construction désirent parvenir à un contrôle partagé de leur milieu de travail en imposant ou en négociant des contrats précisant l'échelle des salaires, les heures de travail, le rôle des agents syndicaux et l'arbitrage des conflits. Mais ils attachent une importance primordiale à l'obtention de l'atelier syndical fermé et à la mise sur pied de bureaux de placement. Il faut dire que la fluidité des lieux de travail et l'instabilité des emplois font en sorte que les ouvriers de la construction, plus que les autres travailleurs, vivent dans l'insécurité. La stratégie utilisée par les syndicats pour pallier à cette insécurité et améliorer les conditions de travail consiste à regrouper la grande majorité des ouvriers d'un métier dans une ville donnée et à obtenir l'atelier syndical fermé sur les chantiers. Ils y greffent les bureaux de placement pour leurs membres, ce qui rend l'appartenance syndicale attrayante, car elle devient source de travail pour les syndiqués. Elle représente aussi une forme de gestion paritaire de la demande de main-d'oeuvre et pour les syndicats, un certain contrôle de l'offre de travail. Pendant la période étudiée, la syndicalisation des ouvriers de la construction leur vaut des avantages significatifs en termes de salaires, d'heures de travail et de règles régissant l'organisation du travail. À Montréal, les briqueteurs et charpentiers-menuisiers doublent leur salaire réel de 1901 à 1930 et voient leur semaine de travail réduite de 60 à 44 heures pour certains d'entre eux.

This article reviews the book, "If We Can Win Here: The New Front Lines of the Labor Movement," by Fran Quigley.

This article uses a case study of a highly publicized 1970 controversy over Canadian Pacific Air Lines’ flight attendant uniforms—specifically, a switch from mini to midi skirt—as a case study in business-labor relations concerning the regulation of women workers’ bodily appearance. Using company and union records and employing a historical, materialist, and feminist analysis, we trace how notions of aesthetic and emotional labor changed over time in relation to the political economy, gender ideologies, and the agency of workers themselves. The flight attendants’ reluctance to challenge the airline’s sexist advertising indicated how both accommodation and resistance were intertwined in complex ways in the workplace. Their acceptance of more “thigh in the sky” had much to do with a highly regulated and disciplined workplace, an entrenched division of labor on the airplane, and gendered notions of beauty and glamour in the industry, including women’s strategic use of beauty on the job to their own advantage.

This article reviews the book, "Kill it to save it – An Autopsy of Capitalism’s Triumph over Democracy," by Corey Dolgon.