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The article chronicles the development of two retail workers' unionization efforts that took place in the Toronto, Ontario area in the 1990s. It examines the role that women labour leaders Wynne Hartviksen and Debora De Angelis played in organizing the drives and describes how their personal experiences working in low-wage and non-benefited retail jobs contributed to their beliefs as workers' rights activists. It also presents comments from both Hartviksen and De Angelis on topics such as fear exhibited by employees regarding being punished by employers for joining unions and their efforts to contact and recruit potential union members through mailings, phone calls, and personal interviews.
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Retail workers are a significant but largely unorganized group in Canada and the United States. However, in recent years, there has been a marked increase in efforts to organize retail workers, including pursuit of innovative structures and strategies. The author focuses on the dominant threads of contemporary retail organizing work in Canada and the United States, outlining three current organizing vehicles: unionization, store-based networks, and occupation or sector-based associations. The author then reflects on the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities of these approaches, independently and collectively, and emphasizes the need to confront the social and cultural as well as the economic devaluation of retail workers.
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Retail workers are a large labor force, yet their jobs are generally devalued and dominated by low wages, precarious conditions, and disrespect. Coulter draws on three years of comparative research on retail workers and political action, including fieldwork in Canada, the United States, and Sweden, to explore what is needed to improve workers' wellbeing and transform retail work. The only book of its kind, Revolutionizing Retail explains the strategies being used to improve retail jobs and retail workers' quality of life, including diverse forms of organizing, public policy, and good management. Coulter analyzes the degree to which current efforts are succeeding, and what lessons they offer about the present and future of work, forms of agency, and class, gender, and race relations. The power of culture, emotions, and workers' personal experiences of political action are at the heart of this engaging discussion of the challenges and possibilities of social change. --Publisher's description
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In this thought-provoking and innovative book, Kendra Coulter examines the diversity of work done with, by, and for animals. Interweaving human-animal studies, labor theories and research, and feminist political economy, Coulter develops a unique analysis of the accomplishments, complexities, problems, and possibilities of multispecies and interspecies labor. She fosters a nuanced, multi-faceted approach to labor that takes human and animal well-being seriously and challenges readers to not only think deeply and differently about animals and work but to reflect on the potential for interspecies solidarity. The result is an engaging, expansive, and path-making text. --Publisher's description
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The article reviews the book, "Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places," by Susan Chandler and Jill B. Jones.
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This chapter draws upon research conducted on retail work from 2009 to 2016 and it highlights the most significant patterns and findings about union avoidance and how anti-unionism is manifested in retail stores on an ongoing basis and in organizing attempts. --Author
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When I entered Queen’s Park, the provincial legislature in Ontario, Canada, I sought to uncover, contextualize, and analyze what political workers do and why, in order to better understand the production of government. Not long after I started fieldwork, during an informal discussion but one that took place in the mythically sacrosanct space of the legislative chamber, a young male Conservative staffer encouraged a Liberal counterpart to decorate his new motorcycle helmet with a sticker proclaiming “Show me your tits, bitch!” This sort of misogyny, in combination with more subtle daily examples of andro-centrism, made it clear that gender and, in particular, variants of hegemonic masculinity were central to the production of government and what political workers do and why. I learned very quickly that I would need to grapple with the relationships between patriarchy and political labor in order to thoroughly understand government.
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Governments are formal political institutions, places of work for thousands of women and men, and powerful social, cultural, and economic sites that shape the lives of all people. This collection demonstrates how anthropologists enrich our understandings of government by exploring the labor of those who govern, and how the dynamics of culture are at the heart of government actions that justify, modify, and reproduce political action. By assembling original, ethnographically-grounded research in legislatures, executives, and bureaucracies, this volume illuminates and unpacks the structures, practices, and values of government actors in local, regional, and national contexts. It will be of interest to scholars and students in anthropology, as well as sociology, political science, policy studies, and labor studies. --Publisher's description
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[T]his chapter identifies different forms of anti-poverty work being pursued in Canada today and examines the relations among poor people, poverty and labour unions. ...[The author] concentrates on examples of three main intersections of labour union and anti-poverty relations: union organizing of low-wage workers, poor workers' organizations, and multi-organization campaigns and coalitions. --Editors' introduction
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