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In recent years the issue of migrant workers with precarious status has increased in importance in Canada, in large part due to economic and policy changes that have led to greater numbers of migrant workers remaining in the country post permit expiry. This study tracks the employment experiences of low-skilled migrant workers who arrived through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and who remained following their permit expiry. Using a temporal analysis, the study identifies four timepoints that shape the workers’ employment outcomes both pre- and post-expiry. Events at these timepoints create differing employment pathways that, in turn, reveal different aspects of the workers’ precarity. In addition to pathways, workers’ ability to access informal support networks shape their employment outcomes as workers with precarious status.
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Unions in North America have a long history of financial support for charities, non-profits and other community-based organisations. However, very little research has been conducted into how much, to whom and why this financial support is provided. This article reports on a survey examining the financial donation patterns of unions in the Canadian province of Alberta. Alberta is chosen as the jurisdiction for the study as the provincial government recently enacted legislation (commonly referred to as Bill 32) that may force unions to reduce community-based donations, which would negatively impact those organisations and interfere with a core union function. The survey also examines how union financial support changes due to the implementation of this legislation. The study finds that a small but not insignificant percentage of union expenditures are devoted to community giving and that unions tend to donate to a narrow range of causes and organisations. It also finds that union responses to donation-dampening legislation were mixed, in part due to the politically controversial nature of the legislation.
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This article argues that while work-places are safer today than they were 50 years ago, the degree to which this change is due to Canada's occupational health and safety (ohs) system is unclear. Examining the literature and reflecting upon the authors' own experiences with work-place safety, the article suggests that fundamental flaws embedded in the principles of the system undermine its effectiveness at keeping workers safe. Specifically, the premise of joint responsibility – which is given life in the internal responsibility system (irs) – appears to ignore the conflicting interests and unequal power relations that exist in Canadian work-places. The circumstances that contributed to the historical effectiveness of the irs no longer exist, undermining the ability of workers to realize safe and healthy work-places.
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Governments in Canada are increasingly using multiple tools to advance their political agenda at the expense of free collective bargaining in the public sector. Legislative intervention has long been a strategy to curtail bargaining rights (Evans et al., 2023). Recently, governments have turned to non-legislative means to influence bargaining outcomes. This article is about the use of a coordination office, a decidedly non-legislative tactic, and how, over two rounds of negotiations, it transformed public-sector bargaining in Alberta. Bargaining has been further transformed by enactment of a legal requirement to keep the government’s mandates secret, the outcome being increased frustration among union representatives and potential damage to long-term relationships. Together, these measures have provided the government with a powerful means of influence, which, if successful, could spread to other jurisdictions.