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The article reviews the book, "Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality and Family in Rural America," by Jennifer Sherman.

This study examines worker voice in the development and implementation of safety plans or protocols for covid-19 prevention among hospital workers, long-term care workers, and education workers in the Canadian province of Ontario. Although Ontario occupational health and safety law and official public health policy appear to recognize the need for active consultation with workers and labour unions, there were limited – and in some cases no – efforts by employers to meaningfully involve workers, worker representatives (reps), or union officials in assessing covid-19 risks and planning protection and prevention measures. The political and legal efforts of workers and unions to assert their right to participate and the outcomes of those efforts are also documented through archival evidence and interviews with worker reps and union officials. The article concludes with an assessment of weaknesses in the government promotion and protection of worker health and safety rights and calls for greater labour attention to the critical importance of worker health and safety representation.

Recent research on the policing of labour disputes suggests that there have been substantial historical changes in policing practices and policies in North America and Europe. Much of the literature points to a postwar movement from reactive policing grounded in the threat and use of force to a more preventive consent-based approach which relies on communication, negotiation and self-policing. At the same time, there have been conflicting reports of increased use of police force and confrontation with labour in some countries such as Britain, while police actions in a number of recent anti-globalization protests in Canada, the United States and Europe have demonstrated readiness of the police to use substantial force in certain public disorder situations. These developments speak to the need to examine more fully the ways in which the police construct their role and the role of labour unions in labour strikes and public protests. Based on interviews with police in 38 different cities and 10 provincial jurisdictions across Canada, this article looks at the ways in which the police understand and implement policies in strike and protest situations. It is argued that the police in most services have constructed a minimalist role for themselves in "normal" strike and protest situations which is grounded in processes of responsibilization, flexible policing and privatization. As they understand most situations, the "best way" to maintain order is to limit the show and use of force, while relying on negotiation and persuasion to resolve conflicts, and civil court or labour board proceedings and the threat of court imposed fines. At the same time, in contexts where the police perceive a clear threat to public interest or safety, in particular when unions or more typically other radical groups refuse to play by the rules of the game, police thinking shifts markedly to the view that extraordinary force is necessary and justified both to prevent and control public disorder.

This article elaborates the concept of knowledge activism as a way of understanding effective health and safety representation within the current Ontario legal regime of internal responsibility. Based on interviews with unionized health and safety representatives in the auto industry, we suggest that knowledge activism is a form of political activism by worker health and safety representatives that is organized around the strategic collection and tactical use of technical, scientific and legal knowledge. We argue that knowledge activism is more effective with reference to larger scale changes in work processes, workplace organization and technologies, and with reference to occupational health issues. Knowledge activism is conceptualized as an effective adaptation to a legislative regime which involves worker representatives in decisions without providing substantive power or proactive enforcement support.

This article traces the definition and treatment of “vulnerable workers” within the province of Ontario’s regulation of employment standards over a fourteen-year period. An examination of the government’s discourse and its enforcement and legislative history reveals significant shifts and inconsistencies between the government’s claims and its enforcement practices. These shifts and inconsistencies are understood within a political economic analysis of “Third Way” employment policies, competing liberal ideologies, shifting political-economic conditions and institutional legacies. The analysis contributes to a cross-national literature exploring the inadequacies of employment standards enforcement in liberal market economies while at the same time identifying opportunities for change within the different “varieties of liberalism” exhibited within Third Way regimes.

Background: Although worker representation in OHS has been widely recognized as contributing to health and safety improvements at work, few studies have examined the role that worker representatives play in this process. Using a large quantitative sample, this paper seeks to confirm findings from an earlier exploratory qualitative study that worker representatives can be differentiated by the knowledge intensive tactics and strategies that they use to achieve changes in their workplace. Methods: Just under 900 worker health and safety representatives in Ontario completed surveys which asked them to report on the amount of time they devoted to different types of representation activities (i.e., technical activities such as inspections and report writing vs. political activities such as mobilizing workers to build support), the kinds of conditions or hazards they tried to address through their representation (e.g., housekeeping vs. modifications in ventilation systems), and their reported success in making positive improvements. A cluster analysis was used to determine whether the worker representatives could be distinguished in terms of the relative time devoted to different activities and the clusters were then compared with reference to types of intervention efforts and outcomes. Results: The cluster analysis identified three distinct groupings of representatives with significant differences in reported types of interventions and in their level of reported impact. Two of the clusters were consistent with the findings in the exploratory study, identified as knowledge activism for greater emphasis on knowledge based political activity and technical-legal representation for greater emphasis on formalized technical oriented procedures and legal regulations. Knowledge activists were more likely to take on challenging interventions and they reported more impact across the full range of interventions. Conclusions This paper provides further support for the concepts of knowledge activism and technical-legal representation when differentiating the strategic orientations and impact of worker health and safety representatives, with important implications for education, political support and recruitment.