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The Subjectivities and Politics of Occupational Risk links restructuring in three industries to shifts in risk subjectivities and politics, both within workplaces and within the safety management and regulative spheres, often leading to conflict and changes in law, political discourses and management approaches. The state and corporate governance emphasis on worker participation and worker rights, internal responsibility, and self-regulative technologies are understood as corporate and state efforts to reconstruct control and responsibility for Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) risks within the context of a globalized neoliberal economy. Part 1 presents a conceptual framework for understanding the subjective bases of worker responses to health and safety hazards using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and the sociology of risk concepts of trust and uncertainty. Part 2 demonstrates the restructuring arguments using three different industry case studies of multiple mines, farms and auto parts plants. The final chapter draws out the implications of the evidence and theory for social change and presents several recommendations for a more worker-centred politics of health and safety.The book will appeal to social scientists interested in health and safety, work, employment relations and labour law, as well as worker advocates and activists. --Publisher's description. Contents: 1. Introduction and Research MethodsPart 1: Risk Subjectivities and Practices2. Identifying Hazards and Judging Risk3. Taking Risks or Taking a Stand: Interests, Power and IdentityPart 2: Case Studies of Health and Safety in Hard Rock Mining, Family Farming and Auto Parts Manufacturing 4. Transforming the Mining Labour Process: Transforming Risk and its Social Construction5. Reconstructing Miner Consent: Management Objectives and Strategies6. The Transformation and Fragmentation of Canadian Agriculture7. Health and Safety in Farming8. The Transformation of Production and Health and Safety in Auto Parts Manufacturing.9. Participation and Control in a Non-Union Auto Parts Firm10. Conclusion and Implications for Change.
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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.
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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.
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The nature of employment is changing: low wage jobs are increasingly common, fewer workers belong to unions, and workplaces are being transformed through the growth of contracting-out, franchising, and extended supply chains. Closing the Enforcement Gap offers a comprehensive analysis of the enforcement of employment standards in Ontario. Adopting mixed methods, this work includes qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with workers, community advocates, and enforcement officials; extensive archival research excavating decades of ministerial records; and analysis of a previously untapped source of administrative data collected by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour. The authors reveal and trace the roots of a deepening "enforcement gap" that pervades nearly all aspects of the regime, demonstrating that the province’s Employment Standards Act (ESA) fails too many workers who rely on the floor of minimum conditions it was devised to provide. Arguably, there is nothing inevitable about the enforcement gap in Ontario or for that matter elsewhere. Through contributions from leading employment standards enforcement scholars in the US, the UK, and Australia, as well as Quebec, Closing the Enforcement Gap surveys innovative enforcement models that are emerging in a variety of jurisdictions and sets out a bold vision for strengthening employment standards enforcement. -- Publisher's description.
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