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  • For much of the 20th century, mining was a highly unionized sector, including in the Canadian North. From the 1960s to the 1990s, there was near-complete union coverage in mines in the northern territories, significantly increasing the share of wealth and political power claimed by many northern mining workers. Today, only two of ten producing mines are unionized: the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories (Public Service Alliance of Canada [ psac]) and the Mary River mine in Nunavut (International Union of Operating Engineers [ iuoe]). This article explores the reasons for this decline and contemporary barriers to organizing, drawing on archival research, document analysis, and interviews with Indigenous organizations, union organizers, servicing staff, and officials. Changes in labour practices – such as the use of long-distance commuting, subcontracting, impact and benefit agreements ( ibas), and the shift to smaller, more highly skilled workforces – have created a more challenging organizing environment. These external challenges are compounded by internal union issues, including a failure to prioritize northern organizing and to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities and governments. We draw on these results to suggest strategies for overcoming these barriers. These included targeting workers in the remediation phase mines and catering and housekeeping workers to gain a foothold in the sector, locating choke points in the fly-in/fly-out production process, investing in offices and permanent organizing staff in northern cities, and working to decolonize unions through education and meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities.

  • ...In this paper, we aim to contribute to the scholarly literatures and related policy debates on LGBTQ+ work and life that [the Toronto-based advocacy organization] Egale highlights, and to bring these debates into economic geography and queer and trans geographies, fields which have heretofore only minimally examined sexual orientation and gender identity and/in the workplace.

  • Using Statistics Canada’s 2011-2016 Labor Force Surveys, this paper examines the spatial dimensions of precarious forms of employment (PFE) in Canada. We first compare different PFEs across a range of geographies including national, provincial, census metropolitan areas and urban/rural areas. The results show that different PFEs exhibited distinct spatial patterns across space and scale. Second, using logistic regression models, results show that patterns in PFEs were reinforced by factors such as immigration status, gender, age, education, and income. These models further confirm that spatial variations in PFEs were robust even when controlling for socio-demographic and socio-economic effects. Taken together, these marked spatial patterns advances our understanding of the spatial divisions of precariousness in Canada.

Last update from database: 9/10/26, 4:10 AM (UTC)

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