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In this article, I argue that labor researchers in North America need to engage more thoroughly with Indigenous studies if they hope to advance social and environmental justice. First, I suggest that researchers approach Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to the environment by supporting Aboriginal rights to lands and resources. Second, and related to this point, I raise the issue of the need for Aboriginal-controlled development in northern Aboriginal communities. Finally, I draw on a case study on Inuit and union participation in the creation of the Vale Inco, Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in Labrador to discuss how the increasing prevalence of corporate-Aboriginal alliances is creating important challenges to union engagement that need to be addressed.
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This article explores how women forest workers’ perceptions of restructuring are related to their work identities. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 29 women working in subsidiaries of a multinational forest company in northern Saskatchewan, I describe how women workers selectively drew on traditional mill worker and flexible worker identities to legitimize and delegitimize restructuring. Women's understandings of themselves as workers were shaped by their paradoxical relationships to standard forest processing work. Some women with previous experience working in low‐waged service industries adopted worker subjectivities that legitimized restructuring and valued flexibility, individual empowerment, and mobility. Other women delegitimized restructuring, referencing traditional characterizations of forest work that valued community stability, collective resistance, and security. Many women, however, neither consistently legitimized nor delegitimized restructuring throughout their interviews. This last group's ambiguous portrayal of work and restructuring demonstrates the identity dilemmas faced by new entrants to declining industrial sectors. Restructuring interrupted women's narratives of having found a “good job” in forestry and prompted the renegotiation of their understandings of mill work. This article contributes to our understanding of restructuring in resource industries by drawing attention to how worker identities, gender, and industrial change are interrelated.
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This study examines employment segregation by gender and by Aboriginal ancestry within Canada's forest sector in 2001. Results show that while gender segregation was principally by occupation, segregation by Aboriginal ancestry was principally by industry sub-sector. White women were over represented in clerical occupations and Aboriginal men were over represented in woods based industries. Patterns of employment for Aboriginal women differed from those of both Aboriginal men and white women.
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Several authors have argued that broadening the traditional understandings of union solidarity is necessary for union renewal. Concerns specific to workers from marginalized groups have been shown to challenge traditional understandings of union collectivity. This paper draws on interviews with white and Aboriginal women forest processing workers to argue that interrogating marginalized workers' negative representations of their unions can provide insights that will help to broaden traditional understandings of union solidarity. I use thematic analysis followed by critical discourse analysis to examine women workers' negative talk about unions. I present examples of how women's negative representations of their unions can be understood as different forms of collectivism when examined in the context of their lived experiences of work and unionism. Some white and Aboriginal women's representations of their unions wove individualistic anti-union statements together with their previous experiences of work highlighting the inequality between unionized and non-unionized workers in the community. The talk of other Aboriginal women critiqued the union for not representing them while demonstrating a sense of collectivity with other Aboriginal workers. By exploring linkages between women's negative representations of unions and their work experiences, unions can better understand the negative union sentiment of marginalized workers and use this to create more inclusive forms of solidarity.
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Aboriginal peoples in Canada are gaining influence in post-secondary education through Aboriginal-directed programs and policies in non-Aboriginal institutions. However, these gains have occurred alongside, and in some cases through, neoliberal reforms to higher education. This article explores the political consequences of the neoliberal institutionalization of First Nations empowerment for public sector unions and workers. We examine a case where the indigenization of a community college in British Columbia was embedded in neoliberal reforms that ran counter to the interests of academic instructors. Although many union members supported indigenization, many also possessed a deep ambivalence about the change. Neoliberal indigenization increased work intensity, decreased worker autonomy and promoted an educational philosophy that prioritized labour market needs over liberal arts. This example demonstrates how the integration of Aboriginal aspirations into neoliberal processes of reform works to rationalize public sector restructuring, constricting labour agency and the possibilities for alliances between labour and Aboriginal peoples.
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The inclusion of new groups of workers has been an important component of union renewal efforts. Sev- eral unions in Canada have begun to dedicate significant resources to better organize and represent Aboriginal workers. Drawing on interviews with union activists, organizers and representatives from two national public sector unions in Canada, we present an overview of union strategies to engage with Aboriginal peoples. Results suggest that understanding the distinct territorial context of Aboriginal peo- ples’ relationships to work and unions has been necessary to the success of these union strategies. This approach begins by drawing connections between Aboriginal peoples’ present-day relationships to work and their prior occupancy of, and dispossession from, lands and resources. Because of the geographical specificity of how the colonial experience affected Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to work and unions, unions have had to adopt non-normative approaches to their engagements with Aboriginal peoples. In workplaces where settlers were dominant, addressing racism in the workplace and gaining support for initiatives to hire and train Aboriginal workers were important. Alternatively, in Aboriginal workplaces, organizing was a priority. Here questions of union legitimacy have taken precedence and the focus of unions has been on partnership building. Most importantly, however, engagement with Aboriginal peo- ples has brought attention to the colonial practices within unions and helped to foster growing Aboriginal voice within the labour movement.