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The relationship between differential inclusion of workers migrating for employment internationally and the dispossession and assimilation of Indigenous people and lands is a growing area of study within critical migration studies. Less attention has been paid, however, to how (im)migration policies that foster migrant worker precariousness also extend settler colonial practices. Scholars situated in the transdisciplinary fields of Black Studies and Indigenous Studies have long theorized nation-state building as exclusionary to Black and Indigenous life, and reliant on limited mobilities and dispossession of Black and Indigenous peoples. Bridging this scholarship with critical migration studies, in this article we explore how policies regulating international migration for employment to Canada on temporary bases reflect and sustain the settler-colonial context in which they operate. We outline three logics of settler colonialism that underpin policies governing temporary migration for employment to Canada: (1) the racialized hierarchization of life and knowledge; (2) the reliance on technologies of governing, which foster unequal administrative burdens; and (3) the disruption of people’s relationships to land and livelihoods. Analyzing Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and International Education Strategy, we illustrate how migration policies reinforce and replicate settler colonial practices.
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This article examines the history of, and legal precedent set by, Four B Manufacturing v. United Garment Workers of America, a 1980 Supreme Court of Canada case involving an Indigenous-owned manufacturing firm that resisted the efforts of its Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers to form a union on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, a reserve in southeastern Ontario. The employer, Four B, contested the jurisdiction of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and argued, unsuccessfully, that as an "Indian enterprise," its own operations were a matter of federal jurisdiction. We return to the case of Four B for three interrelated reasons. First, we argue that Four B remains relevant because of the ways that the political economy of settler-colonial Canada continues to structure Indigenous enterprises, labour, and employment as ongoing sites of tension. Second, as the inaugural case dealing with the "core of Indianness" – a contested legal concept used by the courts to determine federal jurisdiction over Indigenous labour – this case both set the legal precedent and shaped the subsequent political terrain of Indigenous labour relations. Third, the issues addressed in Four B contextualize recent jurisdictional struggles over Indigenous enterprises, labour, and employment in what we term the "Indigenous public sector" – namely, health care, social services, and First Nations government administration. The article reviews the case history of Four B, setting this against the backdrop of deindustrialization in southeastern Ontario during the period, before tracing how the case influenced the juridical and political landscape of Indigenous labour relations. We close by considering the potential tensions between Indigenous self-determination and the exercise of collective bargaining rights by Indigenous workers.
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This chapter focuses on the challenge that precarious employment in Canada’s labor force poses to protective labor law and policy, and thus to state policy more generally. Precarious employment is conceptualized as work for remuneration characterized by multiple dimensions of labor market insecurity, such as job uncertainty, low income, lack of control over the labor process, and higher risks of ill health. The chapter shows that these dimensions of insecurity are associated with particular forms of employment including self-employment, part-time forms of self- and paid employment, as well as temporary paid employment. In considering workers’ legal protections, the chapter focuses on three distinct domains: employment standards (ES), collective bargaining, and occupational health and safety (OHS). It demonstrates that precariously employed workers are vulnerable to ES violations, are less likely to benefit from laws that facilitate access to collective bargaining coverage, and tend to experience relatively high rates of injury and benefit less from OHS regulation.
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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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