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This article uses campaign finance data to trace the changing landscape of party-union relations in Ontario. In an analysis of six provincial elections that took place between 1995 and 2014, the authors demonstrate that significant segments of the province's labour movement have abandoned exclusive electoral alliances with the New Democratic Party in favour of multi-partisan strategic voting campaigns designed to block the election of Progressive Conservative candidates.

This article explores union responses to workplace-based covid-19 vaccine mandates in Canada. Specifically, the authors examine the complex interplay of factors that drove unions to adopt their respective positions on vaccine mandates and to frame those positions in particular ways for the benefit of their members and the wider public. Interviews with key informants, along with analysis of documents and arbitration decisions, reveal a disjuncture between the discursive quality of certain unions’ positions and their actual positions. In particular, media framing of unions as either “for” or “against” vaccine mandates oversimplified or misrepresented the actual positions adopted. In response, the article introduces a typology of union positions that distinguishes between support for mandatory-vaccination policies and support for voluntary-vaccination policies and reveals that the vast majority of unions favoured the latter. The authors further reveal that workplace vaccine mandates were both internally divisive and disorienting for unions, given the central role labour organizations play in managing workplace disputes and representing the interests of workers, both individually and collectively.

Confrontation, Struggle and Transformation is the story of working women and men in the St. Catharines area from the mid-1800s to the present. The study explores the labour movement's fight to survive and thrive in the Niagara region. Thanks to extensive quotations from interviews, archival sources and local newspapers, the story unfolds, in part, through the voices of the people themselves: workers who fought for unions, community members who supported them and employers who opposed them. --Publisher's description

Defines community unionism/alt-labour in terms of community organizations that contest and make claims on the state rather than collaborate with neoliberal governments, such as the downloading of social services. Discusses worker centres and labour-community coalitions including the $15 and Fairness campaign in Ontario. Concludes that organized labour should do more to support community unionism. A revised and expanded version of the essay published in the first edition (2012).

This article seeks to engage Jansen and Young’s recent research on the impact of changing federal campaign finance laws on the relationship between organized labour and the New Democratic Party. Jansen and Young use models from mainstream comparative politics to argue that unions and the NDP retain links due to a “shared ideological commitment” to social democracy, rather than an expectation of mutual rewards and despite changes in the global economy. We critically assess the evidence, method of comparison, and theoretical assumptions informing their claims and find many aspects unconvincing. Instead, we propose that better explanations of this enduring yet strained relationship can be formulated by drawing insights from Canadian political economy, labour history and working class politics, and comparative social democracy.

This article presents the findings of a survey of unionized professors and professional librarians at a public university in Southern Ontario to examine their views on the prospect and desirability of “right-to-work” legislation and “paycheck protection” laws. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to assess the level of opposition to such legislative initiatives among unionized faculty, and, second, to determine the extent to which the passage of such laws would undermine the dues base of the faculty union. Based on the findings of a mixed methods survey, we found that a strong majority of the university professors and professional librarians surveyed were opposed to “right-to-work” and “paycheck protection” laws and that their passage would not deter them from paying dues or authorizing expenditures for political action.

This study examines the views of full-time unionized university faculty at four primarily undergraduate universities in Ontario, Canada, on a broad range of issues related to postsecondary education, faculty associations, and the labor movement. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to better understand the views of unionized professors regarding the role and effectiveness of their faculty unions and of labor unions more generally, and second to explore what impact such views might have on shaping the strategic orientation and political priorities of faculty associations in a context of unprecedented austerity measures and neoliberal restructuring in Ontario's postsecondary education sector. Based on the findings of a mixed-methods survey, we found that university professors were relatively satisfied union members with a healthy degree of union—as opposed to class—consciousness, but had little appetite for engaging in political activities beyond the narrow scope of postsecondary education. This finding, we argue, reinforces the false division between the “economic” and the “political” in the realm of labor strategy, thus potentially undermining the capacity of unionized faculty associations to effectively resist neoliberal restructuring both on campus and in society more broadly.

Analyzes the tendency of public sector unions towards social unionist strategies, including in collective bargaining and mobilizing broader public support for services.

Contrasts business unionism and social unionism with "social movement unionism" as a model of public sector worker engagement.

Analyzes the turbulent history of labour relations between public sector unions and provincial and federal governments since the 1970s. Summarizes the distinctive features of the neoliberal state as employer.

Portrays nonprofit social services as a largely female, increasingly diverse workforce with a strong care ethic. Concludes that values of social justice and social unionism are integral both to worker engagement and resistance of state austerity and managerialism.

Examines the "politicization of caring" and the contest for the public trust between nurses and the state since 1960. Concludes that nurse militancy demonstrates how the battle against austerity can be fought.

Analyzes from a national perspective the role of teachers in capitalist society, the growth of professionalism, the emergence of unions, and the ongoing battle for collective bargaining rights in the face of neoliberal austerity regimes.

Contrasts the administrative structure of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which has undermined its effectiveness, with that of Union of Postal Workers, which in the mid-1960s transformed into a democratic, militant bargaining agent for its workers. Concludes that both unions are in a weakened state, and that only through a broader coalition of forces can the neoliberal agenda of the federal government be fought.

Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of relevant primary documents, this article explores the 1996 unionization of full-time academic faculty at Brock University, a public and primarily undergraduate university in southern Ontario, Canada. The case study examines both the impetus for unionization and the strategies employed by the faculty association in support of certification with a view to demonstrating how discourses of professionalism and collegiality can be challenged, subverted, and redeployed by academics intent on organizing, mobilizing, and ultimately winning support for unionization.

Provides a critical assessment of labour's longstanding relationship with the NDP and makes the case that organized labour's own "culture of defensiveness" has helped to maintain its enduring links with the NDP, despite the party's diminishing interest in projects historically associated with social democracy. --Editor's introduction

Provides an analysis of labour politics in Québec, arguing that the distinct trajectory of Québec unions caused the movement to adopt political strategies which diverged from those of the Canadian labour movement as a whole. --Editor's introduction

Explores the conceptual categories of business unionism and social unionism commonly used to classify different approaches to workers' interests, identities and strategies. [The author] points to their much more complex concrete expressions, and argues for a more careful assessment of different forms of workers' political activity, particularly since so many strategic recommendations for the movement's revival emphasize the centrality of social unionism to renewal. --Editor's introduction

Explores labour's participation in coalition-building on the issue of the environment. ...[The author] argues that social unionism, as a general union commitment, is not enough, gvien the real material conflicts to sort out between different ways of defining and acting on workers' interest. --Editor's introduction

Explores the diversity of Canadian community unionism, including labour-community coalitions and community-based workers' organization. Concludes that the unions must take community unionism more seriously as a means of renewal, that unions are "swords of justice" rather than "vested interests."