Your search
Results 6 resources
-
Western Canada’s oil-exporting economies have come to rely on migrant labour as a cornerstone of economic development. A global division of labour intersecting with the constellation of Canada’s migrant worker programs has shaped the contemporary political-economic character of many Canadian provinces, including Saskatchewan. These programs have worked to construct bifurcated labour markets for growing low-wage industries that exist alongside high-wage resource-sector employment. Although a majority of these migrant workers end up employed in non-unionized workplaces, foreign workers who secure occupations in health care, construction, warehousing, and manufacturing are often represented by a union. The study explores union attitudes and union-member engagement among migrant labour through the lens of union revitalization, in an attempt to confront claims that migrant workers are without an affinity to organized labour and avoid participating in union business and the collective-bargaining process.
-
In 2019, Regina’s Co-operative Refinery Complex locked out the 730 members of Unifor Local 594 amid record profits in an aggressive drive for significant pension concessions. Marred by sweeping antipicketing injunctions, an enormous scab operation, police repression, and general public enmity, the lockout suggests two overlapping trends. First, the union’s adherence to co-operative and conciliatory bargaining had left it ill equipped to confront—either in the workplace or the public sphere—management’s costcutting agenda in the centre of Saskatchewan’s now hegemonic petrostate. Second, a marked tension developed between community outreach efforts and the circumstances in which legal industrial action was ineffective and civil disobedience emerged.
-
Unionization and collective bargaining continue to deliver material gains for workers by way of higher wages and access to supplementary benefits like health insurance and pensions. While researchers have charted a declining union wage advantage over the last few decades, collective bargaining still yields important gains for workers. Unions have sought to remedy stagnating real wages and growing inflation by seeking wage increases that align with the cost of living through bargaining processes and labour militancy. This report provides comparison of wages and benefits for unionized and non-unionized workers across industries in Canada and in the province of Saskatchewan by drawing from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) as well as custom tabulations acquired from Statistics Canada, retrieved from the LFS. --Executive summary
-
In 2019, Regina’s Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC), a subsidiary of Federated Co-operative, locked out Unifor Local 594 after collective bargaining negotiations failed. CRC used the transition to a “low carbon” future as the justification for concessions on working conditions and reducing the workers' pension plan. The lockout demonstrates what a “just transition” means to fossil fuel corporations: rollbacks of collective bargaining, worker rights, cooperative spirit and environmental justice. In the name of a new future, Federated Co-operative and the Saskatchewan government trampled all over important worker rights — the right to strike and picket, occupational health and safety, pensions and collective bargaining. It also highlights the sorry state of co-operative values in Canada. As corporations and governments are poised to make a transition that will be detrimental to workers and communities, this books argues that solidarity between unions and community movements is absolutely necessary to make the transition away from fossil fuels a just one. -- Publisher's description
-
Examines the legislative record of the governing conservative Saskatchewan Party on protecting the rights of migrants and immigrants in the context of business and labour market demands. Concludes that the province's legal regime stands well in comparison to other jurisdictions, although the government has at times also catered to anti-immigration populism, such as the Yellow Vest Canada movement.
-
Examines the anti-union legislative record of the Saskatchewan Party, which saw one of its core bills, prohibiting the right to strike in a broad range of public sector services, struck down by the Supreme Court. The court did, however, uphold a companion bill that undermined workers' ability to organize. Provides background on provincial labour regimes since the landmark Trade Union Act of 1944 that was passed by the CCF government of Tommy Douglas. Concludes that the Saskatchewan Party has done more than any previous conservative government to curtail the right of workers to organize and take job action.
Explore
Resource type
- Book (1)
- Book Section (2)
- Journal Article (2)
- Report (1)