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Collective Bargaining on Working Time: Recent European Experiences, edited by Maarten Keune, and Bela Galgoczi, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change Among Transnational Activists," by Shareen Hertel.

The article reviews and comments on "The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border" by David Bacon, "Juggernaut Politics: Understanding Predatory Globalization" by Jacques B . Gelinas, "Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects" edited by Ronaldo Munck, and "System in Crisis: The Dynamics of Free Market Capitalism" by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer.

Minimum labor standards are legally established standards that apply to most employers and employees and include minimum wages, maximum hours of work, overtime, and paid time off. The regulation of minimum standards in Ontario was consolidated within the Ontario Employment Standards Act in 1968. While the provincial minimum standards of the late 19th and early 20th century have been well documented, the regulation of minimum standards during the postwar period has received little scholarly attention. This article explores the development of minimum standards legislation in Ontario from the immediate postwar years to the enactment of the Employment Standards Act. Social forces both internal and external to the state pressured for the enactment of comprehensive legislation to provide some statutory protection for the most vulnerable workers in the province. However, the ways in which the state negotiated the tensions associated with providing social protection for nonunionized workers, while at the same time minimizing interference in the market, severely compromised the capacity for the legislation to provide protection for the "pockets of exploitation" they were intended for. Further, this approach to minimum standards supported and reproduced patterns of gendered and racialized segmentation within a labor market that was built around the norm of the standard employment relationship and thereby ensured standards of a secondary status for workers with the least bargaining power.

The article reviews the book, "Challenging The Market: The Stuggle To Regulate Work And Income," edited by Jim Stanford and Leah F. Vosko.

Explores the implications of the 2001 revisions to the Employment Standards Act in Ontario, which increased the weekly maximum number of work hours to 60 while loosening the requirements for overtime pay. Based on a case study involving interviews with several workers from the Ontario Toyota plant, the author argues that the changes involve a re-regulation of the labour market that enhances employer-centred flexibility via the construction of a new form of time discipline.

The organization of working time is a central concern in today's labour market, as it is connected to experiences of work-life conflict, employment insecurity, and broader patterns of gender inequality. This article examines union responses to working time changes using a case study of four large unions, as well as a larger survey of working time provisions in major collective agreements. The article contends that working time re-regulation strategies include not only efforts to reduce hours of work, but also a range of strategies to promote employee-oriented time flexibility. These working time strategies provide some means to address growing forms of work-life conflict and working time inequalities; however, these strategies are constrained by a number of factors, including employer resistance and the need for broader-based representational and collective bargaining structures.

In a contemporary labour market that includes growing levels of precarious employment, the regulation of minimum employment standards is intricately connected to conditions of economic security. With a focus on the role of neoliberal labour market policies in promoting "flexible" employment standards legislation - particularly in the areas of minimum wages and working time - Mark Thomas argues that shifts toward "flexible" legislation have played a central role in producing patterns of labour market inequality. Using an analytic framework that situates employment standards within the context of the broader social relations that shape processes of labour market regulation, Thomas constructs a case study of employment standards legislation in Ontario from 1884 to 2004. Drawing from political economy scholarship, and using a qualitative research methodology, he analyses class, race, and gender dimensions of legislative developments, highlighting the ways in which shifts towards "flexible" employment standards have exacerbated longstanding racialized and gendered inequities. Regulating Flexibility argues that in order to counter current trends towards increased insecurity, employment standards should not be treated as a secondary form of labour protection but as a cornerstone in a progressive project of labour market re-regulation. --Publisher's description

This article explores the dynamics of labour organizing among migrant and immigrant workers in Canada, focusing on two case studies: first, recent efforts to organize migrant farmworkers in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program; and, second, the work of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre in Montreal. The Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program, which employs workers from Mexico and Caribbean countries, is often viewed by policymakers and employers as an example of ‘best practices’ in migration policy. Yet workers in the program experience seasonal employment characterized by long hours and low wages, and are exempt from many basic labour standards. The Immigrant Workers’ Centre formed in 2000 to provide a safe place for migrant and racialized immigrant workers to come together around problems in their workplaces. Through these case studies, we examine labour organization efforts including advocacy and grassroots organizing through the Immigrant Workers’ Centre and legal challenges attempting to secure recognition of freedom of association rights for farmworkers. The article explores the ‘limits and possibilities’ of these strategies, and concludes by assessing the implications for labour organizing among the growing numbers of migrant and immigrant workers employed in a wide range of low-wage, low-security occupations due to the recent expansion of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The Christian Labour Association of Canada (clac) has historically had a relatively small presence in Canada's labour movement. Increasing interest in clac over the last decade is due to its expanded membership, largely in western Canada and Ontario: the union claims to represent 60,000 workers. Further, the tactics used to achieve this growth have been controversial within organized labour. In fact, clac was expelled from central labour bodies for its employer accommodationist strategies. This article expands the understanding of clac beyond a characterization of classic "company" unionism. In this article we find that clac integrates elements of populism into a specific geographic strategy for expansion in ways that complicate analysis. We focus on labour board records of disputes between clac and other unions, a recent case where the union backed employer-friendly legislation in Ontario, and the union's rhetorical devices and propaganda.

Interrogating the New Economy is a collection of original essays investigating the New Economy and how changes ascribed to it have impacted labour relations, access to work, and, more generally, the social and cultural experiences of work in Canada. Based on years of participatory research, sector-specific studies, and quantitative and qualitative data collection, the work accounts for the ways in which the contemporary workplace has changed but also the extent to which older forms of work organization still remain. The collection begins with an overview of the key social and economic transformations that define the New Economy. It then illustrates these transformations through examples, including essays on wine tourism, the regeneration of mining communities, the place of student workers, and changes in the public service workplace. It also addresses unions and their responses to the restructuring of work, as well as other forms of resistance. --Publisher's description

This collection of original essays investigates the social, political, and economic transformations associated with the emergence of the so-called new economy, and their impact on the organization of work within Canada. Essays in the book discuss the ways in which new management strategies, new communication technologies, and efforts to revitalize the labour movement have transformed the Canadian workplace. Focusing on changes in work organization, individuals' expectations regarding work, and the institutional support provided for workers and their families, the text constructs a critical analysis of the "new economy" in order to identify both the potential for quality work experiences and the ways in which the organization of work remains a profound social problem. --Publisher's description

The 2008 financial crisis continues to have profound implications for workers worldwide, as governments have embarked on “austerity” programs and employers have confronted organized labor with concessionary demands, placing unions on the defensive. At the same time, populist movements have arisen across North America and Europe as increasing numbers of people grow disenchanted with government action and corporate incompetence. We examine the interplay among what we characterize as “uneven austerity,” union strategic capacities, and rising populism. At the intersection of these processes, we see elements of “populist unionism” as the labor movement confronts both austerity and declining union power. The article develops this concept through an examination of organized labor’s engagement with the Occupy movement in Toronto, Ontario, and the growth of the Christian Labour Association of Canada.

Over the last few decades, the workplace in Canada has experienced profound changes. Work has become increasingly insecure for a growing number of people, young workers struggle to match qualifications and credentials with jobs, and retirement with a secure income is a diminishing prospect. The demographic composition of the labour market is transforming, yet this change is conditioned by longstanding patterns of inequality in terms of gender, race, disability, and immigration status. This third edition of Work and Labour in Canada maps out major trends and patterns that define working life, and identifies the economic, social, and political factors that shape the contemporary workplace. While evaluating working conditions and job quality from a critical perspective, the authors point towards possibilities for a more equitable and democratic future of work. Thoroughly updated and featuring recommended readings, internet resources, and a new chapter on disability and work, this revised edition is an essential textbook for teachers, researchers, labour activists, and students of labour studies and sociology of work. --Publisher's description. Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-322) and index. Contents: The world of work in the 21st century -- Work, wages, and living standards in Canada -- Education, training, and lifelong learning : tensions and contradictions -- The unhealthy Canadian workplace -- Gender, work, and social reproduction -- Race, racialization, and racism at work -- The inaccessible Canadian workplace -- Troubled transitions : into and out of the labour force -- The impact of unions -- Workers' movements in the new millennium -- Globalization and work in Canada -- Improving work : reforming or transforming wage labour?

With a focus on police unions in the United States and Canada, this article argues that the construction of ‘blue solidarity’, including through recent Blue Lives Matter campaigns, serves to repress racial justice movements that challenge police authority, acts as a counter to broader working class resistance to austerity and contributes to rising right-wing populism. Specifically, the article develops a case study analysis of Blue Lives Matter campaigns in North America to argue that police unions construct forms of ‘blue solidarity’ that produce divisions with other labour and social movements and contribute to a privileged status of their own members vis-a-vis the working class more generally. As part of this process, police unions support tactics that reproduce racialised ‘othering’ and that stigmatise and discriminate against racialised workers and communities. The article concludes by arguing that organised labour should maintain a critical distance from police unions.

Employment standards (ES) are legislated standards that set minimum terms and conditions of employment in areas such as wages, working time, vacations and leaves, and termination and severance. In Canada, the majority of workers rely on ES for basic regulatory protection; however, a significant ‘enforcement gap’ exists. In the province of Ontario, this enforcement gap has been exacerbated in recent years due to the deregulation of ES through inadequate funding, workplace restructuring, legislative reforms that place greater emphasis on individualized complaints processes and voluntary compliance, and a formal separation of unions from ES enforcement. The implications of these developments are that, increasingly, those in precarious jobs, many of whom lack union representation, are left with insufficient regulatory protection from employer non-compliance, further heightening their insecurity. Taking the province of Ontario as our focus, in this article we critically examine alternative proposals for ES enforcement, placing our attention on those that enhance the involvement of unions in addressing ES violations. Through this analysis, we suggest that augmenting unions’ supportive roles in ES enforcement holds the potential to enhance unions’ regulatory function and offers a possible means to support the ongoing efforts of other workers’ organizations to improve employer compliance with ES.

[E]xplores the dynamics of labour organizing amongst migrant workers in Canada, focusing on two case studies. First, [the authors] examine recent efforts to unionize migrant farmworkers in the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program. ...[The authors] then turn to the case of the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, Québec. ...[Concludes] by assessing the limits and possibilities of [various] strategies, particularly in terms of the implications for labour organizing amongst the growning number of temporary foreign workers in Canada. --From editors' introduction

In Ontario, hours of work and overtime standards are regulated by the Employment Standards Act (ESA). This legislation covers most employers and employees in the province. As part of an ESA reforms process designed to promote workplace flexibility and enhance competitiveness, the Ontario ESA (2000) allowed for the extension of weekly maximum hours from 48 to 60, and the calculation of overtime pay entitlements to be based on an averaging of hours of work over up to a four-week period. Situated in the context of shifts towards greater working time flexibility, this paper examines the dynamics of working time regulation in the Ontario ESA, with a specific focus on the regulation of excess and overtime hours. The paper considers these processes in relation to general trends towards forms of labour market regulation that support employer-oriented flexibility and that download the regulation of employment standards to privatized negotiations between individual employees and their employers, tendencies present in the ESA that were sustained through further reforms introduced in 2018 and 2019. The paper draws its analysis from interviews with both workers in precarious jobs and Employment Standards Officers from the Ontario Ministry of Labour (MOL), as well as administrative data from the MOL and archival records. In the general context of the rise of precarious employment, the paper argues that ESA hours of work and overtime provisions premised upon creating working time flexibility enhance employer control over time, exacerbate time pressures and uncertainty experienced by workers in precarious jobs, and thereby intensify conditions of precariousness. The article situates the working time provisions of Ontario’s ESA in the context of an ongoing fragmentation of the regulation of working time as legislated standards are eroded in ways that make workers in precarious jobs more vulnerable to employer exploitation.

In a period characterized by growing social inequality, precarious work, the legacies of settler colonialism, and the emergence of new social movements, Change and Continuity presents innovative interdisciplinary research as a guide to understanding Canada's political economy and a contribution to progressive social change. Assessing the legacy of the Canadian political economy tradition — a broad body of social science research on power, inequality, and change in society — the essays in this volume offer insight into contemporary issues and chart new directions for future study. Chapters from both emerging and established scholars expand the boundaries of Canadian political economy research, seeking new understandings of the forces that shape society, the ensuing conflicts and contradictions, and the potential for social justice. Engaging with interconnected topics that include shifts in immigration policy, labour market restructuring, settler colonialism, the experiences of people with disabilities, and the revitalization of workers' movements, this collection builds upon and deepens critical analysis of Canadian society and considers its application to contexts beyond Canada. --Publisher's description.