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This edited collection draws together original case studies written by leading researchers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States that examine the politics of working disasters. The essays address two fundamental questions: what gets recognized as a work disaster? And how does the state respond to one? --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: The Politics of Recognition and Response / Eric Tucker -- Trucking Tragedies: The Hidden Disaster of Mass Death in the Long-Haul Road Transport Industry / Michael Quinlan, Claire Mayhew, and Richard Johnstone -- The Australian Epidemic of Repetition Strain Injury: A Sociological Perspective / Andrew Hopkins -- "All Part of the Game": The Recognition of and Response to an Industrial Disaster at the Fluorspar Mines, St Lawrence, Newfoundland, 1933-1978 / Richard Rennie -- The Long Road to Action: The Silicosis Problem and Swedish Occupational Health and Safety Policy in the 20th Century / Annette Thörnquist -- Disaster, Meaning Making, and Reform in Antebellum Massachusetts / Patricia Reeve -- Regulating Safety, Regulating Profit: Cost-Cutting, Injury and Death in the British North Sea after Piper Alpha / Dave Whyte -- Courts, Crime, and Workplace / Richard Johnstone -- Blame and Causation in the Aftermath of Industrial Disasters: Nova Scotia's Coal Mines from 1858 to Westray / Susan Dodd -- Accountability and Reform in the Aftermath of the Westray Mine Explosion / Eric Tucker.

This edited collection draws together original case studies written by leading researchers in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, and the United States that examine the politics of working disasters. The essays address two fundamental questions: what gets recognized as a work disaster? And how does the state respond to one? --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: The Politics of Recognition and Response / Eric Tucker -- Trucking Tragedies: The Hidden Disaster of Mass Death in the Long-Haul Road Transport Industry / Michael Quinlan, Claire Mayhew, and Richard Johnstone -- The Australian Epidemic of Repetition Strain Injury: A Sociological Perspective / Andrew Hopkins -- "All Part of the Game": The Recognition of and Response to an Industrial Disaster at the Fluorspar Mines, St Lawrence, Newfoundland, 1933-1978 / Richard Rennie -- The Long Road to Action: The Silicosis Problem and Swedish Occupational Health and Safety Policy in the 20th Century / Annette Thörnquist -- Disaster, Meaning Making, and Reform in Antebellum Massachusetts / Patricia Reeve -- Regulating Safety, Regulating Profit: Cost-Cutting, Injury and Death in the British North Sea after Piper Alpha / Dave Whyte -- Courts, Crime, and Workplace / Richard Johnstone -- Blame and Causation in the Aftermath of Industrial Disasters: Nova Scotia's Coal Mines from 1858 to Westray / Susan Dodd -- Accountability and Reform in the Aftermath of the Westray Mine Explosion / Eric Tucker.

J.S. Woodsworth was a prominent Canadian socialist who was a member of the Canadian Parliament from 1921 to 1942 and a founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the predecessor of the present New Democratic Party (NDP). This paper uses a Gramscian framework to explore his promotion of labour rights in the inter-war years, which I argue was an interregnum, a period when the hegemony of the old order was weakened. In this period, counter-hegemonic projects were launched to challenge the old order but, at the same time, so too were liberal passive revolutionary projects that aimed to restore the hegemony of capitalist relation by accommodating some of the demands of disgruntled workers, as well as coercive ones to restore order by force. J.S. Woodsworth strenuously fought against rising coercion and attempted to pursue a politics of amelioration in the hopes it would eventually lead toward socialism, but in the end it was the liberal counter-hegemonic project that was successful. I then examine the Woodsworth legacy for our time, a moment that I argue is also an interregnum, when the hegemony of the post-war order has been weakened, but because subordinated classes are weak, a counter-hegemonic project is not in the offing. Instead, we are witnessing an increase in coercion, on the one hand, and a weak politics of amelioration on the other.

[The author] critically examines the rationale offered to justify the exclusion of agricultural workers from occupational health and safety legislation [in Ontario] which lasted until 2005. The chapter is a case study of marginalized workers denied the benefit of labour law protections. --From editor's introductory chapter, p. 38.

"[P]rovides a historical analysis of worker participation and occupational health and safety regulation in Ontario from 1970 to 2000 in light of the rise of neoliberal policies. [The authors] describe a shift from systems of mandated partial self-regulation in which workers had to participate, supported by external enforcement of regulations, to more ambiguous models that included the downsizing of government and voluntary compliance by employers." --Editors' introduction. Contents: Acts of God, acts of man: the invisibility of workplace death / Jordan Barab -- Criminal neglect: how dangerous employers stay safe from prosecution / Rory O'Neill -- Regulating risk at work: is expert paternalism the answer to workers irrationality? / Peter Dorman -- Silicosis and the on-going struggle to protect workers's health / Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner -- How safe are U.S. workplaces for Spanish-speaking workers? / Laura H. Rhodes -- Got air? The campaign to improve indoor air quality at the City University of New York / Joan Greenbaum and David Kotelchuck -- State or society? The rise and repeal of OSHA's ergonomics standard / Vernon Mogensen -- The ten-percenters: gender, nationality, and occupational health in Canada / Penney Kome -- All that is solid melts into air: worker participation in Ontario, 1970-2000 / Robert Storey and Eric Tucker -- The sinking of the neoliberal P-36 platform in Brazil / Carlos Eduardo Siqueira and Nadia Haiama-Neurohr -- Health and safety at work in Russia and Hungary: illusion and reality in the transition crisis / Michael Haynes and Rumy Husan.

"Regulating Strikes in Essential Services" offers a comparative perspective on one of the most sensitive areas of industrial relations: strike in essential services. Designing a fair, effective and acceptable regime that will reconcile public interest and the public's need for an uninterrupted flow of essential services on the one hand, while maintaining the freedom of collective bargaining on the other, is an ever more difficult public policy challenge. This book, the first detailed analysis of existing legal and practical approaches across a spectrum of key national jurisdictions, provides a structured and insightful overview of the law and practice of regulating strikes in essential services. As such it could be of great value for public policy debate and the enhancement of national law in the field. --Publisher's description

Examines the potential for labour and progressive social movement to use the values expressed in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to mobilize direct political action and to advocate for reform against the backdrop of austerity. [The authors] focus on historical examples of radical organizing that have leveraged constitutional values, as well as recent Canadian social movements. --Introduction

In Canada, as in most advanced capitalist countries, the right of workers to engage in collective action has been partially immunized from competition law, one of the basic norms of capitalist legality. The “zone of toleration”, however, has been contested over time and poses a recurring regulatory dilemma that stems from labour’s commodity status in capitalism. In the capitalist utopia, workers are commodified and atomized, each one competing against all others. But in capitalist reality, such an arrangement produces the tragedy of atomism. In Polanyian terms, labour is a false commodity and treating it as such results socially dysfunctional consequences, producing a counter movement. In Marxist terms, labour is embodied in human beings who resist their commodification and atomization, in part by uniting with other workers and acting collectively to improve their conditions and, perhaps, one day to create a different social order in which labour ceases to be a commodity. Viewed in either light, the zone of legal toleration within competition law is the product of recurring conflicts and struggles whose outcome is shaped and reshaped over time. In Canada, this conflict has been resolved by granting workers a legal immunity from liability under competition law for engaging in approved collective action to improve or defend their terms and conditions of work. However, the zone of toleration is contestable at three margins, explored in this chapter. First, is the margin between those workers who are covered by the exemption and those who are not; second is between the sale of labour power and the sale of the commodities it produces; and the third is between the means that covered workers can lawfully use to make their combinations effective and those that take them out of the zone of toleration. The chapter explores the history of the construction of the zone of toleration and conflicts over its margins.

Compares the case law on Fraser and Dunsmore and critiques the Supreme Court's failure in Fraser to address the functional nature of the discrimination against farm workers as an issue of equality rights under Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,

[Provides] a critical examination of Canada's Temporary Migration Programs for agriculture. I show how migrants are positioned to be relatively more vulnerable than other workers within the country's food agricultural system owing to their position at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, their precarious immigration status as temporary "foreign" workers, and their racialization as non-Whites from the global South. Moreover, I illustrate how changes to policies of temporary migration have constituted farm work as an even more precarious form of employment for migrants in particular, but also Canadians.... Finally, while recognizing that TMPs may contribute to aspects fo economic development, enabling participants to access income and assets formerly out of their reach, I call for greater attention to the rights, welfare, and dignity of migrants when considering temporary migrations programs.

Annotated photographs of migrant farmers in Ontario from 1984 to 2009, drawn from the author's book, "Harvest Pilgrim's" (Between the Lines, 2009).

Explains in detail the purpose of the book (see publisher's description) and provides a synopsis of the essays contained therein.

Examines the Supreme Court's decision on Fraser in the context of the broader political battle on labour rights. The author links the decline in union density to increasing inequality in income and taxation. Canada's failure to ratify or comply with international conventions of labour rights is also analyzed.

Analyzes the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on freedom of association, notably B.C. Health Services (2007), in respect to Canada's constitutional relationship with international law.

Describes the efforts of agricultural workers to obtain legal protection with particular reference to legislation and proceedings in Ontario. Concludes that despite legal setbacks, the struggle continues through the Agriculture Worker Alliance of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

The author, who was the farm workers' legal representative before the Supreme Court in the Fraser case, provides historical background and analyzes the court's decision, including its reliance on judicial deference to the legislature. Concludes that the court was preoccupied with the larger political battle rather than the constitutional merits of the case.

An analysis of the impact of the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Fraser on protection of freedom of association in the collective bargaining context in Canada, with particular emphasis on the different approaches taken by the Court, including the dissenting reasons of Justice Rothstein, and what those reasons reveal about the Court's disagreement over the scope of freedom of association in the collective bargaining context.

Considers the intersection of relevant conventions of the International Labour Organization, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and labour case law of the Supreme Court of Canada. Asserts that the Canadian government is bound by ILO membership to promote collective bargaining, and that the Supreme Court's reliance on ILO principles was fully justified in Dunmore and BC Health Services. Concludes that, although the court's decision on Fraser fails to implement these principles, the right to strike in Canada will eventually be constitutionally recognized.

This chapter is concerned wtih identifying the many symptoms associated with the inadequacy of workers' protection that the study of precarious employment makes visible. ...[The authors] probe key themes central to regulatory failure in the context of precarious employment, including disparity of treatment between workers in precarious employment and workers with greater security, gaps in legal coverage, the interaction between labour market position and social location, and the lack of compliance and enforcement. --From editor's introductory chapter, p. 37.