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[Examines] the three main doctrinal approaches adopted by Canadian courts to determine the scope of freedom of association, suggesting that under each approach, there is strong support for the conclusion that the right to strike is constitutionally protected. --Introduction

This thesis is concerned with understanding the relationship between labour law and triangular employment growth, and particularly in "staffing services" contexts. A review of alternative explanations for growth in triangular employment within three theoretical paradigm (neoclassical, institutionalist, and critical) illustrates the theoretical space for conceiving of a relationship between the particularities of labour law and triangular employment growth. To this end, the thesis develops the concept of a regulatory differential, or ways in which a legal regime may produce differential regulatory effects as between direct and triangular forms of employment. A typology of regulatory differentials is outlined. Further, a discussion of the relationship between these differentials and employer-status rules is provided, and it is suggested that the logic of the framework may helpfully inform analysis of triangular employment growth within a given jurisdiction, as well as comparative analysis of this phenomenon. The theoretical framework is then applied towards examining diverging growth rates in triangular employment as between Canada and the U.S. Legal analysis examining two key sub-fields of labour suggests that the presence (and expansion) of key regulatory differentials in the U.S., absent in Canada, may help explain the observed patterns of triangular employment growth in these countries.

Review of: Les avocates, les avocats et la conciliation travail-famille by Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay and Elena Masocva.

Income inequality has risen rapidly over the past three decades. In Canada it is now at its highest level since 1928. One of the root causes: the consistent chipping away of labour rights. The labour movement has been left unable to maintain membership levels and incapable of narrowing the income gap through collective bargaining, with profound implications for Canadians. Labour rights are human rights. They provide a powerful democratic counterweight to the growing power of corporations and the wealthy, and are key to a functioning democracy. Unions Matter affirms the critical role that unions and strong labour rights play in creating greater economic equality and promoting the social wellbeing of all citizens. --Publisher's description

This article reviews the book, "A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939-45," by Graham Broad.

This article examines the determinants of public attitudes towards labour policy. Using public opinion data on labour standards and essential services legislation from a 2011 Saskatchewan survey, it finds that both self-interest factors (employment in the public sector, and union membership) and symbolic political factors (feelings towards the labour movement and partisanship) structure attitudes toward labour policy in Saskatchewan. Interestingly, the evidence indicates that self-interest may actually trump solidarity within the labour movement, as unionized private sector workers are no more likely than the general public to oppose essential services legislation. The results suggest that researchers should pay attention to both self-interest and symbolic political factors when attempting to understand the relationship between public policy and public opinion.

A small area procedure for a two-way table of proportions is developed, where the estimated proportions are from a complex survey. Estimation is difficult because the observed proportions do not have multinomial distributions, the observed proportions are correlated with estimated variances, benchmarking is required, and mean models are nonlinear. A predictor based on a nonlinear mixed model is specified for the proportions. No transformation of the observations is involved, and the estimation procedure gives predictions that are in the parameter space. A bootstrap estimator of the mean squared error of a benchmarked predictor is suggested and performed well in simulations. The procedure is applied to the proportions in the two-way table defined by occupations crossed with Canadian provinces. The direct estimators are from the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS), and the corresponding two-way table from the previous Canadian Census of Population provides auxiliary information. The application of the prediction procedure to the LFS data leads to gains in estimated mean squared errors relative to the direct estimators between approximately 30 percent and 80 percent. A comparison of the predictors to the Census 2006 proportions further supports the suggested procedures.

Working-time practices across the developed world have exploded with diversity during the past few decades. The once standard 8-hour day and 40-hour workweek that emerged and reigned throughout much of the 20th century have given way to an increasing variety of working-time arrangements. Flexible schedules, in which hours can vary daily or weekly, and nonstandard work arrangements, such as fixed term, on-call, temporary, or part-time, are widely used at the workplace. In addition, we have witnessed the growth of zero-hour contracts that make no guarantee to provide workers with weekly working hours or a reliable income, while requiring employees to work on very short notice with very unpredictable schedules; annualized hours contracts that allow for work hours to vary over a year; and working-time accounts that allow employees to bank hours worked over a set weekly standard and to then draw on these accounts for paid time off.

The contemporary precarious condition, ‘precarity,’ in life, work and culture parallels transformations in national and global economies, in part through the rise of immaterial production. Precarity has led to destabilization and reconfiguration of a class /class system and the creation of a new majority precarious class including domestic and farm workers, academic workers, care givers, part-timers and more. The thesis identifies how a historical moment of the Canadian Farmworkers Union (1979-1999) experienced marginal social protection, racial discrimination, limited legal rights, short-term contracts, vulnerable working conditions and precarious life without health care. The transnational lessons of the CFU include a better understanding organizing precarious citizens today — including what has not worked; importance of visual cultural analysis and counter-visuality to inform resistance. Theories of immaterial labour; porousness of international borders; lack of social protections; shorter career cycles; challenges to traditional craft unions; shift in social values as citizens organize across sectors, geographies and borders; and, migrant experiences as central to the experience of precarity. Confronted with the difficult task of re-imagining old ‘modernist’ visions of ‘class,’ ‘people,’ ‘nation-states’ and many established perspectives of resistance that have been stalemated. The thesis also includes a short survey of visual cultural expressions from twenty-first century precarious citizen groups. [This] The Master of Arts - Cultural Studies major project includes a 96-page illustrated history book entitled "Fields of Power: The Canadian Farmworkers Union," with photographs and text by [the author].

Cet article analyse les effets possibles des dépenses de formation formelle sur la productivité des entreprises canadiennes. Si certains travaux mesurent l’intensité de la formation en entreprise à partir de données longitudinales, les résultats obtenus demeurent partagés. Les différences observées dans les résultats antérieurs peuvent être expliquées notamment par les données disponibles, le type de formation, la mesure de formation et les biais techniques influençant cette relation. Cette recherche s’appuie essentiellement sur la théorie du capital humain.Notre étude s’appuie sur les données de l’Enquête sur les milieux de travail et les employés (EMTE) de Statistique Canada de 1999 à 2005, auprès d’un échantillon de 1621 emplacements où, nous modélisons la relation entre la formation et la productivité à l’aide d’une fonction de production Cobb-Douglas, en intégrant les investissements en capital physique et une variable technologique. Ceci nous permet de montrer que les dépenses de formation contribuent à accroître la performance des établissements, via la productivité, de façon progressive dans le temps. Ces dépenses effectuées au cours d’une année donnée influent significativement sur la productivité jusqu’à trois années plus tard, là où elles atteignent leur maximum d’effet, pour se stabiliser par la suite. Toutefois, ces résultats permettent de soulever un paradoxe : celui de la rentabilité observée des dépenses de formation d’un côté, mais, de l’autre, l’hésitation du monde des affaires à investir en cette matière pour leurs propres employés. Nos résultats suggérent également que les investissements en formation au sein des entreprises devraient être considérés davantage comme un atout, plutôt qu’une simple obligation financière à l’appui d’une stratégie globale de développement des compétences au sein des entreprises.

Repenser la responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise : l'École de Montréal by Corinne Gendron and Bernard Girard is reviewed.

This paper provides a discussion and analysis of the situations in which an employee will be found to stand in the position of a fiduciary vis-a-vis his or her employer, and therefore be under an obligation to act solely in the employ- er's interests, Focusing on the English common law, with comparisons to the Canadian as well as the American and Australian law, the author notes that the employment relationship has not been viewed as inherently fiduciary, even though there is broad acceptance of the principle that an employee owes to the employer duties of trust, confidence and fidelity. However, an employee will be characterized as a fiduciary in two fairly exceptional circumstances: where the employee acts as the employer's agent, or where a fiduciary obligation is implicit in the terms of the employment contract or, alternatively, in the employ- ee's position, powers and responsibilities. With respect to the latter category, some courts have affixed fiduciary responsibility not only where the employee was a de facto director or member of top management, or was otherwise "key" to the enterprise, but also where the employer was said to be "vulnerable" to the employee's misuse of his or her position - an approach which the author criticizes as being too broad in its application to rank-and-file employees. More generally, the author maintains that it is the particular facts underlying an employment relationship, not the existence of the relationship itself that may give rise to fiduciary duties on the part of the employee, and that even high-level or senior employees should be not be considered fiduciaries unless their employ- ment contract or explicitly assigned duties justify such a finding.

The article reviews the book, "Power from the North: Territory, Identity, and the Culture ofHydroelectricityin Quebec," by Caroline Desbiens.

The authors show that the decline in the relative wages of immigrants in Canada is far from homogeneous across the wage distribution. The well-documented decline in the mean wage gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers hides a much larger decline at the low end of the wage distribution, while the gap hardly changed at the top end of the distribution. Using standard OLS regressions and unconditional quantile regressions, the authors show that both the changes in the mean wage gap and in the gap at different quantiles are well explained by standard factors such as experience, education, and country of origin of immigrants. Interestingly, an important source of change in the wages of immigrants relative to the Canadian born is the aging of the baby boom generation, which has resulted in a relative increase in the labor market experience, and thus in the wages, of Canadian-born workers relative to immigrants.

Review of: Initiation à la négociation collective (2nd edition) by Pierre-Luc Bilodeau et Jean Sexton.

This article examines the period leading up to the establishment of the Schefferville iron mine in subarctic Québec, Canada, with a focus on the years 1937–54. The beginning of iron ore mining at Schefferville was a decisive moment in the growth of the modern Québec state, opening the way for the industrial exploitation of the province’s natural resources – mineral and otherwise – in the hinterland. Relying on oral and written sources, the research emphasizes the roles and actions of Innu individuals during this phase of development conducted by exploration companies and the Iron Ore Company of Canada at the heart of their ancestral homeland. If the early mining experience at Schefferville evolved largely to the detriment of the Indigenous communities inhabiting the region, a decentring approach to ethnohistory in the context of industrial colonialism reveals that the Innu also worked to determine their own engagement with the mining world, adjusting and maintaining their practices on the land while participating in the wage labour economy.

"Depicts...[the] labour environment at Louisiana State University and a stark difference in resolve between US and Canadian academic librarians with respect to unionization.." -- Editors' introduction.

The article reviews the book, "The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929-39," by Eric Strikwerda.

Analyzes the correlation between average hourly earnings and union density in Canada and the U.S., as a measure of the prosperity of the society as a whole.

The article discusses the 1968 United Federation of Teachers (UFT) strike in New York City public schools in relation to the community control movement in New York City schools. Topics include UFT leader Albert Shanker's fears of anti-Semitism among New York City blacks who supported community control, educational innovations by black and Puerto Rican activists, and the impact of teacher professionalization on parent-teacher relations.