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Temporary migrant work is a central feature of labour markets in many host states, and an increasing cause of concern for its potential impacts on workers’ rights and protections. In Canada, as elsewhere, policymakers utilise it as a regulatory device to lower labour standards. In this context, workers labouring transnationally are turning to unions for assistance. Yet they are confronting obstacles to securing access to their labour rights through representation. This article analyses one example involving a group of temporary migrant agricultural workers engaged seasonally on a British Columbian (BC) farm under Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) seeking union representation. It considers the question, confronting courts and tribunals in host states across the OECD, of meaningful access to collective bargaining for temporary migrant workers. Focussing on how the BC Labour Relations Board determines an appropriate bargaining unit, the inquiry demonstrates that temporary migrant workers are ill-served by mechanisms aimed at promoting collective bargaining. Although the union involved in the case secured a certification, the outcome was tenuous unionisation. The resulting collective agreement contained provisions augmenting workers’ job security by facilitating their circular movement between the sending and host state. However, the structure of the SAWP, which reinforces workers’ deportability, together with the limits of the prevailing regime of collective bargaining in BC, modelled on the US Wagner Act, contributed to a certification that was weakly institutionalised and underscored labour law’s subsidiarity to legal frameworks governing work across borders.

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.

The article reviews and comments extensively on the book, "Revolutionary Teamsters: The Minneapolis Teamsters Strikes of 1934," by Bryan D. Palmer.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Academic Motherhood in a Post-Second Wave Context: Challenges, Strategies, and Possibilities," edited by D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein and Andrea O’Reilly; and "Academic Careers and the Gender Gap," by Maureen Baker.

Argues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's exercise of political power falls outside of parliamentary and constitutional norms, such as the repeated use of omnibus bills, prerogation of Parliament, and closure of debates.

Accelerating flows of remittances are dwarfing global development aid. This study deepens our understanding of remittance impacts on the families of workers who come to Canada annually for several months under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Interviews with SAWP workers, their spouses, adult children and teachers in Mexico deepen our understanding of the impacts of these remittances. They demonstrate that the remittances are often literally a lifeline to transnational family survival, allowing them to pay for basic needs such as shelter, food, and medical care. Yet, at the same time, the remittances do not allow most of these workers and their families to escape deep poverty and significant precarity, including new forms of precarity generated by the SAWP. Instead, SAWP remittances help reduce poverty, at least temporarily, to more moderate levels while precarious poverty expands through global neoliberal underdevelopment.

Argues that there is an underlying narrative incoherence in the Conservative government of Stephen Harper's use of history for partisan ends. Examines the government's reaction to traditional liberal interpretations of Canadian history and national identity.

This article reviews the book, "Detroit's Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism," by Colleen Doody.

In contrast with Schein's theory, which presumes a single dominant career anchor, this study proposes an original model based on a career value structure that could explain why some individuals have several dominant career anchors. Career values, which are organized according a circular logic, are grouped into four large clusters of values which are opposed by pairs: bureaucratic self-concept opposed to the protean self-concept and careerist self-concept opposed to social self-concept. Using a new career value inventory, the model was tested on a sample of 240 employees and 155 managers in a health care organization. Construct validity was demonstrated by linking career values with career anchors, proactivity and collectivism. For instance, of the four career self-concepts, only the careerist self-concept is significantly related to the managerial competence.

This article reviews the book, "Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania 1897-1959," by Robert P. Wolensky and William A. Hastie, Sr.

This article reviews the book, "Languages of the Unheard: Why Militant Protest is Good," by Stephen D'Arcy.

Since the 2008 revisions to the Ontario Human Rights Code, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) has been responsible for providing fair, accessible, effective and timely resolution of human rights complaints. The author, formerly vice-chair of the HRTO, reviews the implementation and oper- ation of that system over its first five years, highlighting key challenges and the HRTO's responses to them. The author describes the principal stages of the current HRTO process, including applications and responses, mediation, and the hearing on the merits. He also outlines the ongoing restructuring of Ontario's administrative justice system into clusters, the development of a sum- mary hearings procedure, the use of litigation guardians, and efforts to control misuse of the system by vexatious litigants. In his view, the figures to date show progress in the areas of access to justice and efficient caseload management, but much remains to be done. Budget pressures make it difficult to fund such resource-heavy initiatives as active review of files, early case management, and the refining of the HRTO's processes to make them more accessible to appli- cants. The experience of the HRTO since 2008 can offer significant guidance in the design offuture direct access systems in human rights and other areas of administrative justice.

The article reviews and comments on the books, "Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left," by Martin Duberman; "The Indispensable Zinn: The Essential Writings of the 'People’s Historian'" by edited by Timothy McCarthy; and"Agitation with a Smile: Howard Zinn’s Legacies and the Future of Activism," edited by Stephen Bird, Adam Silver, and Joshua C. Yesnowitz.

There is both a lack of theoretical development as well as detailed empirical evidence on the organizational contexts that foster union renewal. Scholars have argued that the integration of social identities into unions and sustained 'lay' participation are key to renewal. This article seeks to identify organizational structures and processes that contribute to incorporating immigrant identities and fostering democratic participation in unions. Empirical analysis is based on ethnographic observations conducted in four local branches within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of the USA that underwent the Justice for Janitors campaign. The approach taken treats union renewal as a complex and non-linear process unfolding over time -- in each city, the campaign entered the complex social structures of local unions, disrupting old processes and structures, and creating new ones. Despite the fact that all four local unions experienced external revitalization owing to the campaign, internal renewal was most successful in Los Angeles, least in Washington DC, and somewhat successful in Boston and Houston. The findings demonstrate the difficulty of achieving transformative change in unions, yet point to key organizational elements that may help achieve it.