Your search

The article reviews the book, "A History of Canadian Culture," by Jonathan F. Vance.

While Australia escaped the harshest aspects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), public services at the federal level have experienced financial stringency in the form of efficiency-related budget cuts from late 2011 as the Australian government strived to achieve a budget surplus. This paper explores the ways in which the main Australian Public Service (APS) trade union, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), developed innovative strategies in 2011 and 2012 to meet this challenge. The CPSU was able to utilize the capacities and experiences gained from operating under a conservative government to expand its activities and capabilities from 2007 under a more socially aware, though neo-liberal, Labor government whose industrial relations legislation and policy agenda were more supportive of collective bargaining. The CPSU developed more targeted campaigns, deployed a broader range of industrial tactics, and mobilized the union's membership in more active and creative ways. The outcome was a renewed form of trade unionism.

Explores the conceptual categories of business unionism and social unionism commonly used to classify different approaches to workers' interests, identities and strategies. [The author] points to their much more complex concrete expressions, and argues for a more careful assessment of different forms of workers' political activity, particularly since so many strategic recommendations for the movement's revival emphasize the centrality of social unionism to renewal. --Editor's introduction

The article reviews the book, "Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement," by David Camfield.

Though the Canadian labour movement’s postwar political, economic and social achievements may have seemed like irrevocable contributions to human progress, they have proven to be anything but. Since the mid-1970s, labour’s political influence and capacity to defend, let alone extend, these gains has been seriously undermined by the strategies of both capitalist interests and the neoliberal state. Electoral de-alignment and the decline of class-based voting, bursts of unsustained extra-parliamentary militancy and a general lack of influence on state actors and policy outcomes all signal that the labour movement is in crisis. Despite much experimentation in an attempt to regain political clout, labour continues to experience deep frustration and stagnation. As such, the labour movement’s future political capacities are in question, and the need for critical appraisal is urgent. Understanding how and why workers were able to exert collective power in the postwar era, how they lost it and how they might re-establish it is the central concern of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada. With essays from established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of labour politics in Canada. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of the newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their impact on the future of labour in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents:  Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada: An Introduction / Stephanie Ross & Larry Savage -- Part 1: Contextualizing Labour and Working-Class Politics. Canadian Labour and the Crisis of Solidarity / Donald Swartz & Rosemary Warskett -- Business Unionism and Social Unionism in Theory and Practice / Stephanie Ross. Part 2: The Challenge of Electoral Politics. The New Democratic Party in the Era of Neoliberalism / Bryan Evans -- Québec Labour: Days of Glory or the Same Old Story? / Peter Graefe -- Organized Labour and the Politics of Strategic Voting / Larry Savage -- Labour and the Politics of Voting System Reform in Canada / Dennis Pilon -- Part 3: The Prospects of Extra-Parliamentary Activism. Unions, Gender Equity and Neoconservative Politics / Amanda Coles & Charlotte Yates -- Social Unionism, Partnership and Conflict: Union Engagement with Aboriginal Peoples in Canada / Suzanne Mills & Tyler McCreary -- Canadian Labour and the Environment: Addressing the Value-Action Gap / Dennis Soron -- Community Unionism and the Canadian Labour Movement / Simon Black -- Anti-Poverty Work: Unions, Poor Workers and Collective Action in Canada  / Kendra Coulter -- Organizing Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada / Aziz Choudry & Mark Thomas -- Labour, Courts and the Erosion of Workers’ Rights in Canada / Charles Smith. Includes bibliographical references (pp. 198-222).

This dissertation consists of four papers aimed at understanding the complex relationship between employment and health. One paper is a systematic review of the return to work literature, while the other three papers used secondary data from three cohorts of people with HIV to examine the association between employment and health-related quality of life. The systematic review looked at longitudinal studies that reported health outcomes associated with return to work in relation to other employment trajectories. This review supported the beneficial effect of return to work on health in a variety of populations, times, and settings, and also found evidence that poor health interferes with the prospects of returning to work. Two other papers looked at the association between employment and health-related quality of life in people with HIV; one paper used a cross-sectional sample of people with HIV, while the other paper used a longitudinal sample of men who have sex with men. These two studies found evidence to support the association between employment and both physical and mental health-related quality of life. They also found that employment had a stronger relationship with physical than mental health, suggesting an adaptation process to the experience of unemployment. Finally, another paper examined the cross-sectional association between job security and quality of life in men and women living with HIV. This study found that job security offered additional mental health quality of life benefits, over and above participation in employment alone, for men living with HIV. On the other hand, women benefited from the availability of work, but the perception of job security failed to offer additional health benefits. The current level of evidence on the relationship between work and health in HIV needs to be strengthened by further research to develop and support practical clinical and policy recommendations.

This doctoral thesis focuses on collective bargaining and temporary migrant workers within Canada participating in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). The intent is to analyze the range and efficacy of legal responses to the problems encountered by this community within Canada, focusing on the unionization of SAWP participants. The dissertation addresses the fundamentally legal relationship between unionization and SAWP workers in Canada. It takes an approach that considers both historical and legal considerations leading to the use of SAWP workers in Canada, and the eventual attempts at unionization. Recent legal developments in several Canadian provinces involving SAWP workers and efforts collective bargaining are analyzed. There is a comparison with similar efforts to unionize migrant workers in the United States, and of efforts to address violations of collective bargaining rights through international complaints as well as within the broader framework of international law. The conclusion reached is that within the current framework of provincial labour legislation and the current structure of the SAWP, collective bargaining alone represents an inadequate response to violations of SAWP workers’ workplace rights in Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Occupied St. John's: A Social History of a City at War, 1939-1945," edited by Stephen High.

Analyzes the housing boom, rising inequality, lowering of employment standards, the attack on organized labour and public sector contracts, and the expansion of temporary and/or precarious workers under the the provincial Liberal government of Gordon Campbell (in office, 2001-2011) in British Columbia. Concludes that unions are in a weakened state and that a broader solidarity movement is needed.

The article reviews the book, "Making a Living: Place, Food and Economy in an Inuit Community," by Nicole Gombay.

Interpretations of Aboriginal women's work have shifted over time, but they have been absolutely central to First Nations women's experiences of colonialism. Yet, in both women's history and Aboriginal history, there has been a "mystification" of Indigenous women's labor, because it was often defined as nonproductive or marginal within capitalist economies; wage work was particularly neglected (Littlefield and Knack 1999: 4). Yet, by studying women's labor in its multiple forms (paid, unpaid, voluntary, ceremonial, commodity production), and in multiple contexts (bush, urban, reserve or reservation), we can gain immense insight into how colonialism was structured, experienced, negotiated, and resisted by women at the level of daily life. By perusing past academic writing on Aboriginal women and work, this paper explores some of the intellectual, political, and social influences that have shaped understandings of Aboriginal women's labor in Canada and the United States, asking what insights we have gained, what questions we need to answer, and what contradictions we still face in our research. Arguably, we need a dialogue that crosses disciplines and theoretical approaches, with perspectives and traditions from Aboriginal history, feminist theory, and labor studies informing and challenging each other. There are transnational trends and shared perspectives in Aboriginal women's history that cross the 49th parallel; however, we also need to identify how and why national and regional histories and interpretations diverge. Still, one transnational commonality highlighted in this paper is the close connection between politics and research, between the present and the past: the questions posed by scholars have been stimulated and inspired by Aboriginal thought and organizing, and Aboriginal politics have benefited from scholarly research. Although research may still be difficult and contested terrain in Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal relations (Smith 1999; Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997), there is hope that scholarly dialogue might contribute productively to decolonization. --From Introduction

Pays homage to the union organizer and labor leader, Madeleine Parent.

Building on the tradition of emotional labour and aesthetic labour, this study of fitness workers introduces the concept of "ocularcentric labour" (the worker seeking the adoring gaze of the client as the primary reward). It is a state in which labour's quest for the psycho-social rewards gained from their own body image shapes the employment relationship (both the organization of work and the conditions of employment). We argue that for many fitness workers the goal is to gain access to the positional economy of the fitness centre to promote their celebrity. For this they are willing to trade-off standard conditions of employment, and exchange traditional employment rewards for the more intrinsic psycho-social rewards gained through the exposure of their physical capital to the adoration of their gazing clients. Significantly, with ocularcentric labour the worker becomes both the site of production and consumption.

Assesses labour's approach to electoral reform, making the case that shifting union support for voting system reform has reflected broader strategic considerations about how best to secure progressive public policy changes for unions and the working class in particular historical moments. --Editor's introduction

Explores the labour movement's contemporary engagement with strategic voting campaigns. [The author] argues that this approach has been a failure for labour, as both an instrumental tactic designed to block the election of right-wing parties and a practice which ultimately undermines labour's capacity to develop a political alternative to neo-liberalism. --Editor's introduction

Introduces the book's principal themes and comments on the essays contained therein.

Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of relevant primary documents, this article explores the 1996 unionization of full-time academic faculty at Brock University, a public and primarily undergraduate university in southern Ontario, Canada. The case study examines both the impetus for unionization and the strategies employed by the faculty association in support of certification with a view to demonstrating how discourses of professionalism and collegiality can be challenged, subverted, and redeployed by academics intent on organizing, mobilizing, and ultimately winning support for unionization.

The article reviews the book, "One Hundred Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in English Canada 1900-2000," by Therese Jennissen and Colleen Lundy.

This article provides an overview of current research on older workers with caregiving responsibilities from Canadian perspective. The first section presents relevant demographic and policy trends. The second section outlines impacts of these trends on caregiving employees, communities, employers, businesses and governments. The third section identifies potential policy responses and program solutions that support the needs of older workers with caregiving responsibilities. The article concludes with a recommended plan of action to move forward in addressing the emerging challenges associated with this issue.

The article reviews the book, "The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000," edited by Lex Heerma Vam Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise Van Nedeveen Meerkert.