Search

Worker representatives were formally recognised as agents in regulating workplace health and safety in most Canadian jurisdictions in the late 1970s. This was one component of the transition to an Internal Responsibility System that included mandated Joint Health and Safety Committees, right to know regulations, and the right to refuse dangerous work. Very little has changed in this regulatory framework in the ensuing three decades. The effectiveness of these regulations in improving health and safety was contentious in the 1970s and continues to be debated. Earlier work by Lewchuk et al. (1996) argued that the labour-management environment of individual workplaces influenced the effectiveness of worker representatives and Joint Health and Safety Committees. In particular, the framework was more effective where labour was organised and where management had accepted a philosophy of co-management of the health and safety function. The Canadian economy has experienced significant reorganisation since the 1970s. Canadian companies in general face more intense competition because of trade deals entered into in the 1980s and 1990s. Exports represent a much larger share of GNP. Union density has fallen and changes in legislation make it more difficult to organise workers. Non-standard employment, self-employment and other forms of less permanent employment have all grown in relative importance. This chapter presents new evidence on how these changes are undermining the effectiveness of the Internal Responsibility System in Canada, with a particular focus on workers in precarious employment relationships. Data is drawn from a recent population survey of non-student workers in Ontario conducted by the authors. -- Publisher's description. Contents: pt. 1. National arrangements for workers' representation: case studies from Europe and Australia. Worker representation on health and safety in the UK -- problems with the preferred model and beyond -- The Australian framework for worker participation in occupational health and safety -- Health and safety committees in France: an empirical analysis -- Characteristics, activities and perceptions of Spanish safety representatives -- An afterword on European Union policy and practice -- pt. 2. Challenges and strategies for worker representation in the modern world of work -- Precarious employment and the internal responsibility system: some Canadian experiences -- Employee 'voice' and working environment in the new member states: translating policy into practice in the Baltic States -- Health and safety representation in small firms: a Swedish success that is threatened by political and labour market changes -- Trade union strategies to support representation on health and safety in Australia and the UK: integration or isolation? -- Worker representation and health and safety: reflections on the past, present and future. Includes bibliographical references and index.

The article reviews the book, "The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941," by Rebecca M. McLennan.

Drawing on two waves of survey data collected from 250 Canadian firms in 2000 and 2004, this study examines union influence on the mix of compensation methods used by employers. As expected, firms with more unionization devoted a larger proportion of total compensation to indirect pay (also known as "employee benefits") than did firms with less unionization, a finding that held in both time periods. However, while more unionized firms devoted a smaller share of compensation to individual performance pay in 2000, this was not true in 2004. Also surprising, more unionized firms did not differ significantly from less unionized firms in their proportions of base pay, group performance pay, or organizational performance pay in either time period. The paper concludes that although unions may still have the power to influence some aspects of the wage bargain (i.e. the compensation mix), this power may be declining.

Wrapped around the stories of these four women, is a mystery. Something''s gone wrong with the Mosquitos being built for the war effort -- they keep crashing in flight tests, for no apparent reason. Is the problem with their design, or are they being sabotaged? By whom? The traitorous Red Finns? The political subversives who have recently escaped from one of the nearby prison camps? Everyone''s on high alert, and "The Factory Voice" keeps abreast of the details. Or at least the rumours. --Publisher's description

This paper will critically analyze the degree to which the Ontario government, led by then Premier Mike Harris, embarked on a neoliberal agenda that led to a crisis in Ontario’s educational system. The period from 1995-2000 was one of the most contentious in Ontario’s educational history, and two pieces of legislation, The College of Teachers Act (Bill 31) and the Education Quality Improvement Act (Bill 160), pitted teacher unions, in particular, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA), against the Harris government. Bill 160 led to a ten-day protest by teachers across Ontario, which signaled a dramatic shift in teacher and state relations that marked a crisis period in Ontario’s educational sector.

In April 2005 Wal-Mart Canada closed a store in Jonquière, Quebec, following a successful certification application by the United Food and Commercial Workers and an impasse in collective bargaining. When the union succeeded in having an arbitrator appointed (under the "first contract" provisions of the Quebec Labour Code') to decide on the terms of a collective agreement, Wal- Mart immediately announced that it would close the store. It did so less than two months later, putting 190 employees out of work. The union and the affected workers claimed that the closing violated the Quebec Labour Code because it interfered with freedom of association and discriminated against employees who had exercised rights under the Code. The matter reached the Supreme Court of Canada. On November 27, 2009, that Court decided two cases arising from the Jonquière store closing - the leading case of Plourde and the companion case of Desbiens. In Plourde, where the Court was split 6 to 3, Justice Binnie's majority judgment concluded that the laid-off workers could not obtain relief under s. 15 of the Quebec Labour Code, prohibiting discrimination against workers who exercise rights.

The article reviews the book, "Recrutement et sélection du personnel," by Anne Bourhis.

The article reviews the book, "Child Workers in England, 1780-1820: Parish Apprentices and the Making of the Early Industrial Labour Force," by Katrina Honeyman.

In 1979, in the CUPE case, the Supreme Court of Canada held that a labour relations tribunal's interpretation of its constituent statute should be upheld on judicial review unless that interpretation was "patently unreasonable." By 2008, the Canadian courts were using three standards of review: patent unreasonableness, simple reasonableness, and correctness. In that year, however, in Dunsmuir, the Supreme Court held that the standard of patent unreasonableness was no longer to be used, but only the standards of simple reasonableness and correctness. By our count, during the 29 years between CUPE and Dunsnuir the courts decided 210 applications for judicial review of Ontario Labour Relations Board decisions. This research note sets out the results of our study examining those 210 cases and comparing them with 23 post-Dunsmuir cases in the Ontario courts involving applications for judicial review of the Board's decisions. --Introduction

Labor played a central role in nineteenth-century penitentiaries. It was intended to provide guidance and discipline to prisoners whose behavior was outside of social, moral, and economic norms. This article examines the relationship between medicine and labor in Canadian federal penitentiaries between 1867 and 1900. As penitentiaries grew and expanded throughout the century, increasing numbers of prisoners were unable to participate in penitentiary labor due to illness or disability. In these cases, penitentiary medicine helped form part of an “enlightened” response to nonworking prisoners. It suggests that medical records from this period demonstrate how penitentiaries reconciled nonworking prisoners with the prevailing model of reform constructed around labor. The article looks at two such groups. The first is sick prisoners, including physical and mental ailments. Mental illness was an increasingly vexing problem for penitentiaries in this era as they struggled to form appropriate responses to mentally ill prisoners within the prevailing penitentiary model. The second group is prisoners with disability, including physical and intellectual disability. Although both groups were understood through medical categories, their status as “unproductive” prisoners sometimes played a larger role in determining their experience of confinement. The article looks at the influence of ideas about labor on the delivery of medical services in penitentiaries and the resulting experience of illness. Although prison medicine in Canada expanded and improved throughout this period, the sick and disabled often experienced marginalization and moral condemnation on the basis of their uncertain relationship to penitentiary labor.

Affectionate portrait of John St. Amand (1943-2007) who, under the tutelage of the left-wing labour activist, Madeleine Parent, moved in 1981 from Ontario to Nova Scotia to become a union organizer.

In New Brunswick, in the early nineties, the Liberal government of Frank McKenna embraced both globalization and neoliberalism in the creation of a call centre industry. It seems a classic case of the adoption of a globalization and neoliberal strategy. However, further examination of the discourse of the period shows a very particular positioning vis-à-vis globalization and neoliberalism. It is one adopted by a ‘have-not’ province as a kind of desperate economic development strategy. Given recent attention in the literature to the various meanings and implications of globalization and neoliberalism, the New Brunswick case gives a particular vantage point from which to reflect on these debates.

For many years Canada has quietly rationalized importing temporary "low-skilled" migrant labour through managed migration programs to appease industries desiring cheap and flexible labour while avoiding extending citizenship rights to the workers. In an era of international human rights and global competitive markets, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) is often hailed as a "model" and "win-win" solution to migration and labour dilemmas, providing employers with a healthy, just-intime labour force and workers with various protections such as local labour standards, health care, and compensation. Tracing migrant workers' lives between Jamaica, Mexico and Canada (with a focus on Ontario's Niagara Region), this thesis assesses how their structural vulnerability as non-citizens effectively excludes them from many of the rights and norms otherwise expected in Canada. It analyzes how these exclusions are rationalized as permanent "exceptions" to the normal legal, social and political order, and how these infringements affect workers' lives, rights, and health. Employing critical medical anthropology, workers' health concerns are used as a lens through which to understand and explore the deeper "pathologies of power" and moral contradictions which underlie this system. Particular areas of focus include workers' occupational, sexual and reproductive, and mental and emotional health, as well as an assessment of their access to health care and compensation in Canada, Mexico and Jamaica. Working amidst perilous and demanding conditions, in communities where they remain socially and politically excluded, migrant workers in practice remain largely unprotected and their entitlements hard to secure, an enduring indictment of their exclusion from Canada's "imagined community." Yet the dynamics of this equation may be changing in light of the recent rise in social and political movements, in which citizenship and related rights have become subject to contestation and redefinition. In analyzing the various dynamics which underlie transnational migration, limit or extend migrants' rights, and influence the health of migrants across borders, this thesis explores crucial relationships between these themes. Further work is needed to measure these ongoing changes, and to address the myriad health concerns of migrants as they live and work across national borders.

The article reviews the book, "Artisans in Early Imperial China," by Anthony J. Barbieri-Low.

The article reviews the book, "New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China," by Yan Hairong.

The article reviews the book ,"The Sixties: Passion, Politics, and Style," edited by Dimitry Anastakis.

The inclusion of new groups of workers has been an important component of union renewal efforts. Sev- eral unions in Canada have begun to dedicate significant resources to better organize and represent Aboriginal workers. Drawing on interviews with union activists, organizers and representatives from two national public sector unions in Canada, we present an overview of union strategies to engage with Aboriginal peoples. Results suggest that understanding the distinct territorial context of Aboriginal peo- ples’ relationships to work and unions has been necessary to the success of these union strategies. This approach begins by drawing connections between Aboriginal peoples’ present-day relationships to work and their prior occupancy of, and dispossession from, lands and resources. Because of the geographical specificity of how the colonial experience affected Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to work and unions, unions have had to adopt non-normative approaches to their engagements with Aboriginal peoples. In workplaces where settlers were dominant, addressing racism in the workplace and gaining support for initiatives to hire and train Aboriginal workers were important. Alternatively, in Aboriginal workplaces, organizing was a priority. Here questions of union legitimacy have taken precedence and the focus of unions has been on partnership building. Most importantly, however, engagement with Aboriginal peo- ples has brought attention to the colonial practices within unions and helped to foster growing Aboriginal voice within the labour movement.

The article focuses on issues concerning revisionism, which is described by John Manley as an international historiographical tendency. It explains that one problem about the concept of revisionism was the uncertainty of method, argument and genre. It discusses the arguments of Manley about the differences of the communist parties in Canada, Great Britain and the U.S. as well as the possibility to make and break government policy in one particular country in the interests of Socialism. It also examines the impact of failing to adopt evaluative criteria on Comintern historiography.

Plan de l’article : Retour au début -- Distinction entre la partie et le tout -- De la mixité des sources de droit -- Fonctions et réactions des parties et de l’arbitre -- Face à ces différentes situations, que peut faire l’arbitre de grief ? -- En guise de conclusion -- Note biographique -- Notes.