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In 1910, Sir William Meredith led a Royal Commission to investigate the injury, death, and permanent disability of workers. In response to his findings, Meredith helped introduce a new system of compensation for injured and disabled workers that emphasized their rights and well-being. But today, Sir William’s principles appear to be dead: injured and disabled workers often end up living in poverty and are viewed with stigma by those who should be providing them with service. What happened? How can we find out the experiences and needs of injured and disabled workers, and how can the necessary changes be put into action? To answer such questions, the Research Action Alliance on the Consequences of Work Injury (RAACWI), a community-based research initiative that brought advocates, injured workers, and academics together, was formed. Who Killed Sir William? provides an engaging look at RAACWI’s eight years of groundbreaking work and what a successful community-academia partnership looks like to inform and inspire fellow academics, advocates, and community. Its discussion includes (and goes beyond): Developing a trusting, productive, community-advocate-academic relationship; successes such as the production of over twenty research publications and a speakers school for injured workers; the use of diverse teaching methods, including skits and theatre pieces; [and] some of the challenges RAACWI faced (and how they overcame them). In Who Killed Sir William? authors Marion Endicott and Steve Mantis not only offer insight on the systemic assailants, but also lay out a process of addressing them. --Publisher's description

For 300,000 years humans have pushed for equality in their societies. For the first time ever, historian Alvin Finkel brings together the evidence to tell the story of the 99% who have constantly sought to live in a society of equals. This is a history of humanity like it's never been told before. Historian Alvin Finkel builds on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists and historians to present the very long view of the history of the human species. His focus is not on the leaders whose exploits are recounted in traditional histories, but rather on the experiences of ordinary people, the 99%, whose experiences and activities are often overlooked. In the extensive research of many contemporary scholars, Alvin Finkel notes a common thread which most historians have ignored: the constant efforts of ordinary people throughout history to create and sustain societies based on equality of all individuals. Contrary to traditional historical writing, he finds that the earliest human communities usually treated all individuals as equals. In the histories of societies all around the world, he records how individuals who found ways to gain wealth and power have faced constant, often successful, resistance from the rest. From the first recorded communities in Mesopotamia to the COVID-19 pandemic, this book features the resistances, uprisings, struggles, and solidarities of the majority against those seeking to dominate. The result is a fresh and challenging interpretation of the history of our species, one that casts a new light on the true nature of humans. --Publisher's description

Ce livre retrace en 15 chapitres le parcours de l'historien Guy Gaudreau qui a choisi les textes les plus représentatifs de sa carrière. --Quatrième de couverture

The renowned Harry Glasbeek unpacks how law has been used to ensure that workers' aspirations are kept in check. Law at Work uncovers how the legal system, through its structures and mechanisms, legitimizes and reinforces the exploitation of workers. Using historic and contemporary examples, Glasbeek illustrates how conscious manipulations of law are part and parcel of how law protects capitalists at the expense of workers. He proves how the very laws designed to safeguard rights and freedoms often act as invisible shackles, compelling readers to reflect on their own struggles as they navigate a world where the legal system fails to serve their interests. These manipulations are made to look innocent because the underlying structures and ideology which give rise to specific rules are not challenged or challengeable. This thought-provoking book is an indispensable resource for those seeking to understand the hidden dynamics of worker oppression, empowering readers to question prevailing narratives and envision a future where the law truly serves the interests of all. -- Publisher's description

This book deals with the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act and the Public Service Act, the statutes that primarily govern unionized and non-unionized employment and labour relations in the Ontario Public Service and Crown Agencies. This updated edition provides a full review of all sections, and all judicial and arbitral consideration, of both acts. It also discusses the unique treatment of the Crown and its employees in the Public Sector Labour Relations Transition Act and the Employment Standards Act. -- Publisher's description

An original history of those who made tattooing their livelihood. In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating permanent images on the skin of paying clients. From this early example of tattooing as work, Jamie Jelinski takes us from coast to coast with detours to the United States, England, and Japan as he traces the evolution of commercial tattooing in Canada over more than one hundred years. Needle Work offers insight into how tattoo artists navigated regulation, the types of spaces they worked in, and the dynamic relationship between the images they tattooed on customers and other forms of visual culture and artistic enterprise. Merging biographical narratives with an examination of tattooing’s place within wider society, Jelinski reveals how these commercial image makers bridged conventional gaps between cultural production and practical, for-profit work, thereby establishing tattooing as a legitimate career. Richly illustrated and drawing on archives, print media, and objects held in institutions and private collections across Canada and beyond, Needle Work provides a timely understanding of a vocation that is now familiar but whose intricate history has rarely been considered. --Publisher's description

To be published: June 2025. The Canadian postwar economic boom did not include one western coal-mining region. When the Canadian Pacific Railway switched to diesel power, over 2,000 coal-production jobs were lost in the Crowsnest Pass and Elk Valley. The Lights on the Tipple Are Going Out tells the story of its fight for survival. Underground mine closures began in 1950, prompting attempts by unions, leftist parties, municipal governments, and business groups to save the local economy. Efforts to reindustrialize in the mid-1960s brought unregulated growth, unsafe working conditions, and pollution. Starting in 1968, new strip mines were built to produce metallurgical coal for Asia-Pacific steelmakers. Not only is this an interesting regional history, but the consideration of the role of labour unions, local communists, and grassroots environmentalists makes it especially compelling. Today, with technological change in steel manufacturing on the horizon, propelled by the climate crisis, Langford argues that the Crowsnest Pass and Elk Valley must look toward ecosystem restoration, sustainable economic activities, and the inclusion of First Nations in decision making in order to embrace a future beyond coal. -- Publisher's description

Autoworkers unionized the General Motors plant in Oshawa in 1937 after a bitterly fought strike that pitted them against a rabidly anti-union government, hostile press and GM corporation. It was a major turning point in Canadian labour history. Crucial factors contributing to the strike’s success include the historical background of working-class struggle in the community, patient and courageous prior organizing by Communists, the engaged leadership of rank-and-file GM workers, and the solid support of the United Autoworkers International Union. The author focuses on the voices and actions of rank-and-file workers and on the day-to-day events, many of which have been misunderstood or misinterpreted. The Truth About the ’37 Oshawa GM Strike takes down the long-accepted—but false—narrative espoused by the academic Irving Abella that the Oshawa workers were “on their own” without significant support from the UAW/CIO leadership and that they would have been better off not to organize under the banner of an international union. It also shows how that narrative fails to grasp the degree to which class struggle organizing principles were crucial to the strike’s success. A true understanding of the ’37 strike provides valuable lessons for people seeking to revive the labour movement today. --Publisher's description

The emergence, dominance, and alarmingly rapid retreat of modernist industrial capitalism on Cape Breton Island during the “long twentieth century” offers a particularly captivating window on the lasting and varied effects of deindustrialization. Now, at the tail end of the industrial moment in North American history, the story of Cape Breton Island presents an opportunity to reflect on how industrialization and deindustrialization have shaped human experiences. Covering the period between 1860 and the early 2000s, this volume looks at trade unionism, state and cultural responses to deindustrialization, including the more recent pivot towards the tourist industry, and the lived experiences of Indigenous and Black people. Rather than focusing on the separate or distinct nature of Cape Breton, contributors place the island within broad transnational networks such as the financial world of the Anglo-Atlantic, the Celtic music revival, the Black diaspora, Canadian development programs, and more. In capturing the vital elements of a region on the rural resource frontier that was battered by deindustrialization, the histories included here show how the interplay of the state, cultures, and transnational connections shaped how people navigated these heavy pressures, both individually and collectively. --Publisher's description

This catalogue of the Nii Ndahlohke exhibition at Art Windsor Essex (September 26, 2023 – June 25, 2024) features work by First Nations artists exploring the history of forced labour of students at Mount Elgin Industrial School (1851-1946). --WorldCat catalogue record

Since the mid-nineteenth century, public officials, reformers, journalists, and other elites have referred to “the labour question.” The labour question was rooted in the system of wage labour that spread throughout much of Europe and its colonies and produced contending classes as industrialization unfolded. Answers to the Labour Question explores how the liberal state responded to workers’ demands that employers recognize trade unions as their legitimate representatives in their struggle for compensation and control over the workplace. Gary Mucciaroni examines five Anglophone nations – Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States – whose differences are often overlooked in the literature on political economy, which lumps them together as liberal, “market-led” economies. Despite their many shared characteristics and common historical origins, these nations’ responses to the labour question diverged dramatically. Mucciaroni identifies the factors that explain why these nations developed such different industrial relations regimes and how the paths each nation took to the adoption of its regime reflected a different logic of institutional change. Drawing on newspaper accounts, parliamentary debates, and personal memoirs, among other sources, Answers to the Labour Question aims to understand the variety of state responses to industrial unrest and institutional change beyond the domain of industrial relations. --Publisher's description

E-textbook that introduces Canadian labour relations, labour history, unions, collective bargaining (including resolving disputes), and grievance arbitration.

Amid the proliferating scholarship and often sensational public campaigns, Trafficking Harms offers fresh insights and critical analyses. The collection’s four thematic areas — Discourses and Representations; Law and Prosecutions; Policing and Surveillance; Migrant Labour Exploitation — examine an array of issues, including the contested definitions of human trafficking, the application of trafficking law and policy, the conflation of sex work and trafficking, the impacts of anti-trafficking frameworks on racialized communities, questions around “victims” and “traffickers” and much more. Showcasing a mix of scholarly research, public advocacy and first-person narratives, this book is the first of its kind in Canada. The authors include a diverse group of academics, legal advocates, frontline activists who work with migrant and sex-working communities, individuals who have been charged and/or convicted of trafficking offences and those who are directly impacted by trafficking law and policing, such as domestic and migrant sex workers. --Publisher's description

In the decades following the Second World War, autoworkers were at the forefront of the labour movement. Their union urged members to rally in the streets and use the ballot box to effect change for all working-class people. But by the turn of this century, the Canadian Auto Workers union had begun to pursue a more defensive political direction. "Shifting Gears" traces the evolution of CAW strategy from transformational activism to transactional politics. Class-based collective action and social democratic electoral mobilization gave way to transactional partnerships as relationships between the union, employers, and governments were refashioned. This new approach was maintained when the CAW merged with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union in 2013 to create Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union. Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage explain how and why the union shifted its political tactics, offering a critical perspective on the current state of working-class politics. -- Publisher's description

In this book, independent experts analyze the performance of Justin Trudeau’s years in power in over 20 important areas of government policy. The record of what has been done–and what hasn’t–will surprise even well-informed readers. The focus is on six policy areas: Indigenous rights, governance and housing; the environment and energy; taxes and spending; healthcare and social benefits; foreign policy, immigration, and trade; and social policy including drug reform, labour rights, and racism. Editors Katherine Scott, Laura Macdonald, and Stuart Trew of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have recruited Canada’s most knowledgeable experts in their areas to contribute to this volume. -- Publisher's description

The story of a people told through the story of a city. Niigaan Sinclair is often accused of being angry in his columns. But how can he not be? In a collection of writing that spans the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at residential school sites, the murder of young Indigenous girls, and the indifference towards the basic human rights of his family members, this book is inspired by his award-winning columns 'from the centre.' Niigaan examines the state of urban Indigenous life and legacy. At a crucial moment in Canada's reckoning with its crimes against the Indigenous peoples of the land, one of our most essential writers begins at the centre, capturing a web spanning centuries of community, art, and resistance. Based on years' worth of columns in the Winnipeg Free Press, CBC, and elsewhere, Niigaan Sinclair delivers a defining essay collection on the resilience of Indigenous peoples. Here, we meet the creators, leaders, and everyday people preserving the beauty of their heritage one day at a time. But we also meet the ugliest side of settler colonialism, and the communities who suffer most from its atrocities. Sinclair uses the story of Winnipeg to illuminate the reality of Indigenous life all over what is called Canada. This is a book that demands change and celebrates those fighting for it, that reminds us of what must be reconciled and holds accountable those who must do the work. It's a book that reminds us of the power that comes from loving a place, even as that place is violently taken away from you, and the magic of fighting your way back to it. -- Publisher's description

Oil workers are often typecast as rough: embodying the toxic masculinity, racism, consumerist excess, and wilful ignorance of the extractive industries and petrostates they work for. But their poetry troubles these assumptions, revealing the fear, confusion, betrayal, and indignation hidden beneath tough personas. The Rough Poets presents poetry by workers in the Canadian oil and gas industry, collecting and closely reading work published between 1938 and 2019: S.C. Ells’s Northland Trails, Peter Christensen’s Rig Talk, Dymphny Dronyk’s Contrary Infatuations, Mathew Henderson’s The Lease, Naden Parkin’s A Relationship with Truth, Lesley Battler’s Endangered Hydrocarbons, and Lindsay Bird’s Boom Time. These writers are uniquely positioned, Melanie Dennis Unrau argues, both as petropoets who write poetry about oil and as theorists of petropoetics with unique knowledge about how to make and unmake worlds that depend on fossil fuels. Their ambivalent, playful, crude, and honest petropoetry shows that oil workers grieve the environmental and social impacts of their work, worry about climate change and the futures of their communities, and desire jobs and ways of life that are good, safe, and just. How does it feel to be a worker in the oil and gas industry in a climate emergency, facing an energy transition that threatens your way of life? Unrau takes up this question with the respect, care, and imagination necessary to be an environmentalist reader in solidarity with oil workers. -- Publisher's description

In this singular firsthand account, a former migrant worker reveals a disturbing system of exploitation at the heart of Canada’s farm labour system. When Gabriel Allahdua applied to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada, he thought he would be leaving his home in St. Lucia to work in a country with a sterling human rights reputation and commitment to multiculturalism. Instead, breakneck quotas and a culture of fear dominated his four years in a mega-greenhouse in Ontario. This deeply personal memoir takes readers behind the scenes to see what life is really like for the people who produce Canada’s food. Now, as a leading activist in the migrant justice movement in Canada, Gabriel is fighting back against the Canadian government to demand rights and respect for temporary foreign labourers. Harvesting Freedom shows Canada’s place in the long history of slavery, colonialism, and inequality that has linked the Caribbean to the wider world for half a millennium--but also the tireless determination of Caribbean people to fight for their freedom. -- Publisher's description

Au cours des dix à quinze dernières années, les plateformes de travail numériques se sont fortement développées dans différents secteurs d'activité, comme le transport de personnes et la livraison de repas, ou sous forme d'une multitude de microtâches réalisées en ligne. Des centaines de milliers de travailleurs et travailleuses se retrouvent actuellement dans cette nouvelle gig economy. Quelle est l'importance des plateformes numériques et quelle est leur signification pour le monde du travail ? Menacent-elles de supplanter les relations d'emploi traditionnelles fondées sur des contrats légalement réglementés ? Sont-elles compatibles avec les promesses d'autonomie et de liberté qui constituent leur image de marque ? Quelle est la situation vécue par les travailleurs et les travailleuses des plateformes ? Cet ouvrage tente de répondre à ces interrogations selon une perspective à la fois internationale et multidisciplinaire. Sociologues, économistes et juristes, spécialistes de la question, dressent un portrait saisissant de l'économie des plateformes numériques, analysent les effets de leur développement sur les manières de vivre le travail et soulèvent des nouveaux questionnements et enjeux sociaux pour l'action publique

The first full-length treatment of Ed Broadbent's ideas and remarkable seven-decade engagement in public life. Ed Broadbent is unique among living political leaders of international stature in offering a fully developed analysis of social democracy and its relevance in the 21st century. His career as a political philosopher, activist, and politician and his conversations with contemporaries such as Willy Brandt, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and Mikhail Gorbachev inform his analysis of the struggles for social justice in the long 20th century. Having come to the socialist and social democratic traditions by way of academic study, Broadbent tested and tempered his ideas in the great postwar struggles over social rights, gender and racial equality, workers' rights, the containment of capital, and reversing the commodification of private life. The book explores the roots of his egalitarianism and the formation of his social democratic ideas, Broadbent's engaged internationalism and relationship with key historical figures, and his experiences and reflections in practical politics and pursuit of government across several of the most momentous decades in the history of Canada. He was a Member of Parliament for over two decades and was, for most of this period, leader of the New Democratic Party. He remains to this day an important social democratic voice in the public debates of the nation. Part political history, part intellectual biography, part manifesto for social democracy this first-ever full-length treatment of Broadbent's thought will be animated in dialogue with three collaborators from different generations, each similarly immersed in the history of social democratic ideas--the result being a fresh analysis of social democracy, Canadian politics, and a lively contribution to current debates and dilemmas. -- Publisher's description