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This thesis examines workers' experiences of control and agency at the micro-political level of the dormitory/workplace in the context of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). I ask: 1) How are individual migrant workers responding to workplace and (im)migration policies and practices that aim to produce a flexible and compliant workforce; and 2) what forms of creative research strategies are best suited to documenting and examining the private, largely hidden lives of migrant farm workers? The thesis sheds light on the daily forms of resilience, opposition and survival among an entrenched, yet largely hidden workforce on the margins of Canada's labour market. I conducted my fieldwork in the town of Leamington, Ontario, a well-established hub of Canada's greenhouse industry, and as such a significant terminus for SAWP workers. In order to fully engage workers in the research process, I incorporated a qualitative, embodied, active and participatory approach to research grounded in life history, personal narrative, and drama-based methods. Through my interactions with workers I explore in detail how colonial attitudes operate alongside Canada's official policy of multiculturalism in the context of migration and employment among `low-skilled' guest workers. Throughout the thesis I examine workers' stories through the conceptual lenses of worker agency, workplace relations and worker emancipation. My research reveals that in tightly controlled and surveilled workplace environments workers learn to be intensely competitive and to distrust each other as a means of survival, resulting in a deep sense of isolation among workers, thus stifling potential opportunities for building group solidarity. However, I found that workers' participation in non-work related activities during leisure hours produced small breaches in the accepted norms of control, offering potentially rich opportunities for critical reflection and dialogue. I argue that an analysis of complex and even contradictory worker subjectivities that are developed and performed in everyday life among Canada's SAWP workers offers a more nuanced understanding of worker solidarities, collective social movements and the potential for labour education at the margins of Canada's labour market.

This dissertation explored the relationship between individual-level value differences and workplace attitudes. Using data from a sample of Canadian workers whose co-workers were currently using flexible work arrangements, the relationship between allocentrism and workers' job satisfaction and organizational commitment was explored. A workplace-allocentrism scale was developed and validated. The scale showed adequate validity and reliability and thus was used in the main study. The Co-Worker Model was developed and tested on a sample of adults in Canada who work in organizations where flexible work arrangements are used. Data were collected from an online research panel and then tested using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that allocentric value orientations were positively related to reported organizational commitment, mediated by job satisfaction. This study sheds light on the importance of understanding individual-level value differences when examining the effectiveness and/or ineffectiveness of organizational policies and practices.

There has been a long-time debate over whether issues conclusively decided at labour arbitration should be subject to a subsequent proceeding before a human rights tribunal. The author examines Supreme Court of Canada decisions dealing with re-litigation of issues before multiple decision-makers, and demonstrates how they are interpreted by the human rights tribunal. This paper identifies principles from cases before other decision-makers that can be applied to the problem of shared jurisdiction between labour arbitration and human rights.

My dissertation, Housework and Social Subversion: Wages, Housework, and Feminist Activism in 1970s Italy and Canada, presents a history of the Wages for Housework movements in Italy and Canada (1972-1978), looking at the parallel development of autonomist feminist politics in these locations. Based on a series of interviews with feminists involved in the movement, my dissertation highlights the significant political value in the way the groups theoretical perspective influenced our current understanding of social reproduction. Social reproduction refers to the unpaid activities associated with family and societal maintenance procreation, socialization, and nurturance as well as paid work in social sectors such as health care, education, childcare, and social services. In the context of Wages for Housework, my dissertation re-examines the movements understandings of wages, housework, and the gendered relations of production in the home. In critiquing the capitalist, patriarchal, imperialist nuclear family, they re-conceptualized wages and housework in a way that allowed for the uncovering of the most hidden aspect of housework: emotional labour and care. Looking at the parallel development of Wages for Housework movements in Italy and Canada, I also highlight the emergence of similar tensions regarding the demand for wages and the role of the working class housewife in their analyses. As Nicole Cox and Silvia Federici wrote, Our power as women begins with the social struggle for the wage, not to be let into the wage relation (for we were never out of it) but to be le out of it, for every sector of the working class to be left out of it (1975, 11). In light of the continued pervasiveness of care as work, this dissertation contributes to building a better understanding of social reproduction in a global context.

Job Developers have complex and demanding jobs that require balancing the needs of organizations, employers, and job seekers. Job Developers must meet new employers and potential employees every day, earn their trust, and learn their needs. A common role Job Developers play is helping people find jobs and helping employers find employees. Job Developers attempt to learn what employers and job seekers need and what each can offer to match the right applicants to the right employers.Competent Job Developers must have organization, research, marketing, selling, communication, and negotiation skills. Job development has become a high growth occupation. Because the nature of their jobs changes constantly, Job Developers must also stays updated on employment trends and labor market information. While these changes provide opportunities for practitioners to expand their roles, they also impose increased demands and challenges to build their skills and capacity to perform their jobs. The job developer profession (also known as employment specialist) is a recently new concept in the nonprofit sector. Job Developers' potential as advocates for the unemployed, those with disabilities, and new immigrants is fundamental in today's competitive job market and in the context of equitable opportunity for employment. Informal and nonformal learning are well-recognized and well-used in the job development field. Job Developers rely on informal and nonformal learning for professional development and occupational autonomy.

This thesis examines the life stories of six Indigenous civil servants who worked in the Canadian federal public service from the late 1960s until today. To contextualize these lived experiences, this thesis also explores the development of a culture of merit, representation, and employment equity within the federal civil service in the twentieth century. Stories of work were provided within the frame of larger life stories, allowing narrators to speak to both their perceptions of the civil service as an employer and also the role and meaning of this work within their lives. As a result, this thesis argues that the complexity of individual experiences, identity formation, and memory make it difficult to generalize about “the Indigenous civil servant” in any meaningful way. Relatedly, this thesis also emphasizes both the enriching possibilities and the unique challenges of conducting life story oral interviews and “sharing authority” in collaborative research projects.

This paper aims to discover the theatrical relationship between the working class and the factory of war. In that, it strives to prove that the lower income labourer is the cog of the machine: a nameless entity with an inescapable destiny. Through the paper and the subsequent production of Oh, What A Lovely War! I intend to give a voice to the worker and will struggle with my own blue collar identity, just as Joan Littlewood did in years past. This production and paper therefore is one of self-discovery and acceptance. In addition, it aims to prove that without the heroic efforts of the laboring class, there would be no war, as the cowardice of capitalism would fall without its soldiers.

In 1932, coal miners inside of Alberta's Crowsnest Pass struck for 195 days over working conditions. I use a multi-perspective approach and found my analysis on the basis of community to increase our understanding on industrial disputes. I explore the strike from the viewpoint of coal operators, miners, union organizers, women, the RCMP, and other residents inside the region to contextualize the experience of the strike. By using the starting point of community, I add to the ‘labour versus capital’ paradigm often employed in writings on industrial disputes. The Mine Workers Union of Canada represented the striking miners but it became clear that community consensus to support for the union was never reached. Resistance against the union formed on several fronts and often pitted strike supporters against those who disagreed. The strike is a reminder that tensions not only existed between classes but also within classes.

The emergence of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in the 1970s as the largest union in Canada was a major development in Canadian labour history and the result of extensive efforts to organize unorganized civil servants and public employees. Public sector union growth has often been thought to have differed fundamentally from the experience of private sector unions, on the grounds that union rights were extended to public sector workers without struggle. The history of CUPE New Brunswick, established in 1963, and its predecessor unions in the 1950s demonstrates the complex struggles of civil servants and public employees to acquire and then to apply collective bargaining rights in the province of New Brunswick. While the enactment of the Public Service Labour Relations Act (PSLRA) in 1968 provided a legal means for civil servants to join a union and bargain collectively, public sector workers continued to struggle for improved wages and working conditions throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These conflicts, which drew on both membership mobilization and legal strategies, are shown in detail in the experience of CUPE members in Local 963, New Brunswick Liquor Store Workers, and Local 1252, New Brunswick Council of Hospital Unions, the umbrella organization representing hospital support workers. While locals within CUPE New Brunswick worked independently of one another, the more than 200 CUPE locals in the province joined together in 1992 to resist measures introduced by the provincial Liberal government. While this was essentially a defensive struggle to protect existing rights, it also represented a challenge to the emerging policies of neo-liberalism and a culmination of a tradition of collective action within the union.