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For much of the 20th century, mining was a highly unionized sector, including in the Canadian North. From the 1960s to the 1990s, there was near-complete union coverage in mines in the northern territories, significantly increasing the share of wealth and political power claimed by many northern mining workers. Today, only two of ten producing mines are unionized: the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories (Public Service Alliance of Canada [ psac]) and the Mary River mine in Nunavut (International Union of Operating Engineers [ iuoe]). This article explores the reasons for this decline and contemporary barriers to organizing, drawing on archival research, document analysis, and interviews with Indigenous organizations, union organizers, servicing staff, and officials. Changes in labour practices – such as the use of long-distance commuting, subcontracting, impact and benefit agreements ( ibas), and the shift to smaller, more highly skilled workforces – have created a more challenging organizing environment. These external challenges are compounded by internal union issues, including a failure to prioritize northern organizing and to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities and governments. We draw on these results to suggest strategies for overcoming these barriers. These included targeting workers in the remediation phase mines and catering and housekeeping workers to gain a foothold in the sector, locating choke points in the fly-in/fly-out production process, investing in offices and permanent organizing staff in northern cities, and working to decolonize unions through education and meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities.

Workplace injuries happen every day and can profoundly affect workers, their families, and the communities in which they live. This textbook is for workers and students looking for an introduction to injury prevention on the job. It offers an extensive overview of central occupational health and safety (OHS) concepts and practices and provides practical suggestions for health and safety advocacy. Foster, Cake, and Barnetson bring the field into the twenty-first century by including discussions of how precarious employment, gender, and ill-health can be better handled in Canadian OHS. Although they address the gendered and racialized dimensions of new work processes and structures in contemporary workplaces, Foster, Cake, and Barnetson contend that occupational health and safety can only be understood if we acknowledge that workers and employers have conflicting interests. Who identifies what workplace hazards should be controlled is therefore a product of the broader political economy of employment and one that should be well understood by those working in the field. The newly revised second edition updates key information and discusses OHS topics related to emerging issues such as COVID-19 and climate change. It offers an expanded discussion of chemical and biological hazards and provides all-new learning activities and exercises. --Publisher's description

This research explores the intersection of precarious legal status and precarious employment of migrants who came to Canada with a temporary status, whether for work, study, or protection purposes. Drawing on data collected from 148 interviews with precarious-status migrants, the article investigates how transitions in status impact employment trajectories. It builds upon a mixed-method analysis, identifying how employment precarity intensifies with increased status insecurity, which results in progressive deskilling and the degradation of working conditions over time. By foregrounding deskilling as a cumulative and temporal process, this study demonstrates how Canada’s temporary migration regime systematically deteriorates migrant workers’ skills and opportunities, extending precarity beyond the immediate moment of employment. This analysis contributes to an understanding of the lived experiences of migrant workers, highlighting the long-term effects of migration policies and regulations on employment and working conditions.

Adoptant un format original axé sur le dialogue et la conversation, cet ouvrage collectif se situe dans la tradition des travaux en relations industrielles – un champ disciplinaire étudiant les problèmes variés associés au travail et à l’emploi. Il jette un regard d’ensemble sur les nouveaux enjeux émergents concernant le futur des milieux de travail et aborde des sujets tels que la crise climatique, le télétravail, la diversité, l’équité et l’inclusion au travail, l’avenir du syndicalisme et les droits des travailleurs. / With an original format centred on dialogue and conversation, this book is rooted in the tradition of industrial relations research, a disciplinary field that studies diverse problems associated with work and employment. As a collaborative work that takes a broad look at new and emerging issues concerning the future of workplaces, it addresses topics such as the climate crisis, telework, diversity, equity, and inclusion at work, the future of unionism, and workers’ rights. --Publisher's description / Résumé de l'éditeur

This article reviews the book, "Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future," by Tom Fraser.

This article analyzes a neoliberal redefinition of citizenship as market participation through the lens of prison labour in Canadian federal penitentiaries. We focus on corcan, a special operating agency of Correctional Service Canada, which employs approximately 4,000 prisoners in various industries. Despite performing tasks like those of free workers, incarcerated individuals are not recognized as employees under Canadian law and are excluded from employment protections. corcan emphasizes employability as a key criterion for evaluating an offender’s rehabilitation. In effect, many prisoners must demonstrate evidence of compliance with a specific model of labour-market participation in order to be paroled, and to be restored to the liberties and rights of citizenship. We highlight the ideological and practical implications of this transformation, suggesting that prison labour serves as both a means of maintaining prison discipline and a window into the logic of a market-driven society. We conclude by exploring the broader significance of these changes for understanding citizenship and labour relations.

This article reviews the book, "Law at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class," by Harry Glasbeek.

Strategies designed to revive the declining union movement require new resources and new members for success. For this, many unions often used closed or agency shops. We compare these with the now dominant open shop as well as the union default. These options are assessed by asking how effective would each be at securing both members and resources for unions; and how much would each option protect and/or advance worker's autonomy in terms of various individual freedoms? Though closed and agency shops have many merits, especially in relation to the open shop, we conclude that the union default is superior to both.

The sixties were not just “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Social movements aimed at overcoming patriarchy, colonialism, and corporate capitalism were equally part of the sixties revolution. These movements are still very much alive. In The Long Sixties, seven veteran political activists from the sixties, all still engaged in campaigns and organizations across Canada, tell their stories of transformational activism. What could veteran activists from the sixties teach about activism? In addition to telling their stories — how they got involved, why they stay involved, how they persevered into their twilight years — they also critically reflect on their victories and defeats, their personal and political challenges, what they learned, and how their perspectives deepened and changed along the way. This book provides hope, chronicling the significant gains — in advancing peace, international human rights, Indigenous rights, women’s and 2SLGBTQ+ rights, workers’ rights, and environmental protection. Weathered voices open an intergenerational conversation about social solidarity and transformation to address the grave crises we face globally and nationally, including climate catastrophe, escalating warfare, extreme wealth inequality, ethno-nationalism, and a heightened continental threat to Canada’s sovereignty. -- Publisher's description

Designed for educators and facilitators from the union hall to the lecture hall, Roles of Resistance: Game Plans for Teachers and Troublemakers outlines revolutionary lesson plans on how to fight the power with people power. The thirteen lesson plans in this book created by John-Henry Harter and Mark Leier can be used independently or combined to create a semester-long course. Sections include units on teaching political economy, labour history, and social activism based on democratic, experiential teaching, including role-plays, simulations, and games. The tried and tested classroom activities in this teacher's guide--successfully applied in high schools, universities, and union classrooms--are bound to create a vibrant learning experience, enriching debates, and providing the main tool we need to change the world: collective action. --Publisher's description

This article takes up the challenge of examining whether, and to what extent, existing labour laws in Canada are equipped to respond to new technological changes in the workplace. While the notion that technology changes labour is not new, both the types of technology associated with this new wave of change, and their rapid deployment, make this an urgently needed inquiry, given their impacts on material working conditions. Further, given that core statutory provisions regulating labour relations in Canada have remained relatively unchanged over the past 50 years, there is reason to speculate about their continued relevance, or suitability to respond to new technology in the workplace. --From Introduction

This article reviews the book, "Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics," by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage.

This article analyzes Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians organizing in Canada through three local case studies in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto, showing how struggles over unpaid caring labour generated feminist alliances across race, class, sexuality, and immigration status. Using interviews with movement leaders and rank-and-file activists alongside private and public archival collections, it traces both solidarities and conflicts between these Marxist feminist groups, low-income mothers, immigrant women’s organizations, Indigenous women, and mainstream feminist bodies such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. The authors argue that Canadian Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians activism was locally vibrant, transnationally connected, and has left a durable legacy in contemporary organizing around welfare rights, immigrant domestic workers, queer politics, and the recognition of women’s unpaid and underpaid care work.

Canada's occupational health and safety (OHS) legislative frameworks describe the general rights and responsibilities of employers and employees to ensure safe workplaces. However, the extent to which these OHS frameworks recognize and safeguard reproductive health and fetal development remains understudied. Protections for reproductive health and fetal development were evaluated in OHS legislation, employment standards, and associated regulations across Canada's federal and 13 provincial/territorial jurisdictions by a policy analysis, supported by a sex and gender-based thematic and content analysis. OHS and reproductive health keyword frequencies were also determined. Three major themes were identified: (1) inconsistent recognition of workplace risks to reproductive health, (2) job modification, and (3) employer-mandated pregnancy leave. Our review found that workplace protections were generally limited to pregnancy, with little recognition of workplace risks to fertility, suggesting gaps in workplace protections for reproductive health and fetal development. We recommend contemporary reform of Canada's OHS legislation and regulations to support universal, comprehensive, and inclusive protections for reproductive health and fetal development for all workers, regardless of sex and pregnancy status.

This article reviews the book, "After Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice," by Kirsten Emiko McAllister and Mona Oikawa, eds.

This article reviews the book, "A Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist ," by Don Hamerquist. Edited by Luis Brennan.

This article reviews the book, "200 ans de cohabitation sociale," by Camille Champagne-Tremblay et Martin Petitclerc.

This article reviews the book, "Remapping an Ableist World: Disability and Oppression Under Capitalism," by Vera Chouinard.

The International Coalition to End Domestic Exploitation (intercede) was a Toronto-based organization that began to mobilize in 1979 in response to the growing crisis of abuse faced by domestic workers as a result of exclusionary immigration laws and the absence of workplace rights. The organization convened its activism on three main fronts: lobbying the federal government for new immigration policies that would allow domestic workers to settle in Canada permanently; petitioning for basic protections for domestic workers to be enshrined under provincial labour laws; and undertaking public advocacy that politically linked issues of women’s rights, workers’ rights, and migrant justice through transnational analysis and coalition building. Despite the unprecedented achievements made by intercede, it has largely been excluded from histories of workers’ struggle in Canada. This essay looks at the publication archive of Domestics’ Cross-Cultural News (dc-cn), a monthly newsletter published by intercede from 1984 to 2006 and housed within the online collection of the Rise Up! Feminist Digital Archive. As one of only a few periodicals produced by racialized women during this period, dc-cn is not only culturally significant but also an important historiographical tool, offering insight into how work and workers’ struggles have been racialized and gendered within a multicultural and transnational framework. This essay therefore positions dc-cn as a rich artifact that allowed domestic workers to become narrators of their own historical experience.

This research note examines Canada’s wartime Women’s Land Army and associated farmerette programs to highlight the value of visual sources for understanding women’s agricultural labour during the First and Second World Wars. Drawing on twenty photographs of women working in orchards, fields, and canneries alongside feminist ethnohistorical methods, it shows how images of uniforms, camp life, and physically demanding farm work both document women’s contributions to the war effort and recover experiences largely absent from conventional archives and policy records. The author argues that combining visual evidence with narrative and reflexive analysis can personalize the historical record, challenge male-centred accounts of wartime labour, and make scholarship on rural women’s work more accessible beyond academia.