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Review of: Y a-t-il un âge pour travailler ? edited by François Hubault.

Examines critically the efforts of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper efforts to reshape the public symbols and representations of Canadian history, citizenship, and identity. Emphasizes the importance of the body of research on social history, as well as the understandings offered collectively by the social sciences and humanities.

This article is a critical review of "Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case," by Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker.

In the mid-1980s, the Abella Commission on Equality in Employment and the federal Employment Equity Act made Canada a policy leader in addressing systemic discrimination in the workplace. More than twenty-five years later, Employment Equity in Canada assembles a distinguished group of experts to examine the state of employment equity in Canada today. Examining the evidence of nearly thirty years, the contributors – both scholars and practitioners of employment policy – evaluate the history and influence of the Abella Report, the impact of Canada’s employment equity legislation on equality in the workplace, and the future of substantive equality in an environment where the Canadian government is increasingly hostile to intervention in the workplace. They compare Canada’s legal and policy choices to those of the United States and to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and examine ways in which the concept of employment equity might be expanded to embrace other vulnerable communities. Their observations will be essential reading for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future of Canadian employment and equity policy. --Publisher's description.

This article examines some of Depression-era Canada’s most influential labour newspapers with the intent to show that their writers were deeply inspired by radical Christianity. While connected in many ways to earlier strands of working-class and leftist Christianity as typified by the social gospel, radical Christianity differs in the extent to which the roots of social dysfunction were acknowledged as being linked to the capitalist order, and the solution being in its destruction. In this way, one can find deep intellec­tual connections between the Canadian labour press and the members of the Fellowship of a Christian Social Order (FCSO). Thus, this article not only examines labour intellectuals in a Gramscian light, but seeks to challenge the claim among many historians that links between labour and Christianity col­lapsed before the Depression. Indeed, labour intellectuals sought to confront the prevailing hegemony of a capitalistic Christianity, not only by challeng­ing the links the institutional churches held with the economic elite but also through developing understanding of how capitalism played an intrinsic role in the creation of sin and suffering.

Amendments to the Ontario Human Rights Code that took effect in 2008 introduced a new hybrid direct access model, which allows complaints to be taken directly to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario without prior investigation by the province's Human Rights Commission, and which limits the Commission's role to the protection of the public interest through policy development and public education. The authors are of the view that there was inadequate cost-benefit analysis of the new model before it was implemented, and that the three-year period between the implementation of the new model and the preparation of the Pinto Report on its operation was not long enough to allow for a thorough analysis of how well the model was working. They argue that cost-benefit analysis is still needed to assess whether the model is meeting its policy goals and whether it is cost-effective and efficient. However, they acknowledge that one of the challenges in performing an analysis of a human rights regime lies in the dificulty of quantifying the regime's costs and benefits; it is hard, for example, to place a value on fictors such as access to justice. With an eye to the differences between the new Ontario model and the human rights regimes in other Canadian jurisdictions, the authors highlight a number of potential problems with the hybrid Ontario model that call for future research using a cost-benefit approach: the lack of Commission-initiated public interest cases; the risk that more non-meritorious cases will reach adjudication because of the lack of screening by the Commission; the shifting of the costs and other burdens of litigation to private parties; and the question of the effectiveness of the Legal Support Centre in helping to meet those burdens.

"In the mid-1980s, the Abella Commission on Equality in Employment and the federal Employment Equity Act made Canada a policy leader in addressing systemic discrimination in the workplace. More than twenty-five years later, Employment Equity in Canada assembles a distinguished group of experts to examine the state of employment equity in Canada today

The title of CIRA's 50th anniversary conference -- From Theory and Research to Policy and Practice in Work and Employment -- has a nostalgic ring to it. You will recall, perhaps, that large numbers of people, who used to be known as "workers", were "employed" in something called "industry". Significant numbers of these workers joined organizations called "unions" that established collective "relations" with employers. Implausible as it now seems, governments were once so concerned about "industrial relations" (IR) that they sponsored a great deal of IR research and even conducted their own. The Task Force on Labour Relations, appointed in 1966, enlisted virtually every industrial relations and labour law scholar in the country; compiled shelves-full of ambitious studies; and made scores of recommendations, a surprising number of which ended up being adopted by one or another Canadian jurisdiction. --From author's keynote address

The article reviews the book, "Autonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade," by Dimitry Anastakis.

Since the mid-1980s, the nonprofit social services sector has been promoted as an option for cheaper and more flexible delivery of services. In order to comply with government standards and funding requirements, the sector has been subject to ongoing waves of restructuring and the introduction of new private market-like, outcomes-based management models, such as New Public Management. This article explores ways in which nonprofit social services sector workers experience their work as highly fragmented. Drawing on case studies completed as part of a larger project addressing restructuring in the nonprofit social services sector in Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, we examine three key aspects shaping work in the nonprofit social services sector: 1) workers’ experience of managerialism; 2) gendered strategies drawn on by workers in the agencies studied; and 3) union strategies in the nonprofit social services sector, as well as within individual workplaces. Conclusions focus on contributions to understanding managerialism as a strong but fragmented project in which even weak union presence and the willingness of the predominantly female workforce to sacrifice to provide care for others ensure that some level of social solidarity endures.

This paper examines the impact of precarity on the nonprofit service providing sector (NPSS). Using in depth qualitative interviews, recent empirically-based surveys of the Ontario nonprofit sector and key academic and grey literature, we explore the deeper meaning of precarity in this sector. We contend that the NPSS is a unique, and in many respects, an ideal location in which to explore the workings and impact of precarity. Looking at the nonprofit sector reveals that precarity operates at various levels, the: 1) nonprofit labour force; 2) organization structure and operation of nonprofit agencies; and, 3) clients and communities serviced by these nonprofit organizations. By observing the workings of precarity in this sector, precarity is revealed to be far more than an employment based phenomenon but also a force that negatively impacts organizational structures as well as vulnerable communities.

In this study, we examine the effect of licensing requirements on the occupational mobility of highly skilled new immigrants in Canada using longitudinal data. We find that immigrants who worked in regulated professions in their home country, but unregulated fields in Canada, experienced significantly greater occupational downgrading than those who worked in unregulated professions prior to migration. Immigrants who worked in regulated fields in their home country who were able to find work in regulated fields in Canada did not experience any occupational downgrading after migration. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.

The article explores Canadian press coverage of the Paris Commune movement in France in 1871. Emphasis is given to the moral aspects of the insurrection in relation to Canadian nationhood and the political development of Canadian Confederation. The author examines newspaper accounts on topics such as the separation of church and state, the appropriation of church property, and the social behavior of women. Other topics include the differences between Anglophone and Francophone newspapers, the popularization of socialism, and moral condemnation.

In [this book], Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of French Canadians involved in the fur economy, the indigenous women whose presence in their lives encouraged them to stay, and their descendants. Joined in this distant setting by Quebec paternal origins, the French language, and Catholicism, French Canadians comprised Canadians from Quebec, Iroquois from the Montreal area, and metis combining Canadian and indigenous descent. For half a century, French Canadians were the largest group of newcomers in this region extending from Oregon and Washington east into Montana and north through British Columbia. Here, they facilitated the early overland crossings, drove the fur economy, initiated non-wholly-indigenous agricultural settlement, eased relations with indigenous peoples, and ensured that, when the Pacific Northwest was divided in 1846, the northern half would go to Britain, giving today's Canada its Pacific shoreline. In the generations that followed, Barman argues, descendants did not become Metis, as the term has been used to describe a people apart, but rather drew on both their French Canadians and indigenous inheritances to make the best possible lives for themselves and those around them. --Publisher's description. Contents: Pt. 1. French Canadians And The Fur Economy. To Be French Canadian -- Facilitating the Overland Crossings -- Driving the Fur Economy -- Deciding Whether to Go or to Stay. Pt. 2. French Canadians, Indigenous Women, And Family Life In The Fur Economy. Taking Indigenous Women Seriously -- Innovating Family Life -- Initiating Permanent Settlement -- Saving British Columbia for Canada. Pt. 3. Beyond The Fur Economy. Negotiating Changing Times -- Enabling Sons and Daughters -- To Be French Canadian and Indigenous -- Reclaiming the Past. Includes bibliographical references (pages 404-430) and index.

Considering a series of oil-driven economic booms, the use of inter-provincial and international migrant labour has become an important part of labour market policy in the Canadian province of Alberta. The increased use of temporary foreign workers is controversial. Narrative analysis of legislators’ statements in the legislature and the press between 2000 and 2011 reveals the government using three narratives to justify policies encouraging greater use of foreign migrant workers: (1) labour shortages require migrant workers, (2) migrants do not threaten Canadian jobs and (3) migrants are not being exploited. Close scrutiny of each narrative demonstrates them to be largely invalid. This suggests a significant disconnect between the real and espoused reasons for the significant changes to labour market policy, changes that advantage employers and disadvantage both Canadian and foreign workers. The findings are relevant to understand the political dynamics of economically related migration.

[Examines] the three main doctrinal approaches adopted by Canadian courts to determine the scope of freedom of association, suggesting that under each approach, there is strong support for the conclusion that the right to strike is constitutionally protected. --Introduction

This thesis is concerned with understanding the relationship between labour law and triangular employment growth, and particularly in "staffing services" contexts. A review of alternative explanations for growth in triangular employment within three theoretical paradigm (neoclassical, institutionalist, and critical) illustrates the theoretical space for conceiving of a relationship between the particularities of labour law and triangular employment growth. To this end, the thesis develops the concept of a regulatory differential, or ways in which a legal regime may produce differential regulatory effects as between direct and triangular forms of employment. A typology of regulatory differentials is outlined. Further, a discussion of the relationship between these differentials and employer-status rules is provided, and it is suggested that the logic of the framework may helpfully inform analysis of triangular employment growth within a given jurisdiction, as well as comparative analysis of this phenomenon. The theoretical framework is then applied towards examining diverging growth rates in triangular employment as between Canada and the U.S. Legal analysis examining two key sub-fields of labour suggests that the presence (and expansion) of key regulatory differentials in the U.S., absent in Canada, may help explain the observed patterns of triangular employment growth in these countries.

Review of: Les avocates, les avocats et la conciliation travail-famille by Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay and Elena Masocva.

Income inequality has risen rapidly over the past three decades. In Canada it is now at its highest level since 1928. One of the root causes: the consistent chipping away of labour rights. The labour movement has been left unable to maintain membership levels and incapable of narrowing the income gap through collective bargaining, with profound implications for Canadians. Labour rights are human rights. They provide a powerful democratic counterweight to the growing power of corporations and the wealthy, and are key to a functioning democracy. Unions Matter affirms the critical role that unions and strong labour rights play in creating greater economic equality and promoting the social wellbeing of all citizens. --Publisher's description