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Canada’s immigration policy has undergone a major shift in recent decades, from an approach centered on permanent immigration to a system increasingly focused on temporary migration. Temporary migrants face highly unequal power relations in the workplace, making them particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Drawing on fieldwork at the Immigrant Workers Center (IWC), a Quebec-based activist organization, this paper examines how migrant workers come to engage in political action despite this adverse context, and how they experience such action. The analysis is informed by the concept of political subjectivation, defined as the process by which individuals contest their subordinate position within a political order and seek to redefine it on more egalitarian terms. I argue that migrant workers’ political subjectivation is supported by the IWC’s participatory and collective approach to casework. In workers centers, casework refers to the practice of providing individual assistance to workers. While it is often described as an individualized and depoliticized approach to social change, my research shows how the practice of casework at the IWC fosters individual and collective transformations conducive to political subjectivation. Thus, it contributes to recent literature on radical approaches to casework and literature at the intersection of social movement and popular education scholarship.

This dissertation examines the lives and work of American and Canadian telegraph operators from 1870 to 1929. While historians have studied the telegraph as a technology and a business, few have integrated telegraphy with histories of class, gender, or the human body. Integrating the bodily turn means recognizing the physicality of telegraph work. This dissertation centres the bodies of telegraph operators and seeks to contextualize those bodies within the larger technological and corporate systems in which they were embedded. Operators’ class identities have often been ambiguous or misunderstood. I argue that telegraph work was real, physical work, in a way that has too often been elided, and that it is important to see operators as part of the working class. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which human bodies and human labour can be erased within large technological networks. I explore the historical significance of that erasure and its relevance for understanding the precarity of labour in high-tech industries today.

Drawing on interviews with seasonal agricultural workers employed in Canada from Jamaica and Mexico, this paper focuses in on the experiences of a Jamaican farmworker who remits funds to pay a neighbour to farm his land (or the land he leases) while in Canada, and who participates in regular long-distance discussions with family members and neighbours back home about the upkeep of the farm. The concept of a “transnational agricultural care chain” is proposed here to capture a series of personal links between people, located, at least temporarily, in different countries, who tend to the crops and farmland as a practice that entails asymmetrical relations of obligation to care for others. Agricultural care chains form part of a strategy to get by and possibly even advance the economic and social standing of one’s family under difficult economic conditions. Land access, as a co-constitutive sphere of production and reproduction, is another important factor in the livelihood strategies of rurally-rooted migrants, but the significance placed on land must be understood in connection to the uneven processes of global capitalism, histories of colonialism and, in the case of Jamaica, plantation slavery. The paper concludes with a reflection on how transnational agricultural care chains as paradigmatic of the contemporary food system are relevant to political and conceptual discussions around food sovereignty.

One adaptation required by the Covid-19 pandemic was a shift to virtual meetings. Collective bargaining has traditionally been conducted in person, but covid forced union and employer negotiators to adopt virtual forms of bargaining. This article examines union negotiators’ experiences with virtual bargaining in this period – first, to document the nature of the adaptations made during a historical public health event, and second, to determine whether either the shift to virtual bargaining or other covid restrictions undermined union bargaining power. It finds that the technical aspects of virtual bargaining did not significantly impact bargaining power, but broader challenges caused by covid did negatively impact union bargaining power at and away from the table.

Industrial Relations in Canada, Fifth Edition, offers students a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the Canadian industrial relations system. Designed for learners with minimal knowledge of the subject, this market-leading textbook blends theory, practice, and process in a clear and engaging way. Student-friendly chapters walk through key topics such as unionization, collective bargaining, dispute resolution, and evolving legal frameworks, while minimizing jargon and legalistic language. Throughout the book, timely coverage of controversial and complex issues fosters critical thinking and real-world problem-solving skills. Integrating a process-oriented approach developed through years of classroom experience, Industrial Relations in Canada, Fifth Edition, is ideal for university and college students in introductory labour relations courses, as well as adult learners in business, human resource management, and labour studies programs. With its strong foundation in both academic theory and practical application, it is also an excellent springboard for more advanced studies in industrial relations. New to this edition: new chapter-opening vignettes featuring Canadian labour relations practitioners; new discussions of social media’s role in union organizing and labour activism, and the effects of technological change on labour-management dynamics; new coverage of current research on union and workplace issues; updated news stories in every chapter reflecting current events in Canadian workplaces; discussions of the impacts of COVID-19 and climate change on labour relations; enhanced analysis of recent court decisions affecting collective bargaining; and updated statistics and demographic data on unionization, strikes, and lockouts across Canada. --Publisher's description

Modern slavery laws are a response to global capitalism, which undermines the distinction between free and unfree labour and poses intense challenges to state sovereignty. Instead of being a solution, Constructing Modern Slavery argues that modern slavery laws divert attention from the underlying structures and processes that generate exploitation. Focusing on unfree labour associated with international immigration and global supply chains, it provides a novel socio-legal genealogy of the concept 'modern slavery' through a series of linked case studies of influential actors associated with key legal instruments: the United Nations, the United States, the International Labour Organization, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Walk Free Foundation. Constructing Modern Slavery demonstrates that despite the best efforts of academics, advocates, and policymakers to develop a truly multifaceted approach to modern slavery, it is difficult to uncouple antislavery initiatives from the conservative moral and economic agendas with which they are aligned. --Publisher's description

The right to strike is a key feature of freedom of association and effective collective bargaining. We consider how the legal regulation of strikes and boycotts affects the power resources available to workers and unions to improve working conditions and workers’ voice in firms, such as global supply chains and platform giants, that utilize network-of-contracts business models. We begin by bringing the literatures on power resources theory and supply chain and platform capitalism into conversation. Treating law as a form of institutional power influencing workers’ ability to exercise other power resources in network-of-contracts business models, we then examine how the laws regulating strikes influence workers’ ability to mobilize their other power resources to affect the terms and conditions of work. We investigate the Make Amazon Pay campaign and related strikes to gauge how the legal regulation of strikes affects workers’ power to disrupt supply and production under network-of-contracts business models. We conclude by highlighting the need to revise the law of strikes to fit the power relations under supply and platform capitalism.

The article reviews the book, "Reimagining Illness: Women Writers and Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Britain," by Heather Meek.

Climate change has reached crisis mode, and confronting it requires confronting corporations, economic planning, policies that exacerbate this process, and social relations that enable such policies and economic paths. This dissertation shows how settler colonialism in Canada revolves today around extractivism. This fact makes the struggle for land critical and highlights how Canadian nationalism is an obstacle to Indigenous solidarity and environmentalism. In 2020, the Shut Down Canada movement that started from Wet'suwet'en territories against building the CGL pipeline on their land, which was a scale-up from the Idle No More movement, underscored the importance of the Land Back movement for environmental justice. Its tactic of shutting down critical infrastructures was the largest scale in Canada's recent history of Indigenous resistance at the time. The well-documented militarized attacks on Wet'suwet'en unceded territories creates a dilemma that should concern every activist. At the same time, the impressive organizing efforts that started from Unist'ot'en as a space of resistance provide lessons for every movement. The case of the CGL pipeline and Wet'suwet'en resistance puts us at the conjuncture of three movements: the issue of solidarity between labour, anti-capitalist Environmentalists and the Indigenous movement. In this dissertation, I strategically explore possibilities for building strong Indigenous-environmentalist-labour solidarity. Through extensive policy analysis of the critical infrastructure risk management approach and media analysis of the CIRG task force, I explore a hidden link between the security arm of one of the largest global investment corporations, KKR, RCMP, and TC Energy executives. The government's risk management approach has enabled such a link, which facilitates and encourages conversations between the involved actors. The state's claim to the so-called public/Canadian interest in pipelines is of utmost importance to this dissertation. The concept of Canadian interest works as a settler colonial and national ideology of governing; historically and presently, the concept creates an umbrella that includes the Canadian working class as it excludes Indigenous communities, along with the processes of reproducing nature and non-capitalist forms of economy that many radical environmentalists try to create through commons. A lack of land-based analysis of the situation of working-class people in Canadian labour has turned the labour movement into a more economistic version of trade unionism, one that does not actively oppose Canadian nationalism.

This studio-based dissertation project emerges from my engagement with the politics of representation of labour and visual culture. Rooted in my experience as a Mexican artist living in Canada, the project examines how Mexican labour is framed through photography, performance, and installation. These themes form the central focus of my research, which moves across Lands and disciplinary forms to investigate how systems of power shape the representation of Mexican workers and how irony can be used as a tool to question dominant narratives. The written component of this dissertation forms part of an interdisciplinary thesis that includes a series of exhibitions and performances carried out between 2021 and 2025 in today’s Mexico and Canada. The artworks, presented across artist-run centres in Ontario and as outdoor installations, use staged photographs, installations, participatory works, to examine labour, value, and exchange. These pieces were shown in the province of Ontario, Canada and the state of Coahuila, Mexico. My thesis engages with a range of theoretical frameworks to support and extend my artistic practice. Drawing from visual culture theory, performance studies, and participatory art discourse, I incorporate the work of theorists such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Derrida, and Claire Bishop, among others. As a whole, this dissertation considers how visual and performance-based practices can challenge representations of Mexican labour across Lands and reflect on the systems that shape the movement of people, goods, and images. The written component includes five chapters, followed by photographic documentation of the works and exhibitions produced during my doctoral studies. Together, the writing and the artworks propose a critical reflection on contemporary labour and visual politics.

The author explores the influence of human rights campaigns on Canadian labour leaders' views of immigration in the 1940s. From the start of the labour movement from 1870s to the 1930s, unionists were among the most vocal and energetic opponents to large-scale immigration to Canada. By the 1940s, labour leaders abandoned most of this opposition and especially their racist and exclusionary rhetoric. Goutor shows that human rights activists - many of whom came from within the labour movement itself in the new wave of organizing during the Second World War - played a key role in driving this change. In particular, human rights campaigns convinced labour leaders that racism and anti-immigrant sentiment were social forces that mostly benefited conservatives and would empower social and political forces hostile to the mass unions emerging during the 1940s. --From editors' introduction

The article reviews the book, "Résister et fleurir," by Jean-Félix Chénier and Yoakim Bélanger.

In collective bargaining, General Wage Increases (GWI) are most normally framed and implemented as percentages, with each eligible member seeing a salary rise of X% on top of pre-existing salary. While this approach is not remarkable where salary grids are in place and union members start at the same rate, it can have significant effects where starting salaries vary, as is common in the university sector. Under these conditions, percentage increases over time contribute to the widening of intra-member salary inequity, exacerbating structurally gendered and racialized inequities of the academic labour market. This paper explores the impact of a flat rate increase approach to salary bargaining. Beginning with the context of collective bargaining in British Columbia, it examines how percentage-based and flat-rate increases would impact real salaries of faculty members at Simon Fraser University in order to better understand how faculty associations and unions could use flat rate approaches to begin to counteract the impact of differential starting salaries on the career earnings of faculty members. The paper finds that flat rate increases could be an effective tool against pay inequity even where that inequity is driven by forces outside the university.

This article examines the role of alcohol, specifically rum, in labour relations in the early staples trades. In the 18th-century colonies that would later form Canada, labour was generally scarce and therefore expensive. Employers had to offer high wages as they struggled to recruit and retain workers, but because their enterprises were typically undercapitalized and vulnerable to market fluctuations, they could not afford to pay the salaries in full at the end of the contracted period. Focusing on the fishing servants of Newfoundland and the voyageurs of the North West Company, the article shows how wages were systematically clawed back through the workings of a version of "truck." Payment was deferred to the end of the season, and in the interim, employers would supply their men with goods at inflated prices, ensuring that many ended up indebted beyond the value of their nominal wages and had to sign on for a further term to pay off their debts. Rum was a crucial element in this system, its addictive qualities making it the ideal instrument for absorbing earnings. Many fishing masters and fur traders actively encouraged consumption; drinking on the job, then, was not only allowed but, in some cases, practically mandatory.

Since the establishment of the Canadian Air Line Flight Attendants’ Association (CALFAA) in 1948 and the Airline Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in 1984, flight attendant unions have advocated for duty time limits, sufficient rest periods, and fair wages. Recently, CUPE’s Airline Division has focused their efforts on unpaid ground time – a vital but overlooked element of flight attendant labor. Despite the union’s efforts, the persistence of unpaid ground time illustrates a trend of systemic prioritization of corporate profit over workplace equity. Through an overview of academic and grey literature (e.g. news articles, government documents), this review details the history of Canadian flight attendant unions before and after neoliberal reforms in the 1980s to trace trends in labor relations. We argue that increased governmental intervention and corporate exemptions in employee-employer labor relations prioritize the industry’s financial stability, forming structural barriers that dilute unions’ change-making capacity. Ultimately, we contextualize unpaid ground time within these trends – where systemic prioritization of corporate interests trump unions’ labor concerns, leaving attendants’ workplace inequity unaddressed.

We illustrate the exploitation in the relationship between Uber and its drivers by aligning their work with the characteristics of neo-villeiny. Two different legal developments in response to irregulation (or the lack of effective regulation) in similar institutional contexts emerge. While Uber drivers in the United Kingdom now have worker status, dysregulation (by which we mean regulation that exacerbates the problem it seeks to resolve) in Ontario has established neo-villeiny in law.

At the end of the twentieth century, as social democratic parties around the world struggled to produce a coherent response to the deindustrialization crisis, many pivoted towards progressive neoliberalism and Third Way social democracy. Almost everywhere, they turned their backs on the weakened trade union movement and embraced neoliberal assumptions about labour force flexibility and global competition. Shamefully, Third Way social democrats emphasized the moral dimension of poverty rather than its structural causes as they abandoned the old redistributive class politics of the Left. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with NDP politicians, senior economic policy advisors, and trade unionists, The Left in Power examines the response of the political Left in Ontario to the crisis that gripped the old ‘industrialized world.’ Steven High revisits the heartbreaking years of Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government—from their historic and unexpected 1990 victory, to their policy shifts that left working-class voters feeling betrayed, to their landslide defeat in 1995—to uncover what we can learn from one social democratic party’s mistakes about how to govern from the Left. --Publisher's description

Higher unionization rates don't just benefit workers, evidence suggests they also offer broad social benefits like a cleaner environment and better health. [Includes tables.] --Website description

Background: In western Canada, Manitoba is a critical hub for a large population of migrant workers. Usually with limited English or French language ability and possessing limited rights and protections under the current TFWP, Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are often tied to a single employer, leaving them vulnerable to employer abuse and the under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses due to the threat of deportation. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when my dissertation research began, the many cases seen among TFWs in Manitoba raises additional important public health questions on the health and wellbeing of migrant workers in Manitoba that I discuss in this dissertation. Methodology: In close collaboration with Migrante Manitoba (MB), I conducted a qualitative study to explore the precarious lives of migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I virtually interviewed 20 migrant workers who entered Canada through the TFWP, employed either as seasonal agricultural workers (n=7) or TFWs (n=13). Thirteen TFWs came from Philippines and seven farmworkers from Mexico (n=6) and Jamaica (n=1). Theoretical contribution: I developed the notion of transnational circuits of precarity to understand the multiple temporal-spatial layers of precarity that migrant workers encounter along their journeys to Manitoba. This multivalent concept is comprised of the following interconnected pieces: 1) a broader political economic “force-field” that compels the movement of human labour resources from the global South to the global North; 2) the rigid and regulated pathway put in place to ensure workers arrival at their work destinations; 3) the process of making “model minorities” through training programs that ensure the “smooth” transition of workers in their host country; and 4) the affective economy that is fueled by workers’ hopes, dreams, and desires. Altogether, these seemingly disparate processes articulate to produce complex temporal and spatial realities that shape the precarious trajectories of migrant workers. Such a paradigm shift away from the narrow temporal and spatial limits of a focus on “occupational health hazards” will be critical if workers are to realize any meaningful and substantive changes to their overall physical and mental well-being.

Wage-earner funds (löntagarfonder) in Sweden and the Fonds de solidarité ftq in Québec, both founded in 1983, are two of the most significant examples of collective workers' investment funds run by unions. This article situates the political context of their emergence in the neoliberal turn of social democracy in the early 1980s. In Sweden, the wage-earner funds were initially proposed as a radical anti-capitalist project in 1975, but the Social Democratic Party leadership developed the idea into a qualitatively distinct plan aimed at increasing investment capital available for private firms, as part of its new market-accommodating program. In Québec, the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (ftq) proposed the solidarity fund as it moved toward concertation and away from the democratic economic planning and autogestion (worker self-management) that it had championed in the 1970s. In both cases, pro-market forces within organized labour proposed the funds so that workers' capital could be used to stimulate private, for-profit investment, while recuperating elements of earlier labour radicalism that had sought to enhance workers' power over capital. Built with an institutional orientation toward the incorporation of workers into financial capitalism, these collective workers' funds represent a neoliberal shift within organized labour in Sweden and Québec, two places where labour is comparatively well organized.