Your search

Recounting the cuts to freedom of association and the collective bargaining process across Canada since the 1980s, this study challenges the notion that Canada is an international champion of human rights. With documentation on the assaults to the rights of Canadian workers, this text considers the ways governments intervene to stop the collective bargaining process and evaluates topics such as the history of collective bargaining in Canada, the role of the International Labor Office, and the future hope of restoring rights and fairness to labor laws. --Publisher's description

From the 1870s until the Great Depression, immigration was often the question of the hour in Canada. Politicians, the media, and an array of interest groups viewed it as essential to nation building, developing the economy, and shaping Canada’s social and cultural character. One of the groups most determined to influence public debate and government policy on the issue was organized labour, and unionists were often relentless critics of immigrant recruitment. Guarding the Gates is the first detailed study of Canadian labour leaders’ approach to immigration, a key battleground in struggles between different political factions within the labour movement. --Publisher's description

The history of British Columbia’s economy in the twentieth century is inextricably bound to the development of the forest industry. In this comprehensive study, Gordon Hak approaches the forest industry from the perspectives of workers and employers, examining the two main sets of institutions that structured the relationship during the Fordist era: the companies and the unions. Drawing on theories of the labour process, Fordism, and discursive subjectivity, Hak relates daily routines of production and profit-making to broader forces of unionism, business ideology, ecological protest, technological change, and corporate concentration. The struggle of the small-business sector to survive in the face of corporate growth, the history of the industry on the Coast and in the Interior, the transformations in capital-labour relations during the period, government forest policy, and the forest industry’s encounter with the emerging environmental movement are all considered in this eloquent analysis. With its critical historical perspective, Capital and Labour in the British Columbia Forest Industry will be essential reading for anyone interested in the business, natural resource, political, social, and labour history of the province. --Publisher's description

This multidisciplinary volume brings together scholars and activists to examine expressions of racism in contemporary policy areas, including education, labour, immigration, media, and urban planning. While anti-racist struggles during the twentieth century were largely pitched against overt forms of racism (e.g., pogroms, genocide, segregation, apartheid, and 'ethnic cleansing'), it has become increasingly apparent that there are other, less visible, forms of racism. These subtler incarnations are of special interest to the contributors. The intent of Race, Racialization, and Antiracism in Canada and Beyond is to probe systemic forms of racism, as well as to suggest strategies for addressing them. The collection is organized by themes pertinent to political and social expressions of racism in Canada and the wider world, such as the state and its mediation of race, education and the perpetuation of racist marginalization, and the role of the media. The contributors argue that, in order to effectively combat racism, various methodological approaches are required, approaches that are reflective of the diversity of the world we seek to understand. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction / Audrey Kobayashi and Genevieve Fuji Johnson -- Negotiating school: marginalized students' participation in their education process / Carl E. James -- Multicultural education: teacher candidates speak out / Donatille Mujawamariya -- The sky didn't fall: organizing to combat racism in the workplace -- the case of the alliance for employment equity / Abigail B. Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi -- Employment conditions of racial minorities in Canada: how bad is the problem of discrimination? / Mohammed A. Al-Waqfi and Harish C. Jain -- Immigrant women's activism: the past thirty-five years / Tania Das Gupta -- Critical discourse analysis: a powerful but flawed tool? / Frances Henry and Carol Tator -- Special plus and special negative: the conflict between perceptions and applications of 'special status' in Canada / Howard Ramos -- Who belongs? Expoloring race and racialization in Canada / Leanne Taylor, Carl E. James, and Roger Saul -- The racialization of space: producng surrey / Gurpreet Singh Johal -- Raceless states / David Theo Goldberg -- Multi-identifications and transformations: reaching beyond racial and ethnic reductionisms / Philomena Essed.

Deindustrialization is not simply an economic process; it is also a social and cultural phenomenon. The rusting detritus of our industrial past — the wrecked halls of factories, abandoned machinery too large to remove, and now useless infrastructures — has for decades been a part of the North American landscape. Through a unique blend of oral history, photographs, and interpretive essays, [this book] investigates this fascinating terrain and the phenomenon of its loss and rediscovery. --Publisher's description. Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-163) and index. "Oral history interviews cited": p. 164. Contents: Industrial demolition and the meaning of economic change in North America -- "Take only pictures and leave only footprints": urban exploration and the aesthetics of deindustrialization -- From cradle to grave: the politics of memory in Youngstown, Ohio -- Out of place: the plant shutdown stories of Sturgeon Falls (Ontario) paperworkers -- Gabriel's Detroit -- Deindustrial fragments -- King coal : the coal counties of West Virginia -- A vanishing landmark: Allied Paper in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Makes it easier to understand the complex and sometimes controversial field of industrial relations. How? Its unique process-oriented approach gives you a clear road map by illustrating how and why unions are formed, and introduces you to the Canadian industrial relations system and the forces that shape it. --Publisher's description

An illuminating study of how gender and work intersect among the rural clergy. For rural clergy, the lines between private life and professional life can blur. Their offices are often in their homes, parishioners are also neighbours, and professional duties are intertwined with emotional caregiving and volunteer activity. In a society that defines work as paid, public, and intellectual the ambiguity inherent in the life of the rural clergy poses unique challenges. Muriel Mellow considers how men and women in this occupational group conceptualize "work" in the context of their unique circumstances and shows how their experience raises questions for feminist theories of work. Based on interviews with forty rural Protestant clergy, Mellow argues that male and female clergy challenge gendered definitions of work by focusing on obligation, context, visibility, and time. She also considers how clergy's work is shaped by the rural setting, arguing that we must consider how work is "placed" as well as gendered. --Publisher's description

From the dock workers of Saint John in 1812 to teenage "crews" at McDonald's today, Canada's trade union movement has a long, exciting history. Working People tells the story of the men and women in the labour movement in Canada and their struggle for security, dignity, and influence in our society. Desmond Morton highlights the great events of labour history - the 1902 meeting that enabled international unions to dominate Canadian unionism for seventy years, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and an obscure 1944 order-in-council that became the labour's charter of rights and freedoms. He describes the romantic idealism of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and looks at "new model" unions that used their members' dues and savings to fight powerful employers. Working People explores the clash between idealists, who fought for socialism, industrial democracy, and equality for women and men, and the realists who wrestled with the human realities of self-interest, prejudice, and fear. Morton tells us about Canadians who deserve to be better known - Phillips Thompson, Helena Gutteridge, Lynn Williams, Huguette Plamondon, Mabel Marlowe, Madeleine Parent, and a hundred others whose struggle to reconcile idealism and reality shaped Canada more than they could ever know. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Working people -- Getting organized -- International ideas -- Political movement -- Labour reformers -- Hinterland labour -- Trades and labour -- Gompers's shadow -- Business, labour, and governments -- Labour radicals -- Labour and the first World War -- Western revolt -- Unroaring twenties -- Surviving the depression -- Industrial unionism -- Fighting Hitler and management -- "People coming into their own" -- No falling back -- Struggle for allegiance -- Merger movement -- Times of frustration -- Prosperity and discontent -- Public Interest, Public Service -- Justice and nationalism -- Quebec and the common front -- Scapegoat for inflation -- Recession and hard times -- Levelling the playing field -- Struggling to the millennium -- Millennial achievements -- Graphs: Changes in the labour movement.

Confrontation, Struggle and Transformation is the story of working women and men in the St. Catharines area from the mid-1800s to the present. The study explores the labour movement's fight to survive and thrive in the Niagara region. Thanks to extensive quotations from interviews, archival sources and local newspapers, the story unfolds, in part, through the voices of the people themselves: workers who fought for unions, community members who supported them and employers who opposed them. --Publisher's description

The Canadian labour movement has undergone several fundamental changes in response to demands for greater inclusion and representation by women, visible and sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Equity, Diversity, and Canadian Labour explores the specific challenges put to outmoded conceptions of labour, charting the effort made towards establishing a more inclusive vision of labour in Canada. The study concludes that the Canadian labour movement has seen a fair amount of progress in this regard, though it still faces persistent impediments to equity and suffers from an uneven responsiveness within and across diversity issues. This collection of original essays brings together contributors from a variety of backgrounds womens studies, political science, sociology, industrial relations, and the labour movement itself. They provide detailed analyses of significant changes in union policies, practices, and cultures as viewed through different disciplinary lenses. With reference to gender, race, disability, and sexuality, the volume assesses the status of labour diversity in Canada and suggests what still needs to be done to advance the equity project. --Publisher's description. --Publisher's description. Contents: Looking back: A brief history of everything / Julie White -- Bargaining against the past: Fair pay, union practice, and the gender pay gap / Anne Forrest -- Union response to pay equity: A cautionary tale / Judy Haiven -- Labour's collective bargaining records on women's and family issues / Karen Bentham -- We are family: Labour responds to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers / Gerald Hunt and Jonathan Eaton -- Broadening the labour movement's disability agenda / David Rayside and Fraser Valentine -- Racism and the labour movement / Tania Das Gupta -- Equity, diversity, and Canadian labour: A comparative perspective / David Rayside. Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-282).

[D]escribes the labour and employment law governing employees of Parliament, employees of government agencies, members of the RCMP, and most direct employees of the government (excluding members of the Canadian armed forces, judges, and employees of Crown corporations). Specifically, the book deals with the Public Service Labour Relations Act and the Public Service Employment Act. It also provides the leading cases and, where appropriate, a representative sample of decisions to explain or provide examples of particular points. The legal regime of the federal public service has undergone significant change in the past three years, and no other book addresses these significant changes. Part I of this book provides an overview of federal public service labour and employment law. Part II considers the normal labour law topics as they apply to direct employees of the government and employees of government agencies. Essentially, Part II of this book is about Part I of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Part III concerns the terms and conditions of employment for both unionized and non-unionized employees — essentially, Part II of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Part IV involves the legal regulation of the employment relationship in the federal public service — namely, the process for appointment to and within the federal public service. Part V of considers Crown servants — specifically RCMP members and parliamentary employees — who are not considered federal public servants for the purposes of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Part VI considers the legal regulation of superannuation (pensions) for Crown servants and the role that courts play in the regulation of federal public service labour and employment law. --Publisher's description

This interdisciplinary volume offers a powerful critique of how social structures and relations as well as ideologies shape workplaces, labour markets, and households in contemporary Canada. Contributors dissect recent transformations in work and expose the uncertainty, insecurity, and instability that increasingly characterize both paid and unpaid work. Using a progressive approach to political economy, contributors propose alternative policies and practices that might secure more decent livelihoods for workers and their families. -- Publisher's description

[The author] reports on his research into the failure of Canadian governments to protect and promote the collective bargaining rights of both unionized and non-unionized workers in this country. Far from honouring their solemn commitments to the UN’s International Labour Organization, our governments have blatantly and repeatedly violated them. Their many strike-breaking actions and arbitrarily imposed contract settlements have been condemned by the ILO, which has cited Canada as one of the world’s worst violators of basic labour rights. In exposing the appalling anti-labour record of our federal and provincial governments, Adams includes his exchange of correspondence with Canada’s labour ministries on their dismal labour-law policies. --Publisher's summary Contents: Why collective bargaining is a human right -- Industrial democracy achieved in Europe, thwarted in Canada -- Exclusive-agent certification, quagmire on the road to industrial democracy? -- Alternatives to exclusive-agent certification -- Why unions rely on certification -- How Canadian practice legitimizes employer opposition in collective bargaining -- Constitutional, non-statutory collective representation: the SASSEA and McMaster examples -- Recent developments and their implications for labour policy -- What our governments ought to be doing -- What our governments are actually doing --The union response -- The NUPGE/UFCW campaign. Includes bibliographical references (pages 147-152);

How the unaccounted costs of neo-liberal policies fall on Canadian women. Using a feminist political economy approach, contributors document the impact of current socio-economic policies on states, markets, households, and communities. Relying on impressive empirical research, they argue that women bear the costs of and responsibility for care-giving and show that the theoretical framework provided by feminist analyses of social reproduction not only corrects the gender-blindness of most economic theories but suggests an alternative that places care-giving at its centre. In this illuminating study, they challenge feminist scholars to re-engage with materialism and political economy to engage with feminism. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: Social Reproduction and Feminist Political Economy / Kate Bezanson and Meg Luxton (pages 3-10) -- Feminist Political Economy in Canada and the Politics of Social Reproduction / Meg Luxton (pages 11-44) -- Social Reproduction and Canadian Federalism / Barbara Cameron (pages 45-74) -- Whose Social Reproduction? Transnational Motherhood and Challenges to Feminist Political Economy / Sedef Arat-Koç (pages 75-92) -- Bargaining for Collective Responsibility for Social Reproduction / Alice De Wolff (pages 93-116) -- Privatization: A Strategy for Eliminating Pay Equity in Health Care / Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Marcy Cohen (pages 117-144) -- Crisis Tendencies in Social Reproduction: The Case of Ontario’s Early Years Plan / Leah F. Vosko (pages 145-172) -- The Neo-liberal State and Social Reproduction: Gender and Household Insecurity in the Late 1990s / Kate Bezanson (pages 173-214) -- Someone to Watch over You: Gender, Class, and Social Reproduction / Susan Braedley (pages 215-230) -- Motherhood as a Class Act: The Many Ways in Which “Intensive Mothering” Is Entangled with Social Class / Bonnie Fox (pages 231-262) -- Friends, Neighbours, and Community: A Case Study of the Role of Informal Caregiving in Social Reproduction / Meg Luxton (pages 263-92 ).

In the 1980s there were few midwives in Canada and their practice was neither legal nor officially recognized. Ontario midwives and their supporters pushed to integrate midwifery into provincial health care systems and by 1993 had established an internationally renowned model. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault analyses the struggle to professionalize midwifery in the context of the negotiations between women, as both consumers and providers of health care, and the state. Push! offers a historical account of the forces behind the integration of midwifery in Ontario, including public interest in funding midwifery services and the impact of political lobbying. Bourgeault also explores the specific features of Ontario's respected model, including the use of independent practitioners, funding for a self-regulatory college, a university-based education program, and the provision of midwifery care in both home and hospital settings. --Publisher's description

During the night of April 10, 1734, Montréal burned. Marie-Joseph Angélique, a twenty-nine-year-old slave, was arrested, tried, and found guilty of starting the blaze that consumed forty-six buildings. Suspecting that she had not acted alone and angered that she had maintained her innocence, Angélique's condemners tortured her after the trial. She confessed but named no accomplices. Before Angélique was hanged, she was paraded through the city. Afterward, her corpse was burned. Angélique, who had been born in Portugal, faded into the shadows of Canadian history, vaguely remembered as the alleged arsonist behind an early catastrophic fire. The result of fifteen years of research, [this book] vividly tells the story of this strong-willed woman. Afua Cooper draws on extensive trial records that offer, in Angélique's own words, a detailed portrait of her life and a sense of what slavery was like in Canada at the time. Predating other first-person accounts by more than forty years, these records constitute what is arguably the oldest slave narrative in the New World. Cooper sheds new light on the largely misunderstood or ignored history of slavery in Canada. She refutes the myth that Canada was a haven at the end of the Underground Railroad. Cooper also provides a context for Canada in the larger picture of transatlantic slavery while re-creating the tragic life of one woman who refused to accept bondage. --Publisher's description

How are national and international labour laws responding to the challenge of globalization as it re-shapes the workplaces of the world? This collection of essays by leading legal scholars and lawyers from Europe and the Americas was first published in 2006. It addresses the implications of globalization for the legal regulation of the workplace. It examines the role of international labour standards and the contribution of the International Labour Organization, and assesses the success of the European experiment with continental employment standards. It explores the prospects for hemispheric co-operation on labour standards in the Americas, and deals with the impact of international labour standards on the rights of women and migrant workers. As the nature and organization of work around the world is being decisively transformed, new regional and international institutions are emerging that may provide the platform for new labour standards, and for protecting existing ones. --Publisher's description

As themes in film studies literature, work and the working class have long occupied a peripheral place in the evaluation of Canadian cinema, often set aside in the critical literature for the sake of a unifying narrative that assumes a division between Québécois and English Canada's film production, a social-realist documentary aesthetic, and what might be called a 'younger brother' relationship with the United States. In Working on Screen, contributors examine representations of socio-economic class across the spectrum of Canadian film, video, and television, covering a wide range of class-related topics and dealing with them as they intersect with history, political activism, globalization, feminism, queer rights, masculinity, regional marginalization, cinematic realism, and Canadian nationalism. Of concern in this collection are the daily lives and struggles of working people and the ways in which the representation of the experience of class in film fosters or marginalizes a progressive engagement with history, politics, and societies around the world. Working on Screen thus expands the scholarly debates on the concept of national cinema and builds on the rich, formative efforts of Canadian cultural criticism that held dear the need for cultural autonomy. -- Publisher's description

This book focuses on the efforts and progress of union revitalization and organizing, and documents the renewal initiatives undertaken by unions in Canada. Unions, separately or in coalition with other unions or social groups, have begun to re-examine the basis of their organization and activity in the face of a harsher economic and political climate. Signs of union renewal include increased rank-and-file participation in the life of the union, increased democratic decision-making, evidence of new horizontal union structures, the development of a worker-centred societal vision, and a new emphasis on organizing both internally and externally. Paths to Union Renewal addresses a subject of considerable political and social importance about which there have been a number of debates. A key impetus for this re-examination has originated in the United States where decades-long union decline has engendered new ideas adopted by a number of unions and the national central labour body the AFL-CIO. This in turn has led to debates on renewal strategies in Western Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries from Britain to Australia. Despite this, little detailed research of the processes, structures, and implications of union renewal has been undertaken across Canada. Paths to Union Renewal fills this gap by critically examining union renewal in a variety of unions, providing a basis for informed discussion and debate on the role and place of trade unions in contemporary society. --Publisher's description. Contents: Pt. 1: Union Renewal and the State of Unions in Canada.  Union Renewal and Organizational Change: A Review of the Literature / Pradeep Kumar and Christopher Schenk -- Rowing Against the Tide: The Struggle to Raise Union Density in a Hostile Environment / Andrew Jackson -- Innovation in Canadian Unions: Patterns, Causes and Consequences / Pradeep Kumar and Gregor Murray -- Women are Key to Union Renewal: Lessons from the Canadian Labour Movement / Charlotte Yates -- Globalization and Union Renewal: Perspectives from the Quebec Labour Movement / Christian Lévesque and Gregor Murray. Pt. 2: Case Studies on Union Renewal. The BCGEU [British Columbia Government and Service Employees Union]: The Road to Renewal / Gary Steeves -- Union Renewal and the CUPE / Jane Stinson and Morna Ballantyne -- Union Resistance and Union Renewal in the CAW / David Robertson and Bill Murningham -- Rank-and-File Involvement in Policy-Making at the CEP / Keith R. Newman -- Mobilizing Young People: A Case Study of UFCW Canada Youth Programs and Initiatives / Anna Liu and Christopher O'Halloran -- Renewal from Different Directions: The Case of UNITE-HERE Local 75 / Steve Tufts -- Building Capacity for Global Action Steelworkers' Humanity Fund / Judith Marshall and Jorge Garcia-Orgales. Pt. 3: Unions and Community: Campaigns and Organizing. Community Unionism and Labour Movement Renewal: Organizing for Fair Employment / Cynthia J. Cranford, Mary Gellatly, Deena Ladd, and Leah F. Vosko -- The Workers' Organizing and REsource Centre in Winnipeg / Geoff Bickerton and Catherine Stearns -- A Community Coalition in Defense of Public Medicare/ Natalie Mehra -- Organizing Call Centres: The Steelworkers' Experience / Julie Guard, Jorge Garcia-Orgales, Mercedes Steedman,a nd D'Arcy Martin. Pt. 4: Leadership Development and Education. Increasing Inter-Union Co-ooperation and Co-ordination: The BC Federation of Labour Organizing Institute / John Weir -- Union Education, Union Leadership and Union Renewal: the Role of PEL / Johanna Weststar.