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The shift to telework has significantly transformed traditional work environments, introducing new dynamics in employee relationships and organizational structures. Telework is now mainstream, but it also presents new challenges for employee engagement. To address these challenges, effective management requires processes aimed at improving employees’ sense of engagement. This study compares the effects of three variables, organizational fairness, trust in/by managers, and trust in/by colleagues, on teleworkers’ psychological engagement in Canada and France. Based on a PLS-SEM analysis on two samples of 196 participants in France and 454 in Canada, findings show that organizational fairness is a key common antecedent of teleworkers' engagement in both countries. They also revealed strong cultural differences: trust in and by managers is crucial in Canada, while trust in and by colleagues is significant in France.

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.

An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

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.

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.

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.

How have workplaces in Quebec's unionized private sector adapted to recent labour shortages? Based on original qualitative and quantitative data, we show that these shortages have affected collective bargaining, collective agreements, work organization, working conditions and union life. As a result, workplace actors have had to be pragmatic in adjusting their practices in response to disruptions caused by labour shortages. The originality of our research lies in its broad perspective on the consequences of labour market tension for labour relations, thus highlighting unexplored and unprecedented effects, both positive and negative on employers, workers and unions.

How have workplaces in Quebec's unionized private sector adapted to recent labour shortages? Based on original qualitative and quantitative data, we show that these shortages have affected collective bargaining, collective agreements, work organization, working conditions and union life. As a result, workplace actors have had to be pragmatic in adjusting their practices in response to disruptions caused by labour shortages. The originality of our research lies in its broad perspective on the consequences of labour market tension for labour relations, thus highlighting unexplored and unprecedented effects, both positive and negative, on employers, workers and unions.

An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

In France, 7.5% of the total number of 15-64 year-olds recognized as disabled are in employment, i.e. 39%, compared with 68% for these age groups as a whole: this means that a vulnerable population remains a long way from employment. In contrast to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which seeks to eliminate segregation in employment and promote an open labor market, work-based support establishments and services (ESAT) aim to play a key role in helping people with disabilities access employment. They offer professional activity as well as medical, social and educational support in a protected environment. Our research does not assume that ESAT are models of inclusive organization but gives a voice to the workers and staff of these structures specialized in supporting work activity. If the aim of autonomy support is to create an enabling environment, according to the capabilities approach, our problem is to demonstrate the extent to which support in a situation of vulnerability encourages the development of autonomy with the aim of inclusion in the workplace. The analysis of testimonials from 70 people from 12 volunteer ESATs (54 hours of face-to-face interviews) identifies the demands and needs related to this support. The characteristics of the population surveyed are representative of those of the entire population of the ESATs studied and the interviews cover all the ESATs in the study in a balanced manner. The results inspire inclusive management practices in the workplace, based on mutual understanding that empowers people. They renew the concept of developing autonomy, defined not as a goal of self-sufficiency, but as a process of overcoming vulnerability through a supportive relationship. Care, a relationship of kindness and high standards, central to this approach, becomes the way to deal with vulnerability.

This article reviews the book, "Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918" by Zhongping Chen.

Using post-structural theories, this paper explores the public discourses of several Canadian teacher unions and grassroots teacher activist groups around the issue of school reopening plans in Canada amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to highlight the ways in which these two forces of teacher activism can influence and impress upon each other to create a different possible future for collective resistance to neoliberalism in education – an assemblage of union and grassroots activism intra-acting, shaping, and impressing upon one another.