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Since the onset of the Great Recession, anti-union conservatives have been hammering out an arguably bogus yet politically potent argument: collective bargaining with government workers is unaffordable as their wages, health benefits, and pensions are driving states into deficits. What is going on in Wisconsin and other states ought to be seen for what it is: an attempt to exploit the economic crisis to win an eminently political victory over organized labour and allied Democrats. Even in their weakened state, US unions can mobilize opposition to the anti-government, anti-labour agenda of a Tea Party-shaped Republican Party. It is this capability that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and other conservative Republicans are determined to undermine by taking away public-sector workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively.

The article reviews and comments on several books including "Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America," by Mark S. Anner, "The Struggle for Maize: Campesinos, Workers, and Transgenic Corn in the Mexican Country," by Elizabeth Fitting, and "Global Maya: Work and Ideology in Rural Guatemala," by Liliana R. Goldín.

The author, who was the farm workers' legal representative before the Supreme Court in the Fraser case, provides historical background and analyzes the court's decision, including its reliance on judicial deference to the legislature. Concludes that the court was preoccupied with the larger political battle rather than the constitutional merits of the case.

The objective of this report is to examine Aboriginal labour market performance in Canada from 2007 to 2011 using data from the Labour Force Survey, which excludes people living on-reserve or in the territories. This is performed by first providing an overview of how the recession affected the Canadian labour market, followed by a Canada-wide portrait of the Aboriginal labour market in 2011. The Aboriginal labour market performance from 2007 to 2011 is then compared to the rest of the labour force on a national level, before being broken down by province and main heritage group. Using this information, the report then discusses the implications of future labour market developments for Aboriginal Canadians and for the labour market policies and programs that support their labour market performance. [Prepared for the Métis National Council by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards.]

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there are differences in satisfaction with pay and benefits between Canadian-born and immigrant workers, and if differences exist, to examine the factors associated with immigrants' pay and benefits satisfaction. Using Statistics Canada's 2005 Workplace and Employee Survey (WES), immigrants are examined both as a single group, and in four cohorts based on the year of arrival. Results show significantly lower pay and benefits satisfaction for immigrant cohorts, with the exception of the pre-1965 cohort, compared to Canadian-born workers. Our findings also suggest that existing theories and conceptual models on pay and benefits satisfaction may not be appropriate when examining them as they relate to immigrants.

In a context of changing demographics and workplace transformations, a number of authors are concerned about the issues related to knowledge transmission in organizations. The vast experiential knowledge and diverse skills developed by workers to cope with the numerous situations encountered in the course of their work constitute part of the intangible assets vital to the sustainability of expertise, if not to the survival of the organization itself. Based on three case studies, this article describes the impact of precarious employment, flexible management practices and work intensification on knowledge transmission in real work situations. Possible avenues for research are proposed with a view to ensuring better support for the transmission of experiential knowledge in organizations.

The aim of this study is to conceptualize and empirically validate the "perceived fairness in the context of collective bargaining", which refers to employees' justice perceptions formed during the collective bargaining process. Using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and hierarchical regressions, we find support for discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity. Overall, the results show that this concept includes eight distinct dimensions, combining the two sources of (in)justice (employer and union) and the four types of justice perceptions: procedural, distributive, relational (interpersonal) and informational justice. Employees clearly distinguish eight justice dimensions, which have a differential effect on their attitudes: trust in the employer and satisfaction with the union. Adding to the structural model (Leventhal, 1980) and the process control model (Thibaut and Walker, 1975), this study highlights new bases of justice: usefulness and profitability (cost-benefits ratio).

The article reviews the book, "Through Feminist Eyes: Essays on Canadian Women's History," by Joan Sangster.

Discusses whether capital's mobility always gives it bargaining power over labour, how labour markets are socially regulated and embedded in specific places, how workers can sometimes shape the economic system, the consequences of migration for labour, and possibilities of alternative or noncapitalist labour geographies. Under "Defending Place: Worker Actions in Situ" (pp. 172-174), the authors describe the role of the Canadian Auto Workers in shaping economic development and production in southern Ontario in the 1990s-2000s.

Written from a neo-institutionalist standpoint, this paper focuses on the influence of employers' networks on the dissemination of managerial practices through the example of skill management in French companies. Previous studies suggest that employers' organizations can be perceived as social networks that affect Human Resources policies. Studying the development of skill management confirms the idea that this type of management becomes institutionalized under the influence of such networks. We evaluate this influence through the use of a quantitative methodology that shows the correlation between the dissemination of skill management techniques and the number of chief executives belonging to employers' networks in a given company. We use data that were collected from 3,000 companies by the French Ministry of Labour for the Reponse survey. Our approach led us to formulate a brief--but new--account of employers' networks in France. But mostly, it allowed us to measure the impact that belonging to these networks has on the implementation of skill management. Though almost three quarters of all 3,000 companies belong or are related to employers' networks, the reality behind this fact is complex and concerns a limited number of the companies considered. We then show that a connection with an employers' network -- especially with clubs of heads of human resources or with entrepreneurs' organizations -- is one of the reasons why a skill management-oriented human resources policy is adopted. The most influential employers' networks are therefore those that rely on voluntary subscription, the research of legitimacy and the exchange of tools and ideas.

The article reviews the book, "Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada," edited by Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson and Marian Bredin.

In Canada, many workers do not earn a living wage because of discrimination. Women work­ers and those who are racialized, immigrant, Aboriginal, living with disabil­ities or similarly disadvantaged are all segregated into low wage job ghettoes—their work systemically devalued. Governments and employers need to deliver more equitable compensation incomes for vulnerable workers. This paper explores how we can close discriminatory pay gaps, so that this basic human right — the right to work and to earn pay free of discrimination — is realized for Canada’s low-paid workers. --Website description

La théorie de l’action raisonnée et les modèles du roulement volontaire ont toujours considéré l’intention de quitter son emploi pour un autre employeur comme le meilleur prédicteur du roulement de personnel. Cependant, dans les faits, les employés disposent de deux autres options, à savoir progresser vers un autre emploi au sein de leur entreprise (roulement interne) ou encore rester dans leur emploi actuel pour une certaine période. Dans une perspective de prévention du roulement, la recherche aurait avantage à identifier des profils d’intentions en fonction de ces trois options. La présente étude vise à vérifier si les employés présentent des profils d’intentions différents et si leur satisfaction au travail, leurs comportements de recherche d’emploi et les taux de roulement volontaire et interne diffèrent selon ces profils.L’analyse des résultats recueillis auprès de 434 agents issus de trois centres d’appels suggère l’existence de quatre profils d’intentions à peu près équivalents en nombre : (1) rester dans l’emploi actuel (forte intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, faible intention de progresser à l’interne et faible intention de quitter à l’externe); (2) rester en attendant de progresser (forte intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, mais forte intention de progresser à l’interne et faible intention de quitter à l’externe); (3) priorité à la progression (faible intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, forte intention de progresser à l’interne et faible intention de quitter à l’externe); (4) priorité à la mobilité (faible intention de rester dans l’emploi actuel, forte intention de progresser à l’interne et de quitter à l’externe).Les résultats de l’étude montrent que ces quatre profils d’intentions présentent des niveaux de satisfaction au travail et des comportements de recherche d’emploi différents. De même, les taux de roulement volontaire du personnel et le taux de roulement interne, mesurés un an plus tard, diffèrent selon les profils d’intention// The theory of reasoned action and voluntary turnover models have always regarded the intention to terminate employment in order to go to another employer as the best predictor of turnover. However, in practice, employees have two other options: to move to another job within the same company (internal turnover) or stay in their current job for an indefinite period. From the perspective of turnover prevention, it would be advantageous if research would identify intention profiles according to these three options. This study aims to explore the different intention profiles of employees and whether job satisfaction, job-search behaviour and rates of voluntary and internal turnover differ according to these profiles. The analysis of results collected from 434 agents from three call centres suggests the existence of four intention profiles, which are about equal in number: (1) Stay in present job (strong intention to remain in current job, low intention to progress internally and low intention to leave for a job externally); (2) Stay whilst waiting to progress (strong intention to remain in current job, but strong intention to progress to a job internally and low intention to leave for a job externally); (3) Priority is to progress (low intention to stay in current job, strong intention to progress internally and low intention to leave for an external job); (4) Priority is to move on (low intention to stay in current job, strong intention to progress internally and leave for a job externally). The results of the study show that these four intention profiles reveal different levels of job satisfaction and job-search behaviour. Similarly, the rates of voluntary staff turnover and internal turnover vary according to the intention profile.

At the close of the American Revolution thousands of American Loyalists were forced into exile and made their way to British colonies beyond the United States. Most of the Loyalists landed in British North America, particularly the Maritimes. Along with the trauma and losses of the conflict, the Loyalists brought with them a way of doing things, an intense political history, and ideas concerning the imperial structure that framed their everyday lives. This dissertation is a study of the Loyalists. Specifically, it explores a prominent Loyalist and his journey from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia along with family members, servants, and labourers, including enslaved persons. A central objective of the dissertation is to illuminate the story of the enslaved and magnify their place in Nova Scotia’s eighteenth century colonial history narrative. The objective is addressed by adapting a holistic perspective that considers a single geography – the plantation. The holistic perspective, developed through an interdisciplinary methodology, explores the people, places and culture that formed the Loyalist plantation and were informed by it. The picture that emerges is one that puts into place the structure and organization of a Loyalist plantation in the late eighteenth century. This dissertation argues that an interdisciplinary approach is fundamental when exploring the subject of the plantation and its inhabitants in Nova Scotia. Through study of the slaveholder and the comparison of his plantation spaces, the dissertation argues for Loyalist continuity. Such continuity confirmed a slaveholding culture during the mass migration. Finally, this dissertation argues that the Loyalist period can be described as Nova Scotia’s Age of Slavery. The Loyalist migration represents an unprecedented arrival of enslaved persons to the province. Furthermore, the Loyalist migration represents the unprecedented arrival of a political and ideological framework that carried within it perceptions of race and seeds of discrimination that took root.

[T]his chapter identifies different forms of anti-poverty work being pursued in Canada today and examines the relations among poor people, poverty and labour unions. ...[The author] concentrates on examples of three main intersections of labour union and anti-poverty relations: union organizing of low-wage workers, poor workers' organizations, and multi-organization campaigns and coalitions. --Editors' introduction

The article reviews the book, "Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places," by Susan Chandler and Jill B. Jones.

There has been a significant expansion in Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) over the past ten years. The Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training (PPORLLFT), a sub program of the TFWP, has been leading this expansion. Drawing upon testimony given to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, this thesis examines the development and expansion of the program, since its inception in 2002, and shows that it is connected to the ongoing process of neoliberalisation in Canada. One significant example of this connection is the program's support for increases in two-step immigration streams that involve employer sponsorship for successful transition to permanent residency; this increase represents a privatisation of citizenship decisions. More than this, the neoliberal aspects of the PPORLLFT have increased inequality and the ability of employers to have a more disciplined workforce. This has decreased the ability of working people to have influence in their workplace and over economic policy more generally.

During the Second World War, the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Canada grew from a handful of members to more than a quarter-million and from political insignificance to a position of influence in the emergence of the welfare state. What was it about the "good war" that brought about this phenomenal growth? And how did this coming of age during the war affect the emerging CIO? Labour Goes to War analyzes the organizing strategies of the CIO during the war to show that both economic and cultural forces were behind its explosive growth. Labour shortages gave workers greater power in the workplace and increased their militancy. But workers’ patriotism, their ties to those on active service, memories of the First World War, and allegiance to the "people’s war" also contributed to the CIO’s growth -- and to what it claimed for workers. At the same time, union organizers and workers influenced one another as the war changed lives, opinions, expectations -- and notions of women’s rights. Drawing on an impressive array of archival material, Wendy Cuthbertson illuminates this complex wartime context. Her analysis shows how the war changed lives, opinions, and expectations. She also shows how the complex, often contradictory, motives of workers during this period left the Canadian labour movement with an ambivalent progressive/conservative legacy. --Publisher's description

Drawing on historical sources and interviews, this paper discusses several key forces that have shaped the development of the snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) fishery in Newfoundland. Once commonly discarded as a pest, snow crab has emerged as the economic foundation of many rural coastal communities since the cod moratorium of the early 1990s. While this fishery has brought unprecedented prosperity to some commercial fishers, it has also been prone to significant price fluctuations and the benefits accruing from it have not been widely shared. Accordingly, it has also been marked by frequent and often bitter conflicts between different crab fishing fleet sectors and between crab fishers, processing companies, and processing plant workers. These tensions reflect fundamentally different visions of how to sustain the fishery into the future and which priorities should decide who benefits most from the crab resource.

The literature of British Columbia and the study of labour therein have been largely ignored in academic criticism. I address this deficiency by foregrounding labour in the prose literature of British Columbia as well as the significance of British Columbia literature itself. My introductory literature review demarcates the field, situates the authors and texts I take up, and points to the general importance of such a study. Chapter two begins by analyzing the male-dominant labour narrative in Bertrand Sinclair’s The Inverted Pyramid and Roderick Haig-Brown’s On the Highest Hill and Timber—each focused on the theme of logging. Rather than an overarching argument, the section on Sinclair addresses many concepts, including Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields, a connection between environmental conservationism and loggers, and a cooperative economic model that opposes capitalism. Likewise, in Haig-Brown I focus on his treatment of danger in the logging industry, the oft-forgotten history of Canada’s national parks, the way that language connects people to nature, and the presence of homosocial and homosexual relationships in logging. My project shifts in chapter three from logging to orcharding and from novels to three works of creative non-fiction by Harold Rhenisch:Out of the Interior: The Lost Country, Tom Thomson’s Shack, and The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys through a Dark Century. Operating out of a site of tension and contradiction,Rhenisch resists what he sees as the dominant discourses in the Interior of British Columbia. In my fourth chapter I return to novels but move from a study of manual labour to white collar labour. Here the phrase “white collar” becomes an analytical lens to view labour stratification, exploitation, authorship, sexism, and agency in Douglas Coupland’s JPod, Robert Harlow’s Scann, and Jen Sookfong Lee’s the end of east. In chapter five, I conclude by using Daphne Marlatt’s novel Ana Historic as a way to reflect on the positions of chapters two through four. Marlatt’s criticism of male dominant conceptions of history and patriarchal systems of power illuminates the texts I have taken up and reveals possibilities for further analysis, debate, and discussion.