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The article reviews the book, "A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice," by Jenny Carson.

This article compares the union careers of the US Teamsters Union leader James R. Hoffa and the head of the Canadian Seafarers International Union (siu), Hal Banks. It focuses on the charges of union corruption that swirled around both men in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The article uses that comparison to consider the predominant understanding of union corruption in the United States, which posits a kind of American exceptionalism in regard to this issue. The similarities and differences between the cases of Hoffa and Banks provide a new consideration of the history of union corruption in Canada. This comparison also offers a new perspective on the divergence between unionization rates in the United States and Canada since 1964.

Le notariat connait depuis les années 2000 un phénomène de modernisation qui se traduit par la digitalisation de nombreuses prestations. Cette contribution vise à montrer comment deux technologies digitales modifient les activités historiques de la profession notariale. L’implémentation de ces technologies cristallise des controverses qui concernent d’une part la légitimité du notariat, et d’autre part l’évolution de l’identité professionnelle du notaire. Cette analyse de la digitalisation de la profession permet d’interroger le repositionnement institutionnel largement animé par la fédération professionnelle, qui vise à doter les notaires d’une place centrale dans l’organigramme juridique belge, en même temps que de rompre avec l’image archaïque de la profession.

The article reviews the book, "Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs," by Leah F. Vosko et al.

What happened to Laurentian University? How did a publicly funded Ontario university go to the edge of bankruptcy without anyone intervening before the crisis became inescapable? And if it was a crisis, why didn’t the provincial government intervene? What are we to think of a “restructuring” that eliminates the disciplines that define the institution it claims to be saving?

According to many pundits, former Ontario Premier Bill Davis deserves credit for having “ushered in Ontario’s modern era” — one marked by underfunded hospitals, schools in disrepair, and enormous restrictions on the rights of workers to organize. In the end, Davis did what he had to to remain in power and maintain the status quo as best he could. But that status quo always required keeping the working class down.

It is imperative that the impetus created by the public response to the sharing of allegations of sexual harassment, abuse, and discrimination within the craft brewing industry builds into an enduring movement that extends beyond the current moment. The possibility for a necessary shift away from a toxic workplace culture comes from the increased support and solidarity that a labour organization or union can provide.

Documents the upheaval inside the Labor-Progressive Party, Canada's major Communist organization, that erupted at its 6th national convention in April 1957, which resulted in an exodus of members from the party. Originally an undergraduate essay, the author's research is based on interviews conducted in 1976-77 with Labor-Progressive Party members who were at the convention.

Between April, 2019 and March, 2020, the Canada Council for the Arts gave a total of $263-million in grants to 2,138 organizations, 456 groups and 3,258 artists. Stand-up, sketch and improv comedians received none of this funding – unless they were able to qualify under another category. That, the Canadian comedy community points out, is no laughing matter. Canadian comedians argue that the Canada Council does not recognize comedy as an art form. The council, in turn, states that those working in comedy can indeed apply for grants. Turns out both points are true – and that’s where the crux of the issue lies.

A crucial step forward is for the Ontario government to urgently recall the legislature and legislate paid sick days by passing Bill 239. Every day longer they wait, racialized and low-income workers are paying the price with their health — and too often with their lives, Dr. Amanpreet Brar and Carolina Jimenez write.

Star finds grocery stores and even the Ontario government’s own LCBO do not provide paid sick days to most front-line workers, who tend to work part-time.

This study aims to examine how gendered precariousness is spatially patterned across Canada's landscape using Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey. We compare gender differences in distinct precarious forms of employment (PFEs) across a range of geographies, including national, provincial, census metropolitan areas, and urban/rural areas. We find that distinct spatial patterns and degree of gendered precariousness were evident within and across geographic spaces. Logit models further confirmed the robustness of gender differences in PFEs across space, revealing that PFEs were associated with gender, immigration status, age, type of economic family, education, income, and occupation. This study has implications for further understanding the causal factors at play in producing these uneven economic geographies. In terms of policy recommendations, this study calls for greater gender equity in social safety net policies, especially in the wake of the labor market shocks brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Precarious faculty, once used by higher education institutions as auxiliary labour, now dominate post-secondary campuses. With as much as half of post-secondary institutions’ courses now taught by contract academic faculty, post-secondary institutions have systematically come to rely on hiring precarious contract faculty for their respective departmental teaching capacity. As an emerging and significant trend in higher education, this study aims to examine the precarious faculty experience through autoethnographic methods that reflects on my personal experience as a precarious faculty member working at four different higher education institutions in British Columbia from 2016-2018: the Private Online University, City College, the Teaching University, and the Institute. Using Tierney’s (1997) Organizational Culture Theory, coupled with theories of organizational socialization and the role of models and mentorship, I compare my personal experiences of being hired and onboarded at the four different institutions in which I worked as a precarious faculty member. I focus on three themes: the faculty interview process, being evaluated as a precarious faculty member, and resources that I was given (or not). A literature review precedes each personal autoethnographic account; I then proceed to compare and contrast my personal experiences with that of the literature as a way to examine the ways in which my experiences working as a precarious faculty member are consistent with, and divergent from the literature. To conclude, I suggest that there is a lack of standard processes and practices when it comes to hiring precarious faculty. Additionally, I suggest that one’s career stage plays a significant role during hiring. I also suggest that good student evaluations of teaching lead to reappointment for precarious faculty. In terms of performance evaluations, I stress the importance of communication and suggest that precarious faculty are evaluated (sometimes) both formally, and informally. Finally, in terms of resources, I echo the literature that office space is a place of power, and that professional development is a two-way street. I conclude that more personal stories—like mine—are required to better understand what it’s like to be a precarious faculty member in higher education.

Over the last decade, firms positioning themselves as craft or artisanal have proliferated in the urban environments of the Global North. Selling themselves as community hubs, friendly neighbours, anticorporate crusaders, and environmental stewards, craft industries – craft breweries, artisanal bakeries, heritage clothing manufacturers, and the like – have effectively insulated themselves from critique. Hidden beneath this veneer, however, are the accounts of countless workers detailing experiences of harassment, overwork, low pay, and discrimination. Motivated by the methodological orientation of workers’ inquiry, this article recounts attitudes and experiences offered by craftworkers and craftspeople about their working conditions, motivations, and attempts to organize in craft industries, particularly craft brewing. Worker testimony reveals a profound disconnect between the optimistic industrial mythologies offered up by craft discourse and the rigid hierarchies, unequal division of labour, and toxic cultures many observed in their workplaces. Contrary to the pervasive artisanal allure that motivates many workers to seek out work in craft brewing and similar industries, the research presented here also suggests new levels of working-class consciousness and solidarity emerging in these industries and profiles attempts by craft brewery workers to organize their workplaces and fight to improve conditions.

This paper examines the evolution of three key institutional systems—CAW/UNIFOR unions, General Motors Canada, and the Canadian federal State—and their impact on workplace relations in Oshawa over a 25-year period. It places particular focus on union policies and shows that important opportunities for workplace transition were lost as local and national leaders avoided critical economic issues and failed to seriously contend with changing objective conditions.

La reconnaissance au travail est un des facteurs essentiels de la qualité de vie au travail. Alors que la littérature a mis en évidence la dégradation des conditions de travail à l’hôpital cet article a pour objectif d’étudier les relations entre les conditions de travail et la perception des pratiques de reconnaissance au travail. Nous adoptons l’approche de la reconnaissance en 4 dimensions (existentielle, de la pratique de travail, de l’investissement au travail et des résultats du travail) définie par Brun et Dugas (2005) pour identifier les dimensions qui sont les plus impactées par la transformation des conditions de travail. Nous avons interrogé en entretiens semi-directifs 16 personnels tirés au sort et 5 experts dans un centre hospitalier universitaire français au cours de l’année 2018. Les résultats montrent que la plupart des catégories de personnel regrettent le manque de moyens matériels et humains mis à disposition par la direction pour réaliser un travail de qualité. Ce manque de moyens est perçu comme un manque de reconnaissance de la qualité du travail de la part de la direction de l’établissement. En raison du manque d’effectif, de nombreux personnels accroissent leur investissement pour malgré tout produire des soins de qualité au patient, ils regrettent alors une non reconnaissance de leur investissement au travail. Seules les catégories de personnel les moins qualifiées expriment des attentes de reconnaissance existentielle.

The article reviews the book, " Histoire du Taxi à Montréal : Des taxis jaunes à UberX," by Jean-Philippe Warren.

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les facteurs influençant l’effectivité d’un accord-cadre international (ACI). L’effectivité est analysée à l’aune de la mise en conformité des pratiques locales de gestion du travail avec les engagements pris dans l’ACI. Considérant la négociation comme un processus, composé de trois phases (avant-négociation, négociation stricto sensu, après-négociation) et ancré dans un contexte, nous élaborons un modèle d’analyse inspiré des études de processus stratégiques (process studies). Ce modèle met en lumière l’influence des positionnements, des comportements et des interactions des protagonistes de la négociation et de l’application d’un ACI sur son effectivité. Nous détaillons les processus de négociation de quatre ACI, conclus au cours des années 2010, par deux firmes multinationales (FMN) françaises et deux fédérations syndicales internationales (FSI). Ces ACI portent sur des thématiques de gestion du travail (santé et sécurité au travail, égalité femmes-hommes, emploi durable). Cette recherche repose sur une analyse de documents, d’observations et de 38 entretiens, menés auprès de syndicalistes internationaux, européens, nationaux, locaux et de membres des directions générales (DG) de ces FMN. Elle porte une attention particulière à la phase de l’avant-négociation et met en exergue les interactions entre les acteurs managériaux et syndicaux, tout au long du processus de négociation. Nous montrons que le positionnement de la DG de la FMN (« social » ou « managérial ») est un facteur décisif du déroulement de la négociation d’un ACI, de son résultat (accord « substantif ») et de son effectivité. Le positionnement « qualitatif » de la FSI peut être un élément essentiel du déroulement de la négociation (par le choix de la thématique de l’ACI) et de son résultat (dispositions portant sur des sujets sensibles). Enfin, la mobilisation des syndicats locaux, soutenue par la FSI, est essentielle à l’effectivité d’un ACI. Nous révélons des processus d’apprentissage et des particularités des ACI et de la NCI.

The Canadian population is aging, bringing with it an increasing number of social and economic challenges. With the aging of the workforce, the reconceptualization of older workers and retirement, the increasing share of women in the labour force, the elimination of mandatory retirement, the fluctuating economy, and the changes to the pension system, barriers to employment for older workers, such as ageism, need to be of central concern. Ageism at Work examines the subjective experiences of older workers in Canada and explores how they negotiate ageism and manage their interactions in the employment setting. Further, this book looks at the intersection between age and gender and the pervasiveness of gendered ageism in the labour market. Finally, this book examines employers' attitudes toward older workers quantitatively, while also exploring their firsthand accounts about them through qualitative inquiry. Understanding how ageism plays out in the labour market, how it intersects with sexism, and its consequences on a personal level are critical to moving the discussion on discrimination and human rights forward in Canada. --Publisher's description

De 2016 à 2019, les comités unitaires sur le travail étudiant (CUTE) ont mené une lutte contre l'exploitation du travail étudiant et pour la rémunération des stages. La mobilisation a touché 60 000 étudiant·e·s et, pour une première fois dans l'histoire du mouvement étudiant québécois, des milliers de stagiaires se sont mis·e·s en grève. Préfacée par George Caffentzis et Silvia Federici, cette anthologie retrace les temps forts d'une lutte étudiante et féministe singulière pour un salaire étudiant. Cet ouvrage s'apparente à une autopsie d'une mobilisation. Celle de la grève des stages lancée au Québec en 2016 et qui aura culminé en 2019 par l'obtention de la création de bourses dans seize programmes liés aux domaines de l'éducation, de la santé et des services sociaux, au sein des écoles de formation professionnelle, des cégeps et des universités. Une victoire sans précédent pour le mouvement étudiant depuis une quarantaine d'années. Or, pour les militantes et les militants qui ont vécu cette lutte de l'intérieur, les revendications dépassaient la simple rémunération des stages. Dans une perspective féministe, on invitait plutôt les grévistes à redéfinir le mouvement étudiant lui-même englué dans des rapports de pouvoir, à reconnaitre les études comme une forme de travail, à décentraliser les mouvements contestataires, à l'éclatement des méthodes du mouvement étudiant traditionnel. C'est que les stages ne se piquettent pas comme des cours. C'est que les stages reproduisent une forme d'aliénation propre au monde salarié, dans des domaines majoritairement constitués de femmes, sauf qu'il s'agit d'un travail gratuit, invisible. À travers les différents chapitres constitués de textes, de tracts et d'affiches qui proviennent des agissantes et agissants des Comités unitaires pour le travail étudiant (CUTE), on replonge dans la toute première grève des stages du Québec. De la fondation des CUTE aux tentatives de ralliement des autres branches de la gauche étudiante, en passant par l'organisation d'une grève qui s'articule de manière régionale et non nationale,--et qui arrive tout de même à faire écho à l'international,--jusqu'à la grève elle-même et tout ce qu'elle implique de sacrifices, de tensions et d'apprentissages. Pour nourrir les mouvements à venir, il était primordial pour les autrices de colliger les expériences et les témoignages de cette grève unique en son genre. -- Publisher's description