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This integrated article dissertation examines some of the new managerial practices that have emerged to handle cognitive capitalism’s ongoing need for creative, flexible labour power. The three articles included in this dissertation offer a glimpse into the widespread processes employed by management to regulate and discipline a workforce that must also be granted a degree of relative flexibility, creativity, and autonomy in order to be effective under post-Fordist conditions of production. The first chapter looks at the emergence of corporate improvisational training at the turn of the twenty-first century as an attempt to cultivate flexible and innovative workers, a move that ultimately succumbs to what Andre Spicer (2013) calls “organizational bullshit”—the deployment of cynical and self-serving discourse that functions to build confidence and legitimacy within workplaces where a clear sense of occupational purpose is lacking. Chapter two explores the recent trend of workplace mindfulness as a specific element of the now-prevalent 'wellness' discourses, which inevitably work to align workers' personal values with those of their employer. The final chapter involves an analysis of the working conditions of voice-over and motion capture actors in the video game industry and the processes of rationalization and neo-taylorization to which they are subjected.

The article reviews the book, "Solitudes of the Workplace: Women in Universities, edited by Elvi Whittaker.

This article reviews the book, "Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization," by Kim Scipes.

The article reviews the book, "Sports and Labor in the United States," by Michael Schiavone.

This paper examines the tension between macro level regulation and the rule breaking and rule following that happens at the workplace level. Using a comparative study of Canada, Norway, and Germany, the paper documents how long-term residential care work is regulated and organized differently depending on country, regional, and organizational contexts. We ask where each jurisdiction’s staffing regulations fall on a prescription-interpretation continuum; we define prescription as a regulatory tendency to identify what to do and when and how to do it, and interpretation as a tendency to delineate what to do but not when and how to do it. In examining frontline care workers’ strategies for accomplishing everyday social, health, and dining care tasks we explore how a policy-level prescriptive or interpretive regulatory approach affects the potential for promising practices to emerge on the frontlines of care work. Overall, we note the following associations: prescriptive regulatory environments tend to be accompanied by a lower ratio of professional to non-professional staff, a higher concentration of for-profit providers, a lower ratio of staff to residents and a sharper division of labour. Interpretive regulatory environments tend to have higher numbers of professionals relative to non-professionals, more limited for-profit provision, a higher ratio of staff to residents, and a more relational division of labour that enables the work to be more fluid and responsive. The implication of a prescriptive environment, such as is found in Ontario, Canada, is that frontline care workers possess less autonomy to be creative in meeting residents’ needs, a tendency towards more task-oriented care and less job autonomy. The paper reveals that what matters is the type of regulation as well as the regulatory tendency towards controlling frontline care workers decision-making and decision-latitude.

Farm workers were central to the development of Canada's prairie West. From 1878, when the first shipment of prairie grain went to international markets, to 1929, when the Great Depression signalled the end of the wheat boom, the role of hired hands changed dramatically. Prior to World War One, hired hands viewed themselves and were treated in the rural community as equals to their farmer employers. Many were farmers in training, informal apprentices who worked for wages so they could accumulate the capital and experience needed to secure their own free 160-acre parcels of land. In later years, as free lands were taken, hired hands increasingly faced the hkehhood of remaining waged labourers on the farms of others. They became agricultural proletarians. In this first full-length study of labour in Canadian prairie agriculture during the period of settlement and expansion, Cecilia Danysk examines the changing work and the growing rural community of the West through the eyes of the workers themselves. World War One was a catalyst in bringing into focus the conflicting nature of labour-capital relations and the divergent aims of workers and their employers. Yet, attempts at union organization were unsuccessful because most hired hands worked alone and because governments assisted farmers by stifling such attempts. The workers' greatest form of workplace control was to walk off one job and find another. --Publisher's description. Previously published in 1995 by McClelland & Stewart. Contents: Introduction -- Labour-Capital Relations in Prairie Agriculture -- Part 1. Beginnings, 1870s-1900. Recruiting the Agricultural Labour Force. Part 2. Expansion, 1900-1918. Agricultural Labour as Apprenticeship -- Class, Culture, and Community -- The Nature of Work --Part 3. Consolidation, 1918-1930. Proletarianization -- The Dialectic of Consent and Resistance -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Notes -- Index.

In [this book] Iyko Day retheorizes the history and logic of settler colonialism by examining its intersection with capitalism and the racialization of Asian immigrants to Canada and the United States. Day explores how the historical alignment of Asian bodies and labor with capital's abstract and negative dimensions became one of settler colonialism's foundational and defining features. This alignment allowed white settlers to gloss over and expunge their complicity with capitalist exploitation from their collective memory. Day reveals this process through an analysis of a diverse body of Asian North American literature and visual culture, including depictions of Chinese railroad labor in the 1880s, filmic and literary responses to Japanese internment in the 1940s, and more recent examinations of the relations between free trade, national borders, and migrant labor. In highlighting these artists' reworking and exposing of the economic modalities of Asian racialized labor, Day pushes beyond existing approaches to settler colonialism as a Native/settler binary to formulate it as a dynamic triangulation of Native, settler, and alien populations and positionalities. --Publisher's description

The so-called “gig-economy” has been growing exponentially in numbers and importance in recent years but its impact on labour rights has been largely overlooked. Forms of work in the “gig-economy” include “crowdwork”, and “work-on-demand via apps”, under which the demand and supply of working activities is matched online or via mobile apps. These forms of work can provide a good match of job opportunities and allow flexible working schedules. However, they can also pave the way to a severe commodification of work. This paper discusses the implications of this commodification and advocates the full recognition of activities in the gig-economy as “work”. It shows how the gig-economy is not a separate silo of the economy and that is part of broader phenomena such as casualization and informalisation of work and the spread of non-standard forms of employment. It then analyses the risks associated to these activities with regard to Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, as they are defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and addresses the issue of misclassification of the employment status of workers in the gig economy. Current relevant trends are thus examined, such as the emergence of forms of self-organisation of workers. Finally, some policy proposals are critically analysed, such as the possibility of creating an intermediate category of worker between “employee” and “independent contractor” to classify work in the gig-economy, and other tentative proposals are put forward such extension of fundamental labour rights to all workers irrespective of employment status, and recognition of the role of social partners in this respect, whilst avoiding temptations of hastened deregulation.

The article reviews the book, "The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894," by Sam Mitrani.

Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser l’influence de la culture organisationnelle sur les problèmes d’épuisement professionnel dans la main-d’œuvre. Ceci est important pour explorer des pistes d’intervention qui vont au-delà des employés eux-mêmes et des conditions de travail ainsi qu’afin de mieux comprendre comment les éléments du contexte organisationnel peuvent influencer le développement de l’épuisement professionnel dans les organisations. En intégrant à la fois la culture organisationnelle et les conditions de l’organisation du travail, il est possible d’examiner comment la culture influence les différentes composantes des conditions de l’organisation du travail et comment celles-ci peuvent, ensuite, donner lieu au développement ou à l’aggravation des différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel. Cette étude s’appuie sur le courant fonctionnaliste, selon lequel la culture existe dans l’organisation par ses manifestations et artefacts — qui expriment les valeurs et les croyances partagées —, et sur lesquels la haute direction peut avoir une emprise. Des analyses de régression multiples de type multi-niveaux ont été conduites à partir de données recueillies dans 60 établissements privés canadiens auprès de 1824 individus lors de l’étude SALVEO (2009-2012). Les résultats montrent que les cultures groupales, rationnelles et développementales s’associent aux différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel. Ainsi, les cultures organisationnelles groupales et développementales, qui sont caractérisées par la flexibilité, s’associent indirectement à un niveau plus faible d’épuisement émotionnel et de cynisme et à un niveau plus élevé d’efficacité professionnelle. La culture rationnelle, qui est caractérisée par la performance, s’associe indirectement à un niveau plus élevé d’épuisement émotionnel et de cynisme. La culture hiérarchique, quant à elle, ne s’associe pas avec l’épuisement professionnel. Les résultats obtenus démontrent l’importance d’intégrer des variables reliées au contexte organisationnel dans les études portant sur l’épuisement professionnel.

The article reviews the book, "Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement," by Thomas Geoghegan.

The main response (Mantsios 2015) to neoliberalism and the marginalization of labor studies in higher education has been the call for a “new” labor college—one that integrates “workforce development” and liberal arts, yet separates worker education from its working-class roots. This article interrogates the state of worker education and the impact of neoliberalism on various civic engagement efforts at colleges and universities. The authors argue for a critical reevaluation of workers’ education and labor studies programs, calling for organized workers to retake control of such projects to avoid the deradicalization of class politics now ascendant in neoliberal institutions.

The article reviews the book, "Empire of Cotton: A Global History," by Sven Beckert.

This article reviews the book, "Reflexive Labour Law in the World Society," by Ralf Rogowski.

This article reviews the book, "Responsabilité sociale des entreprises: mirage ou réalité ?," by Mustapha Bettache.

Au Canada, le 19e siècle constitue une période de transformations profondes. Parmi celles-ci etaient la transition au capitalisme qui simula l’économie coloniale et produisit une richesse nationale alors même que son mouvement engendra d’importantes inégalités sociales. Cette transition se loge au cœur de plusieurs questions qui occupent la sociologie historique sur les façons dont le capitalisme transforma les relations sociales en Occident et au Canada. Nombreuses de ces questions ont déjà été éclairées alors que d’autres demandent toujours à sortir de l’obscurité. Cet article a pour objectif de dresser un portrait des familles ouvrières et de leurs différentes stratégies de reproduction. À l’aide des données recueillies sur la population de la ville de Québec, nous souhaitons comparer différentes pratiques sociales en mettant l’accent sur les caractéristiques d’un nouveau régime temporel et mesurer son influence sur les ouvriers et ouvrières.

The article reviews the book, "Transforming Provincial Politics: The Political Economy of Canada’s Provinces and Territories in the Neoliberal Era," edited by Bryan M. Evans and Charles W. Smith.

The world of paid work has shifted extraordinarily in the last several decades. Globalization, technology, lean production, the intensification of work, mergers and reorganizations and precarious work have all meant a toughening of the conditions for workers. Unions organize in these conditions, confronting issues of concern to workers. Very little has been written about the role unions play in trying to protect the psychological health of their members. The major question of this thesis is whether unions are identifying and combating psychosocial hazards in the workplace. The thesis adds to knowledge on this subject by analyzing two data sets. First I conduct an analysis of grey literature on the Internet about psychological health and safety concerns. Second, I explore a series of questions with union health and safety experts representing every major Canadian union from each sector of the economy. The questions probe how unions are dealing with psychosocial risks in the workplace, how unions are organizing resistance and building solidarity. My inquiry also explores the issue of how unions deal with return-to-work for workers who have been absent for mental health reasons. I am not a neutral observer: I write from the standpoint of workers. My work has a practical utility to the degree that it can be directly applied to these real life problems facing health and safety practitioners. It attempts to theorize that which these union specialists should do. It also tries to anticipate some practical problems they may need to solve in future as a result of current health and safety practices. I observe real life phenomena and develop theory around them. One of these is that unions resist employer restraints and power and in so doing bump up against managementsâ right to control production and dictate work organization. In this thesis, I show the fledgling ways in which unions are challenging managementsâ typical rights in the interests of better working conditions. I give evidence of three promising practices that unions are adopting and propose that these may be adapted further for initiatives in other sectors. I argue that workersâ psychological health is one potential winner of these strategies. I also propose that union representatives be educated to deal more empathically with members that are absent for reasons of psychological ill health, in advocating for them when they return and by building solidarity among co-workers.

Why is there no labor party in the United States? This question has had deep implications for U.S. politics and social policy. Existing explanations use “reflection” models of parties, whereby parties reflect preexisting cleavages or institutional arrangements. But a comparison with Canada, whose political terrain was supposedly more favorable to labor parties, challenges reflection models. Newly compiled electoral data show that underlying social structures and institutions did not affect labor party support as expected: support was similar in both countries prior to the 1930s, then diverged. To explain this, I propose a modified “articulation” model of parties, emphasizing parties’ role in assembling and naturalizing political coalitions within structural constraints. In both cases, ruling party responses to labor and agrarian unrest during the Great Depression determined which among a range of possible political alliances actually emerged. In the United States, FDR used the crisis to mobilize new constituencies. Rhetorical appeals to the “forgotten man” and policy reforms absorbed some farmer and labor groups into the New Deal coalition and divided and excluded others, undermining labor party support. In Canada, mainstream parties excluded farmer and labor constituencies, leaving room for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) to organize them into a third-party coalition.