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This article uses case studies from three comparable Ontario-based universities to explore the relationship between bargaining unit structures and collective bargaining outcomes for unionized sessional contract academic faculty. The article charts the complex network of bargaining unit structures and inter-union or association relationships in Ontario universities and uses both quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate how different structures influence internal debates about sessional contract academic faculty, bargaining priorities, and collective bargaining strategies. The authors conclude that bargaining unit structures have less of an impact than practitioners assume and that success at the bargaining table for sessional contract academic faculty is dependent on a broad range of factors rather than any particular structure.

Le 6 février 1920, un petit groupe d’employés de la fonction publique se réunit pour la première fois afin de former une association professionnelle. Un siècle plus tard, l’Institut professionnel de la fonction publique du Canada (IPFPC) est un agent négociateur représentant près de 60 000 travailleurs du secteur public dont les efforts pour le bien collectif améliorent la vie de chaque Canadien. Publié à l’occasion du 100e anniversaire de fondation de l’IPFPC, À l’avant-garde du progrès dresse le portrait complet de son évolution, de 1920 à aujourd’hui, et lève le voile sur un pan souvent négligé de l’histoire syndicale nord-américaine. L’auteur, Jason Russell, s’appuie sur une abondante collection de sources, dont des documents d’archives et des témoignages de dizaines de membres actuels et passés de l’IPFPC. Marquée par des réussites et semée d’embûches, l’histoire est complexe et racontée avec clarté et modération. Après des décennies de changements démographiques et générationnels, de booms et de crises économiques et de bouleversements politiques, les membres de l’IPFPC entament les cent prochaines années guidés par la même mission importante que celle qui les a inspirés jusqu’à présent : militer pour une justice sociale et économique pour le bien de tous les Canadiens et Canadiennes. --Description de l'éditeur

On February 6, 1920, a small group of public service employees met for the first time to form a professional association. A century later, the Professional Institute of the Public Service Canada (PIPSC) is a bargaining agent representing close to 60,000 public sector workers, whose collective efforts for the public good have touched the lives of every Canadian. Published on the centennial of PIPSC’s founding, Leading Progress is the definitive account of its evolution from then to now—and a rare glimpse into an under-studied corner of North American labour history. Researcher Dr. Jason Russell draws on a rich collection of sources, including archival material and oral history interviews with dozens of current and past PIPSC members. The story that unfolds is a complex one, filled with success and struggle, told with clarity and even-handedness. After decades of demographic and generational shifts, economic booms and busts, and political sea change, PIPSC looks toward its next hundred years with its mission as strong as ever: to advocate for social and economic justice that benefits all Canadians. --Publisher's description

The automotive industry has long been a leader in the introduction of new forms of work organization and technology—including mass production and high performance work systems (HPWS). It has also been a focal point for how trade unions negotiate such systems. Recently, much attention has focused on Industry 4.0 (I 4.0)—a manufacturing system featuring advanced robotics, digitalization and artificial intelligence. However, in the automotive industry, I 4.0 is confronted with considerable technical and social challenges, and I 4.0 paradigms have been criticized for marginalizing the continuing importance of employees in shaping, if not ‘hybridizing,’ such new production processes. Based on a study of UNIFOR union locals in Canadian automotive assembly plants, we argue that I 4.0 has to be analyzed in terms of the ways unions have influenced the almost universal adoption of HPWS in that sector. We thus investigate the ways unions have impacted HPWS and its implications for their roles in workplace integration of I 4.0. As such, we first argue that, while overlapping, HPWS and I 4.0 represent different managerial strategies. Second, we develop an exploratory analytical framework for use in examining union roles in negotiating HPWS and technology adoption. Based on this framework, we then analyze 18 interviews we conducted in 2017-2018 with plant managers and key UNIFOR representatives at five southern Ontario assembly plants. The interviews illustrate not only commonalities in adoption of HPWS, but also differing ways in which the union influences the ‘hybridization’ of HPWS. Union practices differ significantly from one plant to another as a function of three variables: 1- firm-plant competitive positions; 2- the union’s overall monopoly face; and 3- internal union local solidarity and narratives around HPWS. Keeping these commonalities and differences in mind, we then consider the challenges that unions are likely to confront as they begin negotiating I 4.0.

Economic inequality is one of the great issues of our era. But what is inequality? Eric Sager argues that inequality is more than the distribution of income and wealth. Inequality is the idea that there are wide gaps between rich and poor, that the gaps are both an economic problem and a social injustice, and that the problem can be either eliminated or reduced. This idea arose in a transatlantic world, in the long evolution of political economy in Britain and the United States from classical economics to the emerging welfare economics of the twentieth century. Within this transatlantic frame inequality took a distinct form in Canada. It appeared among radical reformers and republicans in the 1830s. It arose in a critique of wealth among Protestant thinkers and their moral imperatives. The idea appeared among labour radicals and reformers who interpreted the conflict between capital and labour as a problem of distribution. For social gospelers inequality was a simplifying frame that made sense of an alien modernity of industry, urbanism, and class conflict. A tradition of idealist thought persisted in the twentieth century, sustaining the idea of inequality despite deep silences among Canadian economists. The idea appeared forcefully in social Catholicism in Quebec, and then waned in the political and intellectual justifications of the social security state. In the new era of inequality in our century, a political solution may rest upon the recovery of an older ethical idealism and in a historically-informed egalitarian politics."-- Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "A Suffragette in America: Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change," by E. Sylvia Pankhurst, edited with an introduction by Katherine Connelly,.

The article reviews the book, "The Social Cost of Cheap Food: Labour and the Political Economy of Food Distribution in Britain, 1830–1914," by Sébastien Rioux.

Bargaining is an intensive and complex procoess during the best of times, but what happened when the Brock University Faculty Association found itself bargaining a new collective agreement in the middle of a pandemic? --Editor's note

Review essay of "A Grander Vision: My Life in the Labour Movement" (2019) by Sid Ryan, and "A New Kind of Union: Unifor and the Birth of the Modern Canadian Union" (2019) by Fred Wilson.

The article reviews the book, "Research Handbook on Employee Turnover," edited by George Saridakis and Cary L. Cooper.

While decades of scholarship point to the broad consensus that unions compress the distribution of wages and incomes, recent empirical contributions suggest that unions’ within-country egalitarian effect is dwindling, as unions decline and membership composition changes. What is more, unions now operate in an increasingly difficult political economy transformed by, among other forces, globalization, financialization and fiscal austerity. At the same time, there is an increased demand for unions to play a broader role in a movement for distributive justice. Transposing these debates to the Canadian provincial context, this article asks whether unions still matter for reducing inequality. Considering the role of industrial relations more broadly by taking into account strike activity and collective labour statutes, the article explores the relationship between union power and market income inequality over a period ranging from 1984 to 2012. This empirical contribution is framed in theories from comparative capitalism, economics, and sociology. Descriptive longitudinal statistics support the well-documented union decline narrative. On average, union density and strike activity have declined in the provinces. As for the quality of collective labour rights, it is argued that the relative apparent stability of statutes conceals more substantive issues with Wagnerism as an organizing model. Linking unions to inequality, results from multivariate regressions using panel data suggest that union power still matters for limiting market income inequality. While estimates for strike action are not statistically significant, those for union density and the quality of collective labour statutes suggest that unions still exert an inequality-reducing effect. However, the rarity of significant estimates across models using different measures of inequality indicates that this effect is by no means comprehensive.

The article reviews the book, "All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence," by Emily L. Thuma.

For decades, the Supreme Court of Canada has contemplated the appropriate standard of judicial review of decisions by administrative tribunals. The Court has grappled with the tension between the role of, and relationship between, courts and tribunals. The author, who has been both a judge and a tribunal member, argues for an attitude of humility towards these administrative bodies. With this approach, the author argues, even those most skeptical of tribunals might recognize their value as less formal, more expeditious, more expert, and binding dispute resolution mechanisms that complement—rather than detract from or compete with—courts. They may come to appreciate tribunals as the court’s institutional justice sibling, pursuing similar ends through different means.

Compelling evidence exists that centralized bargaining structures, including broader-based and sectoral bargaining (bbb), offer significant benefits to workers. Examining the role of bbb in major Canadian labour law reform initiatives between the late 1980s and 2019, this article explores why the labour movement, despite the potential advantages of bbb, has not collectively pursued bbb reforms. It concludes with an analysis of the failure to incorporate bbb proposals into labour legislation and an assessment of the key challenges to adopting significant bbb reforms in the future. Earlier research concluded that bbb proposals in the 1990s failed because of employer opposition and lack of understanding, including by labour. This study departs from earlier conclusions to find that neither of these factors has been prominent regarding bbb in recent decades. Instead, lack of support for bbb arises from some unions’ concerns about preserving existing representation rights, resistance to the prospect of mandatory councils of unions, and anticipation of jurisdictional conflicts. Lack of support for bbb from some peak labour organizations arises from a consensus approach to deciding which labour law reform issues to promote. An additional challenge to its adoption is the politicized nature of labour law reform, and the political cost of innovative and untried proposals deter governments from adopting bbb.

During the pandemic employees in the US have engaged in a wave of strikes, protests, and other collective action over concerns about unsafe working conditions, and many of these involved non-unionized workers in the private sector. Similar employee protests were notably absent in Canada. This article examines the differences in labour legislation between the US and Canada, which may help to explain these diverging experiences, primarily: the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) section 7 protection for concerted activity, and the NLRA section 502 ability for a good faith strike due to abnormally dangerous conditions for work. This article outlines and compares the situation of, and consequences for, three categories of workers engaging in a strike over fears of workplace safety: unionized employees, non-unionized employees, and non-employees, such as independent contractors under the NLRA compared to under the Ontario Labour Relations Act (OLRA), as generally representative of Canadian labour legislation. In the final section, this article considers how a statutory provision similar to the NLRA protected concerted activity provision might be incorporated into Canadian labour legislation such as the OLRA. It also considers some more fundamental questions that such changes might prompt policymakers to reconsider, including: the focus of our statutory system on “organizing” collective action to the exclusion of “mobilizing” collective action, and questions about the potential role of minority unionism in our labour legislation system.

Analyzes the historical context of class struggle and strikes under capitalism, the restrictions on strike activity in Canada, and the entrenchment of back-to-work legislation under the Canadian neoliberal regime.

Introduces the roundtable on back-to-work legislation held at the Canadian Association of Work and Labour Studies' annual conference in 2019. Summarizes the papers presented and pays tribute to the work of Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz.

Abstracts of papers from no. 86, Fall 2020.

Poppy used to be an optimist. But after a photo of her dressed as Rosie the Riveter is mocked online, she's having trouble seeing the good in the world. As a result, Poppy trades her beloved vintage clothes for a feathered chicken costume and accepts a job as an anonymous sign waver outside a restaurant. There, Poppy meets six-year-old girl Miracle, who helps Poppy see beyond her own pain, opening her eyes to the people around her: Cam, her twin brother, who is adjusting to life as an openly gay teen; Buck, a charming photographer with a cute British accent and a not-so-cute mean-streak; and Lewis a teen caring for an ailing parent, while struggling to reach the final stages of his gender transition. As the summer unfolds, Poppy stops glorifying the past and starts focusing on the present. But just as she comes to terms with the fact that there is good and bad in everyone, she is tested by a deep betrayal. -- Publisher's description

Western Canada’s oil-exporting economies have come to rely on migrant labour as a cornerstone of economic development. A global division of labour intersecting with the constellation of Canada’s migrant worker programs has shaped the contemporary political-economic character of many Canadian provinces, including Saskatchewan. These programs have worked to construct bifurcated labour markets for growing low-wage industries that exist alongside high-wage resource-sector employment. Although a majority of these migrant workers end up employed in non-unionized workplaces, foreign workers who secure occupations in health care, construction, warehousing, and manufacturing are often represented by a union. The study explores union attitudes and union-member engagement among migrant labour through the lens of union revitalization, in an attempt to confront claims that migrant workers are without an affinity to organized labour and avoid participating in union business and the collective-bargaining process.