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This article reviews the book, "People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent," by Joseph Stiglitz.

The article reviews the book, "No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation's Founding," by Sean Wilentz.

In Canada, as in most advanced capitalist countries, the right of workers to engage in collective action has been partially immunized from competition law, one of the basic norms of capitalist legality. The “zone of toleration”, however, has been contested over time and poses a recurring regulatory dilemma that stems from labour’s commodity status in capitalism. In the capitalist utopia, workers are commodified and atomized, each one competing against all others. But in capitalist reality, such an arrangement produces the tragedy of atomism. In Polanyian terms, labour is a false commodity and treating it as such results socially dysfunctional consequences, producing a counter movement. In Marxist terms, labour is embodied in human beings who resist their commodification and atomization, in part by uniting with other workers and acting collectively to improve their conditions and, perhaps, one day to create a different social order in which labour ceases to be a commodity. Viewed in either light, the zone of legal toleration within competition law is the product of recurring conflicts and struggles whose outcome is shaped and reshaped over time. In Canada, this conflict has been resolved by granting workers a legal immunity from liability under competition law for engaging in approved collective action to improve or defend their terms and conditions of work. However, the zone of toleration is contestable at three margins, explored in this chapter. First, is the margin between those workers who are covered by the exemption and those who are not; second is between the sale of labour power and the sale of the commodities it produces; and the third is between the means that covered workers can lawfully use to make their combinations effective and those that take them out of the zone of toleration. The chapter explores the history of the construction of the zone of toleration and conflicts over its margins.

The article reviews the book, "Industrial Craft in Australia: Oral Histories of Creativity and Survival," by Jesse Adams Stein.

In 1938, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) came to organize the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Mine Mill) in Trail, British Columbia. Six years later it was recognized as the legal representative of more than 5,000 workers at a smelter owned by the powerful Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada (CM&S). Smelter Wars aims to unfold the historic struggle of the working people who built the city of Trail. The book recounts the various difficulties of the rural community, providing glimpses into the political and social life in the smelter city, as well as the turbulent years marked by economic depression, war, and Cold War intolerance. Ron Verzuh draws upon archival and periodical sources, including the mainstream and labour press, to explore the CIO's complicated legacy in Trail as it battled a wide range of antagonists: a powerful employer (CM&S), a company union, local conservative citizens, and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) leadership. More than a history of a union, Smelter Wars is a cultural study of a community that has been shaped by decades of corporate welfare. --Publisher's description

To appease public anxieties and limit exploitation, in recent years Canada has sought to more strictly regulate and reduce temporary migrant work, while expanding opportunities for international mobility. This article explores the division between mobility and migration in this settler colonial context by charting developments in two overarching Canadian immigration program streams dedicated to facilitating international migration for employment on a temporary basis – the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and the International Mobility Program (IMP) – focusing on the latter. Through an analysis of underexplored IMP subprograms directed at ‘national competitiveness,’ it probes the extent to which several fast-growing IMP subprograms entail a departure from temporary migrant work under exploitative conditions. Questioning the validity of the migration/mobility distinction assumed in policy discourse, it argues that far from providing for ideal conditions for ‘mobile’ workers, Inter-Company Transfer, Postgraduation, and Spousal subprograms are characterised by conditions poised to heighten exploitation. Meanwhile, many participants in these subprograms migrate from source countries with a history of subordination through differential inclusion, illustrating how the application of migration control devices is bound-up with residues of formal barriers to entry forged on the basis of nationality and the institutionalised racism that they engendered and threaten to perpetuate.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada imposed certain international travel bans and work-from-home orders, yet migrant farmworkers, declared essential to national food security, were exempt from such measures. In this context, farm worksites proved to be particularly prone to COVID-19 outbreaks. To apprehend this trend, we engaged an expanded and transnational employment strain framework that identified the employment demands and resources understood from a transnational perspective, as well as the immigration, labour, and public health policies and practices contributing to and/or buffering employment demands during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied mixed methods to analyze administrative data, immigration, labour, and public health policy, as well as qualitative interviews with thirty migrant farmworkers employed in Ontario and Quebec. We concluded that the deleterious outcomes of the pandemic for this group were rooted in the deplorable pre-pandemic conditions they endured. Consequently, the band-aid solutions adopted by federal and provincial governments to address these conditions before and during the pandemic were limited in their efficacy because they failed to account for the transnational employment strains among precarious status workers labouring on temporary employer-tied work permits. Such findings underscore the need for transformative policies to better support health equity among migrant farmworkers in Canada.

The Labour Rights Index is a comparative tool, an international qualification standard, which allows its users to compare labour legislation around the world. In a way, it helps you navigate the labour markets of 145 countries. The labour market regulation affecting around more than 90% of the 3.5 billion global labour force has been analysed and scored under the Index. The aim is to make all this abstract legal information accessible to workers in order to improve their working lives. Similarly, the work is useful for national and trans-national employers to ensure compliance with local labour legislation. --Website description

The article reviews the book, "The Subjectivities and Politics of Occupational Risk: Mines, Farms and Auto-Factories," by Alan Hall.

For four days in October 1932, during the height of the Great Depression, prisoners at Kingston Penitentiary revolted. They took control of their workshops and brought the convict labour regime to a halt, until the guards and militia violently regained control. This revolt was the culmination of more than a year of organizing and collective actions. Prisoners wrote manifestos, participated in work refusals, elected representatives, and developed a sophisticated critique of the conditions of their incarceration and the penitentiary administration. Using a unique collection of archival documents, this article closely examines the complaints, criticisms, fears, hopes, and frustrations of the incarcerated, whose demands and goals are crucial for understanding how and why the prisoner revolt unfolded as it did. I argue that the prisoners at Kingston Penitentiary, by striking and organizing to assert their dignity, democratically organized their lives and ensured a "fair deal" should be considered part of the Depression-era protests of the unemployed, imprisoned, and marginalized.

Throughout history, farm families have shared work and equipment with their neighbours to complete labour-intensive, time-sensitive, and time-consuming tasks. They benefitted materially and socially from these voluntary, flexible, loosely structured networks of reciprocal assistance, making neighbourliness a vital but overlooked aspect of agricultural change. Being Neighbours takes us into the heart of neighbourhood - the set of people near and surrounding the family - through an examination of work bees in Southern Ontario from 1830 to 1960. The "bee" was a special event where people gathered to work on a neighbour's farm like bees in a hive for a wide variety of purposes, including barn-raising, logging, threshing, quilting, turkey plucking, and apple paring. Drawing on the diaries of over one hundred men and women, Catharine Wilson takes readers into families' daily lives, the intricacies of their labour exchange, their workways, feasts, and hospitality. Through the prism of the bee and a close reading of the diaries, she uncovers the subtle social politics of mutual dependency, the expectations neighbours had of each other, and their ways of managing conflict and crisis. This book adds to the literature on cooperative work that focuses on evaluating its economic efficiency and complicates histories of capitalism that place communal values at odds with market orientation. Beautifully written, engaging, and richly detailed and illustrated, Being Neighbours reveals the visceral textures of rural life. -- Publisher's description

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.