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Fréquemment, les chercheurs ont conceptualisé le conflit travail-famille de façon bidirectionnelle : l’étude des effets de la vie professionnelle à l’endroit de la vie de famille (appelé conflit travail-famille) et celle des effets de la vie de famille à l’égard de la vie d’emploi (appelé conflit famille-travail). Toutefois, les résultats inhérents aux recherches basées sur cette conceptualisation se sont avérés controversés. Autrement dit, très peu d’effort a été déployé afin de différencier entre les effets des différentes formes de ce conflit. Pourtant, Greenhaus et Beutell (1985) en ont proposé une conceptualisation multidimensionnelle, en ajoutant aux deux dimensions directionnelles trois autres supplémentaires liées au conflit de temps, d’effort et de comportement. Ainsi, notre recherche répond à la question générale suivante: la conceptualisation multidimensionnelle du conflit travail-famille est-elle plus efficace pour cerner la réalité de ce phénomène que la conceptualisation bidirectionnelle ? À partir d’un échantillon de 375 sujets provenant du personnel infirmier d’un centre hospitalier, nous avons privilégié une conceptualisation multidimensionnelle dudit conflit (Greenhaus et Beutell, 1985), et ce, afin d’identifier les effets spécifiques aux diverses dimensions de ce conflit. Pour ce faire, nous avons utilisé l’analyse en termes des cartes autoorganisatrices de Kohonen (SOM), cartes qui sont basées sur un réseau de neurones résultant de la méthode d’apprentissage non supervisée (Kohonen, 2001). Les résultats de l’analyse neuronale indiquent qu’il y a six formes de conflit. Deux d’entre elles paraissent générer des effets similaires à ceux obtenus selon la conceptualisation bidirectionnelle (conflit à haute intensité versus conflit à basse intensité), tandis que les quatre autres formes apparaissent engendrer des effets spécifiques, justifiant la nécessité d’appliquer la conceptualisation multidimensionnelle préconisée. En outre, l’analyse de variance appliquée aux données a révélé plusieurs différences significatives entre les six formes de ce conflit et des variables externes liées à des facteurs explicatifs dudit conflit, ainsi qu’à ses conséquences. Cette nouvelle taxonomie, basée sur la conceptualisation multidimensionnelle des conflits travail-famille, contribue à une meilleure compréhension de l’interférence entre la sphère de la vie familiale et celle de la vie professionnelle, en identifiant les formes spécifiques du conflit travail-famille au niveau desquelles une ou plusieurs sources de conflictualité sont en action. Des avenues de recherche et des implications managériales sont déduites à la lumière des résultats enregistrés.

Although the literature on comparative capitalism has been expanded to encompass the Mixed Market Economies (MMEs) of the Mediterranean world and other less mature institutional arrangements, it can be argued that more attention needs to be accorded to internal diversity within capitalist archetypes and the nature and path of change. In focusing on the latter, this paper explores changes in Industrial relations (Ir) regulation and practice in Greece which, since the onset of the economic crisis, has shifted towards lighter regulation; however, liberalization has not meant convergence with the mature Liberal Market Economy (LME) model and its presumed associated complementarities. Based on current developments and advances in the literature on comparative capitalism, this study explores the process and dynamics of institutional change, and the long continuities that set Greece apart from both ‘disorganized’ LMEs and other MMEs. This encompasses issues such as the composition of elites, the nature of institutional path dependence and change, and the uneven and partial nature of what constitutes institutional functionality. Whilst the Greek system is commonly condemned as dysfunctional, it satisfies specific economic interests. Being impelled in one direction by a progressive movement from below, it is driven in another by external pressures, and, at home, by “unpatriotic” elites, who have little interest in stronger regulation, and may well be served by weaker governmental capabilities. As local economic elites seek to reposition themselves within the system in order to cope with shifts in the capitalist economy, it may result in them further narrowing their focus onto their own immediate concerns accommodated through economic liberalization. Smaller, marginal, players may be pushed further out of the system and/or actively choose to withdraw, the attempts of the present government to ameliorate the shocks of liberalization notwithstanding. This vests the organized labour and other civil society associations with great historic importance.

The article reviews the book, "Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic," by Margaret Gray.

The project Leadership, Feminism and Equality in Unions in Canada (2012) explored the current practices, climate around, and attitudes to women, feminism, leadership, and equality through the insights, voices, and experiences of forty-four women union lead- ers, activists, and staff. This article outlines what we did: what prompted the project and its goals, methodology, activities, output, and results for participants. It also includes a summary of some findings that underscore the significance of the project.This project points to the permeability between and among breaking the silence, movement building, and union education. It asks what kind of union education is rel- evant and available for seasoned activists, leaders, and educators. It found that an ongoing process of what might be called politicized education is critical. Certainly this group of union women benefited from re-politicizing their individual experiences, per- haps what could be called “re-organizing.”

Objective: We examined disparities in hazardous employment characteristics and working conditions among Chinese and white workers in Toronto, Canada.Design. We used self-administered questionnaire data from a 2005–2006 population-based survey (n = 1611). Using modified Poisson regression, we examined the likelihood for Chinese workers of experiencing adverse exposures compared to whites. Models were stratified by sex and adjusted for differences in human capital. Work sector was conceptualized as a mediating variable.Results. Chinese workers were generally more likely to report adverse exposures. In many cases, disparities were only evident or more pronounced among women. The shorter length of time in Canada of Chinese relative to whites accounted for some of the observed disparities. Meanwhile, the higher educational level of Chinese compared to whites provided them with no protection from adverse exposures. The risk of experiencing discrimination on the labor market and at work was more than 50% higher among Chinese men and women as compared to whites, and those disparities, though reduced, persisted after adjustment for confounders.Conclusions. Discrimination is far more prevalent among Chinese than among whites and may explain their disproportionate exposure to other hazards.

This article explores how precarious legal status circumscribes differential inclusion in the agricultural labor market and affects workers' lives through a comparative study of workplace health and safety among temporary migrant guest workers and immigrants in Canada. Original, multimethod research with South Asian immigrant and Mexican migrant farmworkers examines employment practices, working conditions, and health-care access. We find that both groups engage in precarious work, with consequences for their health and safety, including immigrant workers with citizenship. Nevertheless, migrant guest workers are subject to more coercive forms of labor discipline and a narrower range of social protection than immigrants. We argue that while formal citizenship can mitigate some dimensions of precariousness for farmworkers racialized as non-white, achieving a more just, safer food system will require broader policies to improve employer compliance and address legislative shortcomings that only weakly protect agricultural labor.

In the winter of 2012, the Canadian federal Conservative government introduced back-to-work legislation prohibiting work stoppages at Canada’s largest airline, Air Canada. In the following weeks, wildcat strikes by baggage handlers, ground crew, and even pilots rattled the company. These disputes were preceded in 2011 by another instance of back-to-work legislation and threats of legislation against Air Canada’s customer service workers and flight attendants, respectively. In all cases, the union leadership was legally forced to police their membership and order their members to cease job actions when they erupted. This article situates the Conservative government’s coercive measures to deal with labor unrest at Air Canada within a broader anti-union context, highlighting the continued decline of industrial pluralism in Canada and questioning whether the repeated use and threat of federal back-to-work legislation will open up space for civil disobedience as a new norm in Canadian industrial relations.

The shifting provincial-municipal landscape in Ontario, which has positioned local government as central to the neoliberal project, has created both strategic opportunities and risks for organized labour. This article explores how the provincial state has used downloading and neoliberal municipal restructuring to shift the balance of class forces in local politics and provides analytical context against which to examine organized labour’s attempts to pursue progressive policy outputs in this new environment.

English/French abstracts of articles in Spring 2014 volume.

Review of: Y a-t-il un âge pour travailler ? edited by François Hubault.

Examines critically the efforts of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper efforts to reshape the public symbols and representations of Canadian history, citizenship, and identity. Emphasizes the importance of the body of research on social history, as well as the understandings offered collectively by the social sciences and humanities.

This article is a critical review of "Constitutional Labour Rights in Canada: Farm Workers and the Fraser Case," by Fay Faraday, Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker.

This article examines some of Depression-era Canada’s most influential labour newspapers with the intent to show that their writers were deeply inspired by radical Christianity. While connected in many ways to earlier strands of working-class and leftist Christianity as typified by the social gospel, radical Christianity differs in the extent to which the roots of social dysfunction were acknowledged as being linked to the capitalist order, and the solution being in its destruction. In this way, one can find deep intellec­tual connections between the Canadian labour press and the members of the Fellowship of a Christian Social Order (FCSO). Thus, this article not only examines labour intellectuals in a Gramscian light, but seeks to challenge the claim among many historians that links between labour and Christianity col­lapsed before the Depression. Indeed, labour intellectuals sought to confront the prevailing hegemony of a capitalistic Christianity, not only by challeng­ing the links the institutional churches held with the economic elite but also through developing understanding of how capitalism played an intrinsic role in the creation of sin and suffering.

Amendments to the Ontario Human Rights Code that took effect in 2008 introduced a new hybrid direct access model, which allows complaints to be taken directly to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario without prior investigation by the province's Human Rights Commission, and which limits the Commission's role to the protection of the public interest through policy development and public education. The authors are of the view that there was inadequate cost-benefit analysis of the new model before it was implemented, and that the three-year period between the implementation of the new model and the preparation of the Pinto Report on its operation was not long enough to allow for a thorough analysis of how well the model was working. They argue that cost-benefit analysis is still needed to assess whether the model is meeting its policy goals and whether it is cost-effective and efficient. However, they acknowledge that one of the challenges in performing an analysis of a human rights regime lies in the dificulty of quantifying the regime's costs and benefits; it is hard, for example, to place a value on fictors such as access to justice. With an eye to the differences between the new Ontario model and the human rights regimes in other Canadian jurisdictions, the authors highlight a number of potential problems with the hybrid Ontario model that call for future research using a cost-benefit approach: the lack of Commission-initiated public interest cases; the risk that more non-meritorious cases will reach adjudication because of the lack of screening by the Commission; the shifting of the costs and other burdens of litigation to private parties; and the question of the effectiveness of the Legal Support Centre in helping to meet those burdens.

The title of CIRA's 50th anniversary conference -- From Theory and Research to Policy and Practice in Work and Employment -- has a nostalgic ring to it. You will recall, perhaps, that large numbers of people, who used to be known as "workers", were "employed" in something called "industry". Significant numbers of these workers joined organizations called "unions" that established collective "relations" with employers. Implausible as it now seems, governments were once so concerned about "industrial relations" (IR) that they sponsored a great deal of IR research and even conducted their own. The Task Force on Labour Relations, appointed in 1966, enlisted virtually every industrial relations and labour law scholar in the country; compiled shelves-full of ambitious studies; and made scores of recommendations, a surprising number of which ended up being adopted by one or another Canadian jurisdiction. --From author's keynote address

The article reviews the book, "Autonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade," by Dimitry Anastakis.

Since the mid-1980s, the nonprofit social services sector has been promoted as an option for cheaper and more flexible delivery of services. In order to comply with government standards and funding requirements, the sector has been subject to ongoing waves of restructuring and the introduction of new private market-like, outcomes-based management models, such as New Public Management. This article explores ways in which nonprofit social services sector workers experience their work as highly fragmented. Drawing on case studies completed as part of a larger project addressing restructuring in the nonprofit social services sector in Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, we examine three key aspects shaping work in the nonprofit social services sector: 1) workers’ experience of managerialism; 2) gendered strategies drawn on by workers in the agencies studied; and 3) union strategies in the nonprofit social services sector, as well as within individual workplaces. Conclusions focus on contributions to understanding managerialism as a strong but fragmented project in which even weak union presence and the willingness of the predominantly female workforce to sacrifice to provide care for others ensure that some level of social solidarity endures.

This paper examines the impact of precarity on the nonprofit service providing sector (NPSS). Using in depth qualitative interviews, recent empirically-based surveys of the Ontario nonprofit sector and key academic and grey literature, we explore the deeper meaning of precarity in this sector. We contend that the NPSS is a unique, and in many respects, an ideal location in which to explore the workings and impact of precarity. Looking at the nonprofit sector reveals that precarity operates at various levels, the: 1) nonprofit labour force; 2) organization structure and operation of nonprofit agencies; and, 3) clients and communities serviced by these nonprofit organizations. By observing the workings of precarity in this sector, precarity is revealed to be far more than an employment based phenomenon but also a force that negatively impacts organizational structures as well as vulnerable communities.