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The Embassy of Italy, the Consulate General of Italy in Toronto and Villa Charities join together with authors Paola Breda and Marino Toppan to present a ground-breaking new history of the Italian-Canadian immigration experience, finally including the previously untold story of the thousands of Italian Fallen Workers who died building this beautiful country — a story that’s destined to become a new piece of Canadian History. Compiled after decades of research by Toppan, this epic new volume includes countless contributions from across the country, from scholars of Italian-Canadian history and the families of the fallen themselves. This ground breaking new book includes profiles of those in the Italian community in Canada who triumphed with incredible successes, those who died in tragic circumstances, as well as in-depth studies on immigration patterns, labour history, socio-adaptive patterns, labour action, strife and hardships experienced, and many more themes in the Italian-Canadian identity. It even coins a new phrase: Canadianità! --Publicity release, May 23, 2019

At the intersection of three highways, the Douglas Hotel, in Manitoba’s central-west, is a place to stop for a coffee, a meal, or a night’s accommodation. Like elsewhere on the Canadian prairies, the daily labour required of these services falls largely to a migrant workforce. Bringing together historic political economy with feminist political economy, I draw on the presence of this workforce, comprised of 71 Filipino service and hospitality workers, in Douglas as an entry point into an extended exploration of the workings of social reproduction under globalized capitalism historically and at the beginning of the 21st Century. Sensitive to the transnationality that characterizes the lives of these workers, this multi-sited ethnographic study reads the details of everyday life in Manitoba and the Philippines through the historic and present-day political economy of each site. Offering this parallel yet integrated account, I highlight the variability of migrant experience in Canada at the sub-national level, as well as the ways in which receiving-states and private enterprise collaborate in the creation of labour markets. Low-wage and low–status, the labour market in question demands a kind of corporate, commodified care work that ensures the bodily reproduction of the Hotel’s guests and the material reproduction of the Hotel itself. Following from the objectives of their migration, the labour these workers perform at the Hotel also supports the survival and well-being of family in the Philippines. However, in addition to ensuring the material reproduction of non-migrant kin, through their use of digital communication technology and social media, these migrants contribute to the reproduction of migrant subjectivities, and subsequently, respond to the needs of global capital and the Philippine state. Thus, identifying the various, scaled forms of social reproduction in which the Hotel’s migrant workers participate, this thesis offers a multi-faceted, transnational account of reproduction, incorporating migrants, their families, their employer, and multiple state players. While not reproductive as conventionally defined, their labour at the Hotel provides insight into the patterning and re-patterning of social reproduction, and its associated labour, under global capital. Moreover, it demonstrates the centrality of those processes to operations of capitalism.

Canadian labour and working-class history has, to a great extent, been bedevilled in its attempts to understand national trends by the cleavages of gender, region, industry, race, language, and culture. This article argues that one possible way out of this impasse lies in foregrounding the particular relationship between colonial exploitation and class exploitation in our settler colonial economy, both in terms of class formation and in the ongoing project of social reproduction. The adoption of a "settler order framework" seeks to build on important recent works attempting to understand Indigenous peoples' participation in the ranks of those who toil, struggle, and dream of freedom from capitalism, by integrating the fundamental reality of settler workers' ongoing theft of Indigenous land and resources into the story of the Canadian working class.

The 21st century has seen growing attention to settler colonialism among academic researchers in Canada and internationally. In the Canadian context, interest has been fuelled above all by an ongoing resurgence of Indigenous activism and intellectual work, of which the most visible expression to most non-Indigenous people was the Idle No More movement of 2012–13. To date, however, little attention has been paid to settler colonialism within labour studies, broadly understood. As a modest contribution to remedying this deficiency, this article argues for the importance of understanding Canada as a settler-colonial society, proposes a conceptualization of settler colonialism from the perspective of a historical materialism reconstructed through engagement with Indigenous anticolonial thought, and offers some preliminary reflections on integrating analysis of settler colonialism into historical and contemporary research on labour.

Joseph R. Smallwood was, for lack of a better term, a Newfoundlander for Newfoundland. Or so, that is how he portrayed himself. Under the first ten years of Confederation, Smallwood pushed a program of rapid industrialization. This program was largely unsuccessful. So, when the IWA [International Woodworkers of America] declared a strike on the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company in January 1959, which posed a significant threat to the province’s most prosperous industry (pulp and paper), Smallwood leapt into action. Rather than support the loggers’ elected union, he banned the IWA in favour of a provincial union that was to be run by Max Lane, President of the Fishermen’s Federation. Utilizing key documents from the Smallwood Collections at Archives and Special Collections, Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, this thesis examines the factors that led up to this decision, its outcome and ultimately, and why Smallwood chose to do what he did.

Canada’s unions are proud to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination with the release of a ground-breaking report on the impacts of Islamophobia in the workplace. [This report] explores the rise of anti-Muslim attitudes and discrimination in Canada. It provides recommendations for employers, trade unions, and government on how to address this pernicious phenomenon. --Website description

The article reviews the book, "Les discriminations au travail," by Stéphane Carcillo et Marie-Anne Valfort.

Two-part poem in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: 1) Prologue; or An introduction to (bourgeois) political economy; 2) Winnipeg: The strike, May-June 1919.

The article reviews the book, "Au coeur des cabinets d’audit et de conseil. De la distinction à la soumission," by Sébastien Stenger.

L’arrivée des plateformes numériques dans le paysage du travail canadien s’accompagne d’un recours croissant aux conventions imposant l’arbitrage (ou clauses compromissoires) comme mode de résolution des conflits. Les travailleurs de plateformes souhaitant faire reconnaître leur statut de salarié au sens des lois sur les normes d’emploi doivent donc s’adresser à un forum privé, parfois situé à l’extérieur du Canada. C’est dans ce contexte que l’invalidation d’une telle clause dans l’affaire Heller v Uber Technologies Inc par la Cour d’appel d’Ontario prend toute son importance. La Cour suprême ayant accepté d’entendre l’appel, empruntera-t-elle la voie du droit américain et permettra-t-elle que ces clauses fassent obstacle aux recours collectifs revendiquant la reconnaissance du statut de salarié ? Notre étude des jugements tant ontariens qu’américains sur la validité des clauses compromissoires liant Uber à ses chauffeurs révèle, à cet égard, le caractère déterminant de l’approche choisie par les tribunaux.

The article reviews the book, "Handbook on In-Work Poverty," edited by Henning Lohmann and Ive Marx.

La charge de travail des cadres est un phénomène bien documenté : la littérature sur le sujet souligne, entre autres, l’intensification du travail des cadres, ainsi que les effets des réorganisations sur cette intensification. Une étude de cas dans une administration ayant vécu une réorganisation, confrontée à la menace de l’ouverture à la concurrence et caractérisée par un modèle corporatiste, illustre ces points, tout en les accompagnant d’un constat qui incite à approfondir l’analyse. En effet, une première analyse quantitative descriptive révèle que la charge de travail, et surtout le travail « inintéressant », vont croissant quand on s’élève dans la hiérarchie, phénomène qui peut sembler à prime abord étonnant. Une enquête approfondie, qui combine approches quantitative et qualitative, et qui s’inscrit dans le cadre théorique de l’analyse systémique des organisations, permet alors de montrer en quoi la charge de travail est le fruit de facteurs variés. Ceux-ci peuvent être liés à l’ouverture à la concurrence, à la mise en place d’un système de reddition de compte contraignant, mais également à des stratégies mises en place par les différents acteurs afin de gérer leur travail en fonction des ressources à leur disposition et de leur position dans le système. Une typologie nous a conduite à identifier quatre groupes de cadres caractérisés par des perceptions et des stratégies homogènes relatives à la charge de travail. L’analyse systémique permet, ensuite, de comprendre ces stratégies à l’aune du système de l’établissement. Finalement, cette enquête souligne la structuration systémique de la charge de travail des cadres, tout comme l’intérêt d’une méthodologie mixte pour l’appréhender.

The article reviews by the book, "West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London's Industrialized Marshland, 1839-1914," by Jim Clifford.

The article reviews the book, "I Am Not a Tractor: How Florida Farmworkers Took on the Fast Food Giants and Won," by Susan L. Marquis.

The article reviews the book, "Not for Long: The Life and Times of the NFL Athlete," by Robert W. Turner II.

The article reviews the book, "Woman Enough: How a Boy became a Woman and Changed the World of Sport," by Kirsten Worley and Johanna Schneller.

Revealing how Canada's first Prime Minister used a policy of starvation against Indigenous people to clear the way for settlement, the multiple award-winning Clearing the Plains sparked widespread debate about genocide in Canada. In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics—the politics of ethnocide—played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Indigenous people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream. " It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day. This new edition of Clearing the Plains has a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Fenn, an opening by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, and explanations of the book’s influence by leading Canadian historians. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Indigenous Health, Environment, and Disease before Europeans -- The Early Fur Trade : Territorial Dislocation and Disease -- Early Competition and the Extension of Trade and Disease, 1740-82 -- Despair and Death during the Fur Trade Wars, 1783-1821 -- Expansion of Settlement and Erosion of Health during the HBC Monopoly, 1821-69 -- Canada, the Northwest, and the Treaty Period, 1869-76 -- Treaties, Famine, and Epidemic Transition on the Plains, 1877-82 -- Dominion Administration of Relief, 1883-85 -- The Nadir of Indigenous Health, 1886-91.

This article introduces a special issue critically investigating contemporary formations of digital game labor, with a focus on the political-economic forces, social inequalities, and technological dynamics mutually shaping these formations. Accounts of game industry practices have been at the forefront of efforts within media studies to document and theorize conditions and transformations of labor under digital capitalism. The study of digital game labor has tended to cluster around four areas of inquiry: below-the-line labor, the creative labor of game development, player-production, and game labor politics. Providing empirically informed portraits of diverse contexts and experiences of gamework, this issue interrogates multiple dimensions of precarious work and social exclusion within an industry whose playful self-image can make it a resistant object of labor-centered analysis. The contributors to this issue promote a research orientation that is attentive to how work in the digital game industry might be made more accessible and sustainable.

Recent research within employment relations has identified how employer collective organizations continue to thrive in countries featuring different institutional characteristics. In the UK, we identify 447 membership-based Employer Organizations (EOs) active within employment relations and human resource management. The volume of organizations identified prompts our research question: what explains the changing role and activities of UK EOs? Country-level studies of EOs continuation use a range of theoretical frameworks to analyze how these organizations have adapted to institutional and economic change, but the most effective mode of analysis is debated. Our contribution is to apply Schmitter and Streeck’s identification of logics driving the behaviour of employer collective organizations, previously applied to coordinated market economies as defined by the Varieties of Capitalism framework, to the UK’s liberal market economy. The article explores the extent to which liberalization prompted new behaviour within UK EOs. Some studies argue that EOs in coordinated market economies adapt by prioritizing logics driving influence over those linked to membership. We explore how the UK’s changing political economy spurred evolution in the application of logics and find that the opposite happened. EOs once used participation within collective bargaining agreements and the governance of tripartite bodies to prioritize the logic of influence but these institutions decayed. It might have been expected that such decay would have caused a withering of EOs but they reconstituted themselves instead. The declining salience of the logic of influence prompted employer bodies to focus to a greater degree on the logic of membership by offering a broader range of member-focused services. Our findings indicate that employer collective bodies can react to liberalization with adaptation, not extinction. We also argue that our methodology could shed light on EOs behaviour in North America.