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Organisées au printemps 1971 pour dénoncer l'intervention américaine au Vietnam, les conférences indochinoises constituent l'une des plus importantes tentatives de coalitions féministes de l'époque. L'événement incarne le projet de bâtir une sororité globale. Bien qu'abondamment critiqué dans l'historiographie, cet idéal est rarement analysé dans toute son ambiguïté : cet article propose donc d'historiciser la sororité et de mettre en lumière la complexité de ses usages politiques. Tout en reconnaissant l'importance des conflits entourant ce projet, nous souhaitons justement comprendre pourquoi, malgré tout, celui-ci s'impose comme cadre de référence partagé par une si grande diversité de militantes au tournant des années 1970., Cette relecture des conférences indochinoises permet de proposer une définition plus souple de la sororité globale : les discours sur la question reflètent les tiraillements d'un mouvement mû par l'urgence d'articuler les différentes subjectivités des femmes pour organiser une opposition massive et efficace à la guerre du Vietnam. La sororité sert ainsi de cadre de référence fédérateur suffisamment malléable pour permettre à diverses conceptions du féminisme de coexister et de s'entrechoquer. Elle permet ainsi de baliser un terrain à partir duquel une solidarité féministe pluraliste et débattue peut se développer.

In recent years, scholars of science and technology studies (STS) have increasingly turned their attention to the role of collective imagination in shaping sociotechnical futures. This scholarship leaves open the question of how the collectives involved in bringing these futures to life come into being. Starting with one episode in the ongoing conflict over the construction of Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory in settler-colonial Canada, this discourse analysis draws on scholarship in feminist, anticolonial, and co-productionist STS to study this process of collective formation in relation to sociotechnical futures. It does so by examining how oil and gas workers become enrolled into a sociotechnical imaginary I call Canadian resource techno-nationalism. Comparing media and politicians’ representations of oil and gas workers with White workers’ representations of themselves indicates that they can end up participating in this imaginary regardless of their affinity to it. Examining policy documents and scholarly literature about the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in impact assessment, as well as political debates and mainstream media coverage about the conflict over the Coastal GasLink pipeline, draws attention to how elites’ active construction and protection of the boundary between knowledge and politics works to enroll Indigenous people into oil and gas jobs and, therefore, into the collective performing Canadian resource techno-nationalism. In both cases, elite actors deploy the resources at their disposal in ways that help funnel oil and gas workers into lives imagined for them, securing the power of the settler state in the process. This dynamic illustrates the importance of disentangling participation in the collective performance of sociotechnical imaginaries from freely given consent. Residents of liberal states can end up performing dominant imaginaries less out of any sense of affinity to them than as a response to the disciplinary power these imaginaries help sustain.

The article reviews the book, "The Moderate Bolshevik: Mikhail Tomsky from the Factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936," by Charters Wynn.

Autoworkers unionized the General Motors plant in Oshawa in 1937 after a bitterly fought strike that pitted them against a rabidly anti-union government, hostile press and GM corporation. It was a major turning point in Canadian labour history. Crucial factors contributing to the strike’s success include the historical background of working-class struggle in the community, patient and courageous prior organizing by Communists, the engaged leadership of rank-and-file GM workers, and the solid support of the United Autoworkers International Union. The author focuses on the voices and actions of rank-and-file workers and on the day-to-day events, many of which have been misunderstood or misinterpreted. The Truth About the ’37 Oshawa GM Strike takes down the long-accepted—but false—narrative espoused by the academic Irving Abella that the Oshawa workers were “on their own” without significant support from the UAW/CIO leadership and that they would have been better off not to organize under the banner of an international union. It also shows how that narrative fails to grasp the degree to which class struggle organizing principles were crucial to the strike’s success. A true understanding of the ’37 strike provides valuable lessons for people seeking to revive the labour movement today. --Publisher's description

Indigenous communities have been in direct conflict with the Canadian state when asserting their right to self-determination. Literature reveals that the Canadian state interprets Indigenous resistance as a threat to settler authority, responding with violence and criminal enforcement. This thesis investigates the relationship between the norms related to Indigenous rights articulated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the institutional enforcement response to Indigenous resistance in the case of Mi’kmaw moderate livelihood fishing. Through a critical discourse analysis of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s public statements, policy documents, and recorded actions, this research found a discursive influence on state institutions. Despite the rhetorical commitments, this research found that state response continued an approach of criminalization and violence against Mi’kmaw moderate livelihood fishers. These contradictions between rhetoric and practice challenge the institutional legitimacy of settler authority.

The emergence, dominance, and alarmingly rapid retreat of modernist industrial capitalism on Cape Breton Island during the “long twentieth century” offers a particularly captivating window on the lasting and varied effects of deindustrialization. Now, at the tail end of the industrial moment in North American history, the story of Cape Breton Island presents an opportunity to reflect on how industrialization and deindustrialization have shaped human experiences. Covering the period between 1860 and the early 2000s, this volume looks at trade unionism, state and cultural responses to deindustrialization, including the more recent pivot towards the tourist industry, and the lived experiences of Indigenous and Black people. Rather than focusing on the separate or distinct nature of Cape Breton, contributors place the island within broad transnational networks such as the financial world of the Anglo-Atlantic, the Celtic music revival, the Black diaspora, Canadian development programs, and more. In capturing the vital elements of a region on the rural resource frontier that was battered by deindustrialization, the histories included here show how the interplay of the state, cultures, and transnational connections shaped how people navigated these heavy pressures, both individually and collectively. --Publisher's description

For more than fifty years, Jamaican farm workers have been seasonally employed in Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). In Canada, these workers live and work in conditions that make them vulnerable to various health issues, including poor mental health. This ethnographic study investigated Jamaican SAWP workers’ mental health experiences in Southern Ontario. Several common factors that engender psychological distress among Jamaican workers, ranging from mild to extreme suffering, were uncovered and organised into five themes: (1) family, (2) work environments and SAWP relations, (3) living conditions and isolation, (4) racism and social exclusion, and (5) illness and injury. I found that Jamaican workers predominantly use the term ‘stress’ to articulate distress, and they associate experiences of suffering with historic plantation slavery. Analysis of workers’ stress discourses revealed their experiences of psychological distress are structured by the conditions of the SAWP and their social marginalisation in Ontario. This article presents and discusses these findings in the context of SAWP power dynamics and concludes with policy recommendations aimed at improving the mental health of all SAWP workers. In foregrounding the experiences of Jamaican workers, this study addresses the dearth of research on the health and wellbeing of Caribbean SAWP workers.

This study explores ableism within higher education through an examination of the collective agreements and institutional policies that govern the academic responsibilities of disabled faculty members. Critical disability theory serves as the theoretical framework for this study, which employs both institutional ethnography and qualitative content analysis in the review of the publicly available documents from English speaking U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities (n=13). The study unfolds in three parts: Part I presents the findings from the analysis of the collective agreements and institutional policies outlining the tenure and promotion process and the barriers disabled faculty members experience in fulfilling their academic responsibilities. Part II explores the tensions and contradictions between institutional accommodation processes and the language used in their public presentation of EDI initiatives, while Part III represents the everyday experiences of disabled faculty members though interviews, representing the embodiment and internalization of the texts examined in parts I and II. This research challenges and disrupts normative understandings of what it means to be a “good academic”, by addressing an absence in the literature exploring ableist representations and assumptions present in collective agreements and institutional policies. The examination of these texts and the lived experiences of disabled faculty members through interviews has illuminated the existing contradictions and tensions in these texts, showing ableism is strongly entrenched and condoned in university policies and governance.

Given the importance of the fishing industry to the Newfoundland economy and identity, understanding the realities of fish work in the province allows for a deeper understanding of labour practices, safety regulations, and the health of the many fisheries the bolster that Newfoundland economy and identity. Initially designed to assess the working experiences of migrant workers on Canadian fishing boats, this thesis turns to domestic workers to unpack labour realties and address the potential of exploitative and abusive practices that help chart fishing among one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. This research took place in Newfoundland in October of 2022, where crew members, boat captains, their owners, and industry and union representatives were approached to gather work experiences and opinions on the broader regional fishing industry in the province. From these experiences, an assessment of how and if exploitative working conditions can be improved utilizes existing and proposed international labour conventions, understandings of unionization, and the political economy, to represent exploitative labour conditions along a continuum. The evolving and changing economic and environmental realities of fishing both globally and in eastern Canada highlight how an already risk-taking, masculine, and community focused industry lives with, is shaped by, and can work towards limiting, the more damaging forms of exploitation. This thesis utilizes qualitative data to inform its assessment of precarious labour realities at sea in the Newfoundland fishing industry to further advocate for the move towards regionalized and industry specific seafarer support mechanisms. Through promoting these mechanisms, such as a seafarer support centre and the ratification of the Work in Fishing Convention (C188), this research calls for Newfoundland's fishing industry to lead the way towards better practices nationally.

Critiques Bryan Palmer's essay, "The Past is Before Us," published in the same issue. The paper was originally presented as a set of comments at the conference, Challenging Labour conference/Le défi du travail, Mount Royal University, Calgary, October 2022. Author hagwil hayetsk is also known as Charles Menzies.

This thesis explores the lived experiences of international students in Canada, examining the impacts and outcomes of Canada’s International Student Program (ISP) that positions students as not only educational participants but also flexible economic assets. Through a brief review of international student policy developments, it is argued that these changes reflect a deliberate effort to commodify international students' labor to meet Canadian labor market demands. The thesis also draws on migration literature to highlight the exploitative risks inherent in foreign labor pathways, applying these concerns to the International Student Program. Through the use of qualitative semi-structured interviews with international students and support professionals, this study reveals the challenges students face under these policies including permit or program navigation, financial instability, and most notably adverse impacts on well-being. This study highlights the complex relationship between Canada’s various mobility programs and notes the benefits of utilizing qualitative methodologies in researching program outcomes.

The article reviews the book, "Théories féministes voyageuses. Internationalisme et coalitions depuis les luttes latinoaméricaines," by Mara Montanaro.

Although counterintuitive for many academics and lay people alike, the Canadian environmental movement has long included significant engagement from organized labour. More surprising, perhaps, the most dedicated labour environmentalists came from unions representing workers in the auto, steel, mining, chemical, and oil industries. This was certainly the case in Alberta during the 1970s. There, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (ocaw) used their outsized influence within the Alberta Federation of Labour (afl) to conjoin growing concern about occupational health and safety with developing awareness about air and water pollution beyond the workplace. Drawing on fonds at the University of Calgary Glenbow Archives, Provincial Archives of Alberta, and Library and Archives Canada, this article chronicles and assesses efforts by ocaw officials within the afl to introduce and sustain a labour environmentalist agenda. It also makes an argument for historians interested in the origins and evolution of the Canadian environmental movement to pay closer attention to organized labour.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, public officials, reformers, journalists, and other elites have referred to “the labour question.” The labour question was rooted in the system of wage labour that spread throughout much of Europe and its colonies and produced contending classes as industrialization unfolded. Answers to the Labour Question explores how the liberal state responded to workers’ demands that employers recognize trade unions as their legitimate representatives in their struggle for compensation and control over the workplace. Gary Mucciaroni examines five Anglophone nations – Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States – whose differences are often overlooked in the literature on political economy, which lumps them together as liberal, “market-led” economies. Despite their many shared characteristics and common historical origins, these nations’ responses to the labour question diverged dramatically. Mucciaroni identifies the factors that explain why these nations developed such different industrial relations regimes and how the paths each nation took to the adoption of its regime reflected a different logic of institutional change. Drawing on newspaper accounts, parliamentary debates, and personal memoirs, among other sources, Answers to the Labour Question aims to understand the variety of state responses to industrial unrest and institutional change beyond the domain of industrial relations. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Questioning the Entrepreneurial State: Status-Quo, Pitfalls, and the Need for Credible Innovation Policy," by Karl Wennberg and Christian Sandström.

Some shocking statistics underpin Adrian Murray's examination of COVID=19 in Canada: underfunded and poorly regulated for-profit care homes for the aged experienced a death rate four times that of public care homes. Murray details the uneven impacts of the pandemic in Canada, with the burden falling hardest on those in precarious work, women, black, Indigenous and other racalised groups - as shaped by Canada's colonial history of dispossession and racism, now exacerbated by neoliberal economic policies. Murray highlights the contradictions of Canadian exceptionalism, suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic be read through the lens of a colonial present epitomised by internal inequalities and internationally by hoarding of vaccines. --From editor's introduction

The article reviews the book, "After Populism: The Agrarian Left on the Northern Plains, 1900-1960," by William C. Pratt.

The Centre for Future Work has released new research regarding union coverage and wages across different racialized categories of Canadian workers. The report also contains a review of efforts by Canadian unions to improve their representation of Black and racialized workers, and recommendations for strengthening the union movement’s practices. ---Website, 2024/08/13

The article reviews the book, "Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America," by Margot Canaday.

Quebec jurisprudence in civil matters constitutes a valuable source for the history of work and employment. It reveals a vast range of conflicts experienced among workers during the transition to industrial capitalism and the way in which the judicial system proceeded to regulate such conflicts. Working with 128 reported cases, the author examines the fate of lawsuits filed by – or against – ordinary workers, factory workers, day labourers and carters, workers directly affected by the levy of surplus value generated by physical labor and through the free play of power relations in the economic world. Six categories of disputes mark this jurisprudence: divisions established by law among manual labour (notably under the legislation on masters and servants); failure to pay wages; the difficult implementation of worker privileges; challenges to employer discipline; the imposition of damages during work; and, finally, the hazards of seizures carried out against workers. Many indicators betray the incapacity of bringing together civil law and civil justice, as instruments of social regulation, in order to take precautions against the profound fragility of wage-earning status in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.