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Chinese migrant workers in North America have typically been regarded in two ways by historians: either as competitive threats to white workers, or as workers isolated within ethnic niches. Few scholars have examined cases where Chinese workers complemented or supported the labour of others. This thesis looks at Chinese labour in British Columbia’s salmon canning industry between 1871 and 1941, arguing that Chinese workers were foundational to white fishing jobs in the province. Drawing on company records, Government reports, newspapers, and oral interviews, I examine Chinese manual labour, labour politics, and wages as three areas where Chinese workers upheld the labour of fishers in a nominally “white” industry. As such, this thesis offers a different outlook on the structural entanglement of race and labour in British Columbia in the seventy years after the province joined the Canadian Confederation.

This article reviews the book, "A Vanished Ideology: Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-Speaking World in the Twentieth Century," edited by Matthew B. Hoffman and Henry F. Srebrnik.

Bryan M. Evans, Stephen McBride, and their contributors delve further into the more practical, ground-level side of the austerity equation in Austerity: The Lived Experience. Economically, austerity policies cannot be seen to work in the way elite interests claim that they do. Rather than soften the blow of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 for ordinary citizens, policies of austerity slow growth and lead to increased inequality. While political consent for such policies may have been achieved, it was reached amidst significant levels of disaffection and strong opposition to the extremes of austerity. The authors build their analysis in three sections, looking alternatively at theoretical and ideological dimensions of the lived experience of austerity; how austerity plays out in various public sector occupations and policy domains; and the class dimensions of austerity. The result is a ground-breaking contribution to the study of austerity politics and policies. Contents: Austerity as lived experience: An introduction / Bryan Evans and Stephen McBride. Pt. 1. Theory and ideology. Introduction: Manufacturing the common sense of austerity / Bryan Evans and McBride -- Articulating austerity and authoritarianism: Re-imagining moral economies? / John Clarke -- Speaking austerity: Policy rhetoric and design beyond fiscal consolidation / Sorin Mitrea -- No deal capitalism: Austerity and the unmaking of the North American middle class / Eric Pineault -- Framing the economic case for Austerity: The “expansionary fiscal contraction hypothesis” / Ellen Russell. Pt. 2. Impact and consequences. Introduction: Austerity on the ground / Evans and McBride -- Care and control in long term care work / Donna Baines -- ‘Negotiate your way back to zero’: Teacher bargaining and austerity in Ontario, Canada / Brendan A. Sweeny and Robert S. Hickey -- Austerity and the low wage economy: Living and other wages / Bryan Evans, Stephen McBride, and Jacob Muirhead -- Immigration in an age of austerity: Morality, the welfare state and the shaping of the ideal migrant / Susan Barrass and John Shields -- Pension reforms in the context of the global financial crisis: A reincarnation of pension privatization through austerity / Yanqiu Rachel Zhou and Shih-Jiun Shi. Pt. 3. Class, resistance, alternative. Introduction: The old strategies don’t work. So what’s possible? / Bryan Evans and Stephen McBride -- From austerity to structural reform: The erosion of the European social model(s) / Christophe Hermann -- Austerity of imagination: Quebec’s struggles in translating resistance into alternatives / Peter Graefe and Hubert Rioux -- Social democracy and social pacts: Austerity alliances and their consequences / Bryan Evans -- Austerity and political crisis: The radical left, the far right and Europe’s new authoritarian order / Neil Burron -- Conclusion.

In this paper, Fay Faraday explores how to provide workers in the on-demand service economy protection under the Employment Standards and Labour Relations Acts. Ontario’s Bill 148 – the Fair Workplace Better Jobs Act, 2017 – should provide protections to workers in precarious employment in the 21st century labour market. Workers in the on-demand service sector are at the forefront of both precarity and technological change. This paper provides guidance on how Bill 148 could be amended to extend protections to these workers. --Website description

Families who work for low wages face impossilbe choices--buy food or heat the house, feed the children or pay the rent. The result can be spiralling debt, constant anxiety and long-term health problems. This reports breaks out the differences in actual costs for single parent and two-parent families in three locations in the province of Manitoba: Winnipeg, Brandon, Thompson. And with these real costs proposes a living wage for these families.

Have Indigenous people in Canada been active as wage labourers and union members? If so, what have been the circumstances? When and where and for what reasons have Indigenous people worked for wages and been union members and how have they fared in these roles? In this short paper we examine a wide range of recent studies that have looked at various aspects of these questions. In particular, we examine the role that unions have played with Indigenous wage workers, and with Indigenous people who have sought to work for wages, and we consider some recent initiatives that unions have taken to meet the needs of Indigenous workers. Such efforts are especially significant in an era when the numbers of Indigenous workers entering the labour market are growing rapidly, and when the labour force as a whole is becoming increasingly diverse. --Introduction

The article reviews the book, "Radical Theatrics: Put-ons, Politics and the Sixties," by Craig J. Peariso.

This article reviews the book, "Civic Labors: Scholar Activism and Working-Class Studies," edited by Dennis Deslippe, Eric Fure-Slocum, and John W. McKerley.

In the employment context in Ontario, jurisdiction over human rights claims is now shared between the Human Rights Tribunal, the courts, and labour arbitra- tors. This paper compares human rights damages awarded by statutory tribunals, civil courts, and labour arbitrators in Ontario with a view to identifying trends and to understanding whether remedial outcomes are likely to vary depending on the litigant's choice of forum. After reviewing the statutory basis for the awarding of human rights damages, and the criteria which adjudicators have developed in quantifying the appropriate amount of compensation, the author turns to a detailed analysis of cases in which such damages were ordered by statutory tribunals, arbi- trators, and judges. The author finds that while decision-makers apply largely the same remedial principles in assessing damages, historically, the amount of monet- ary awards have varied considerably across fora. The author suggests, however, that the Ontario Court of Appeal's recent decision in Strudwick, explicitly adopt- ing the remedial principles articulated by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and making a substantial award of damages, may promote greater consistency and predictability in the assessment of human rights damages.

The article reviews the book, "The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild," by Miranda J. Banks.

Background: How the media frames and presents a subject influences how society sees and responds to that issue. Analysis: This study uses frame analysis to examine how Canadian English language newspapers portrayed workplace injuries between 2009 and 2014. Three frames emerge: Under Investigation, Human Tragedy, and Before the Courts. There is also a meta-frame casting injuries and fatalities as isolated events happening to “others” with no cause, thus the public ought not be concerned about workplace safety. Conclusion and implications: The article concludes that media frames obscure issues of cause and fault, thereby denying workers a full understanding of why injuries happen in the workplace. These frames serve the interests of employers by obfuscating the employer’s role in creating workplace injury and death.

In 2007, the Alberta government and the Alberta construction industry developed a ten-year strategy to increase the participation of women, youth, Indigenous peoples, and immigrants in construction occupations. At the same time, construction employers began turning to temporary foreign workers (tfws) as an alternative labour supply, and the number of tfws working in Alberta construction jumped dramatically. This article examines the labour market effects of the influx of tfws on employment rates of other marginalized groups in construction occupations. Alberta is a valuable case study because it employed greater numbers of tfws in construction between 2003 and 2013 than any other province. Drawing upon labour market segmentation theory, this study finds that the proportion of traditionally underrepresented workers in construction occupations was essentially unchanged over the study period. These groups of workers experienced higher-than-average employment volitility and remain a secondary source of labour supply. This study also finds that tfws have become a new, hyperflexible source of secondary labour. The article discusses possible explanations for the findings and evaluates the effectiveness of the government's ten-year strategy.

The paper examines the experience of C.B. Wade (1906–1982), a chartered accountant and university instructor who was recruited to work for organized labour during the period of transition from wartime mobilization to postwar reconstruction at the end of the Second World War. In hiring Wade in 1944, District 26 of the United Mine Workers of America became one of the first Canadian unions to employ a research director to help address the challenges of the new age of industrial legality and advance their social democratic agenda. The paper discusses Wade's background, including his involvement in the Workers' Educational Association, and documents his contributions to the work of the coal miners' union, including the efforts to promote public ownership of the industry. In addition, the paper discusses Wade's unpublished history of the union, a manuscript that has had a long life as an underground classic. While the negotiation of the postwar compromises between labour, capital and the state gave union staff such as Wade an increasingly central role in labour relations, this was not a stable context, and the paper also considers the deepening Cold War conditions that led to the end of his employment in 1950. In the context of labour and working-class history, Wade can be associated with a relatively small cohort of politically engaged intellectuals who made lasting contributions to the research capacity of unions and to the field of labour studies.

This research project examines systemic forms of racism that limit the employment chances of racialized workers in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) labour market. Through a situated analysis of racialized workers, institutional actors, and public policies, I explore the nuances of racialized individuals encounters with discriminatory hiring practices and job promotion procedures that exist in the labour market. Through the perspectives of racialized workers lived experiences, and by bringing into question the employment practices of hiring managers and human resource personnel, this project addresses the following key questions: 1) How do racialized workers negotiate their movement through places of employment in the Toronto CMA? 2) How might we understand the operation of racism in hiring practices and what are the mechanisms under which it remains institutionally entrenched? This research critiques the organizational cultures of private companies that are configured as spaces of whiteness.

This article reviews the book, "Daunting Enterprise of the Law: Essays in Honour of Harry W. Arthurs," edited by Simon Archer, Daniel Drache and Peer Zumbansen.

Les rapports entre travail et temps se sont profondément transformés ces vingt dernières années. cet article s’intéresse à l’un des aspects de ces transformations, à savoir le débordement de plus en plus fréquent du travail sur le temps personnel, en particulier chez les cadres en France. Il vise plus spécifiquement à répondre à deux questions. tout d’abord, quelle est l’ampleur de ce phénomène chez les cadres français ? Deuxièmement, quels sont ses déterminants ? En utilisant des données quantitatives colligées auprès de plus de mille cadres par un syndicat, notre recherche permet de mieux cerner le phénomène du débordement du travail sur le temps personnel. Finalement, les variables liées aux caractéristiques du travail et à l’utilisation des technologies ont une incidence beaucoup plus significative sur le débordement du travail que les variables sociodémographiques testées.

Policies for the southern Ontario automotive cluster support multiple collaborative research projects designed for the application of enabling technologies. However, these initiatives cater to a small percentage of highly innovative automotive suppliers and exclude much of the traditional manufacturing base. This stands in contrast to automotive clusters in Detroit, MI; the West Midlands, United Kingdom; and Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where applied research collaborations target the entire supply chain. With respect to policy implications, we argue that new forms of industrial coordination emerging in competitor regions may offer critical policy lessons for Ontario on how to stem the erosion of innovation capabilities in its automotive supply base.

The Institute for Research on Public Policy, in collaboration with the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network, has gathered some of the country’s leading experts to provide new evidence on the causes and effects of growing income inequality in Canada and the role of policy. Their research and analysis is collected in this volume, the fifth in the IRPP’s The Art of the State series. --Publisher's description

This article reviews the book, "The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West," by Ryan Dearinger.

This dissertation examines the impact of the development of diamond mines in the Yellowknife region, Northwest Territories (NWT), asking two questions: how has the diamond-mining regime affected the gendered social relations in the regional racialized mixed economy? And, how can violence against Indigenous women living in the region be situated in the context of structural shifts in the mixed economy? The analysis developed in response to these questions is informed by a theorization of the mixed economy as a dynamic set of social relations characterized by tension between the temporal imperatives of capitalist production and the place-based imperatives of subsistence. Taking a decolonizing, feminist political economy (FPE) approach, this dissertation responded to these questions by drawing on documentary analysis, interviews, and talking circles to examine the often invisibilized labour performed by Indigenous women that reproduces the mixed economy. The central contention is that the diamond-mining regime represents a new imposition upon daily and intergenerational social reproduction performed by Indigenous women, an imposition that is sometimes violent, and that is met with resistance. The dissertation unfolds in six substantive chapters. Building on a theoretical and historical grounding offered in chapters one and two, chapters three-five draw on field research to examine shifts in local relations of capitalist production, social reproduction, and subsistence production. The analysis reveals that the Fly-In-Fly-Out (FIFO) diamond-mining regime, itself a spatial articulation of the capitalist separation between (masculinized) capitalist production and (feminized) social reproduction, introduces, or, in some cases, intensifies a nuclear male-breadwinner/female-caregiver structure. Woven through this analysis is an examination of the relationship between structural and embodied violence. Indeed, the structural shifts imposed by the diamond-mining regime characterized in this dissertation as structural violence contribute to Indigenous womens experiences of embodied violence in the Yellowknife region. At the same time, Indigenous women meet these shifts with decolonizing resistance in the form of the day-to-day labours they perform to reproduce the place-based social relations of the mixed economy.