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This study examines the emergence of the New Left organization, The New Tendency, in Windsor, Ontario during the 1970s. The New Tendency, which developed in a number of Ontario cities, represents one articulation of the Canadian New Left's turn towards working-class organizing in the early 1970s after the student movement's dissolution in the late 1960s. Influenced by dissident Marxist theorists associated with the Johnson-Forest Tendency and Italian workerism, The New Tendency sought to create alternative forms of working-class organizing that existed outside of, and often in direct opposition to, both the mainstream labour movement and Old Left organizations such as the Communist Party and the New Democratic Party. After examining the roots of the organization and the important legacies of class struggle in Windsor, the thesis explores how The New Tendency contributed to working-class self activity on the shop-floor of Windsor's auto factories and in the community more broadly. However, this New Left mobilization was also hampered by inner-group sectarianism and a rapidly changing economic context. Ultimately, the challenges that coincided with The New Tendency's emergence in the 1970s led to its dissolution. While short-lived, the history of the Windsor branch of The New Tendency helps provide valuable insight into the trajectory of the Canadian New Left and working-class struggle in the 1970s, highlighting experiences that have too often been overlooked in previous scholarship. Furthermore, this study illustrates the transnational development of New Left ideas and organizations by examining The New Tendency's close connections to comparable groups active in manufacturing cities in Europe and the United States; such international relationships and exchanges were vital to the evolution of autonomist Marxism around the world. Finally, the Windsor New Tendency's history is an important case study of the New Left's attempts to reckon with a transitional moment for global capitalism, as the group's experiences coincided with the Fordist accord's death throes and the beginning of neoliberalism's ascendancy.

This article explores the experiences of construction-industry workers commuting to major project sites with a view to broadening understandings of the meaning and impact of the development of extractive industries in Newfoundland and Labrador since the 1990s. Theoretically, the article draws upon and develops the concept of “mobilities regimes,” a formulation that locates relations of power and inequality in the co-constitution of mobility and institutional structures. The empirical findings are based on research conducted between December 2014 and June 2016 as part of the On the Move Partnership, a research initiative examining employment-related geographical mobility (e-rgm) in a variety of sectors and provinces across Canada. The focus is on mobility associated with projects that fall under the provincial Special Project Order (spo) legislation. A total of 60 interviews to date have been conducted with workers as well as with key informants, including government officials, employers, and labour organizations. The central argument is that a mobilities regime is discernible not only in policies and project documents produced by governments, employers, and labour organizations, but also in the experiences of workers. These gendered experiences reveal that Newfoundland and Labrador’s spo projects enable people who may otherwise commute interprovincially to work close to home, but this work has contradictory meanings for the men and women involved due to the mobility it entails. By making visible the experiences of workers in the mobilities regimes of much-celebrated projects, the article encourages reflection on the effects on workers and their families of the underlying capitalist imperatives driving Newfoundland and Labrador’s contemporary economic transition.

The article reviews the book, "Syndicalisme et santé au travail," edited by Lucie Goussard et Guillaume Tiffon.

Employment and working conditions having an impact on health and safety are some of the most important concerns of workers. Amongst the various means by which trade unions contribute to prevention, the contribution of Worker Safety Representatives (WSR) is well-established and the most studied, including their participation in joint occupational health and safety committees (JOHSC). However, there are surprisingly few studies examining the place of OHS as an issue of workers’ collective action. Conducted with a large Quebec Central Labour Body, this study aims to understand why and how local-level unions concentrate upon these issues, the repertoire of means that they employ and the context that supports or hindus such actions. The conceptual framework is based on previous realistic evaluations of OHS preventive interventions and includes Levesque and Murray’s (2010) trade union power resources and strategic capabilities. In phase I, eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted with union staff members and elected representatives from different sectors, covering a wide array of activities such as unionization, training, negotiation, OHS prevention and compensation. Results also refer to five case studies (phase 2) of local-level trade unions identified by phase 1 respondents as particularly active in relation to prevention. The process by which working conditions having a negative impact on OHS are framed (or not) as trade union issues is examined. Levers and barriers are also identified. Factors affecting the presence of resources for trade union autonomous action aimed at prevention (like the integration of WSR to the union core structure, release time for prevention, etc.) are highlighted. A widely diverse repertoire of workplace-level trade union means of action for OHS is also highlighted by the interviews and case studies, not limited just to those provided by the Quebec OHS regime. It includes the recourse to labour relations mechanisms (e.g. negotiation and strike) and is based on an autonomous agenda, including mobilization. The potential of OHS issues for union revitalization is discussed, as well as the barriers that must be overcome.

How does the current labour market training system function and whose interests does it serve? In this introductory textbook, Bob Barnetson wades into the debate between workers and employers, and governments and economists to investigate the ways in which labour power is produced and reproduced in Canadian society. After sifting through the facts and interpretations of social scientists and government policymakers, Barnetson interrogates the training system through analysis of the political and economic forces that constitute modern Canada. This book not only provides students of Canada’s division of labour with a general introduction to the main facets of labour-market training—including skills development, post-secondary and community education, and workplace training—but also encourages students to think critically about the relationship between training systems and the ideologies that support them. --Publisher's description.

This study examines the ethical management of workers with disability (WWD) employed at two social enterprises in Australia. Viewed largely through the spectrum of institutionally-based conflict in the employment relationship, this research draws on a framework of situated moral agency (Wilcox, 2012) to establish the ways in which WWD are afforded opportunities to engage in work and how managers and supervisors practise situated moral agency at the workplace. A qualitative case study approach is used with 62 participants through semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Key findings demonstrate supervisors constantly have to reshape and reinterpret human resource management (HRM) policies and practices to exercise and extend moral agency. This phenomenon suggests contradictions between moral agency and ethical management practice within current HRM regimes. The key message of the paper is that HRM does not always support the ethical management of WWD. Consequently, we question the ethical nature of contemporary HRM policy and practice for WWD, and argue for further research to unpack ethical ways to more effectively support WWD in the workplace. For WWD to be included at work, achieve life skills and their goals, managers and supervisors need to engage with their moral agency. Finally, we draw implications for management and employment relations theory and practice.

This paper proposes a structurationist model that revises the notion of actors in industrial relations (Bellemare, 2000), reconsiders the frontiers of the industrial relations system (Bellemare and Briand 2006, Legault and Bellemare, 2008) and encompasses the developments of "life politics." This model is illustrated by the influence of users/patients on the work organization and governance bodies of a University Hospital in France, as well as on the health care system (public policies, research priorities, etc.).

Cet ouvrage réunit les actes du colloque tenu à Montréal le 11 mai 2017 dans le cadre du congrès de l'Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS) sous le thème «Régulation sociale et juridique : quel avenir pour le régime des décrets de convention collective au Québec ??». Il fait le point sur ce régime en vigueur depuis 1934 et régi par la Loi sur les décrets de convention collective. Le livre comprend deux parties. La première, qui porte sur les décrets et les acteurs sociaux, présente un état des lieux aussi bien au plan historique qu'en termes d'expériences très actuelles, éprouvées par les grandes organisations patronales et syndicales. La seconde partie propose un regard vers le futur et met en lumière certaines voies et hypothèses de changements susceptibles de bonifier le régime juridique. --Publisher's description

La culpabilité est une émotion couramment éprouvée dans la vie quotidienne. L’objectif de cette recherche était de l’étudier dans le cadre du travail. Une recherche exploratoire a donc été menée afin, d’une part, d’identifier les situations générant de la culpabilité au travail ainsi que les effets de cette émotion et, d’autre part, de déterminer si la culpabilisation est une stratégie de management permettant d’obtenir davantage de travail de la part des salariés. Les personnes interviewées sont des salariés aux profils variés selon l’âge, le sexe, le poste occupé, le secteur d’activité, la taille de l’entreprise et le statut. Vingt-huit entretiens semi-directifs ont ainsi été menés. Les résultats identifient les caractéristiques de la culpabilité éprouvée au travail en révélant que cette dernière est familière, d’intensité et de fréquence variables, et évolutive. L’analyse des entretiens révèle aussi huit situations génératrices de culpabilité qui sont liées aux phénomènes suivants : une absence ou un retard, la perception d’un travail globalement mal fait, des demandes ou des promesses non suivies, des comportements ou attitudes non corrects, des caractéristiques personnelles (par exemple, un manque de compétence), un client ou un collègue qui souffrent et ne peuvent être aidés, un manque de temps ainsi que l’impact du travail sur la vie privée. Cette recherche montre que la culpabilité ressentie génère une gêne chez les personnes. Mais elle a, surtout, des effets positifs sur le travail réalisé par les salariés. La culpabilité a généralement un effet bénéfique sur les efforts au travail, sauf quand cette émotion est trop intense. La culpabilisation est un autre axe important de cette étude. Si elle est bien constatée par les répondants, il en ressort qu’elle est jugée inefficace lorsqu’elle émane des supérieurs. Elle est alors rejetée et mal vécue. Cet article ouvre des perspectives de recherche afin, d’une part, d’approfondir la place et le rôle de cette émotion et, d’autre part, de développer des implications managériales en termes de bien-être au travail et de performance au travail.

The works of Karl Marx have been central to the formation of a body of critical communication scholarship in Canada. But as Nicole S. Cohen adeptly shows, the influence of Marx’s thought has been absent, mostly, as it relates to questions involving cultural labourers. Of particular interest to her is Marx’s formulation concerning exploitation and its relationship to the field of journalism as it affects freelance writers. This dissertation extends the notion of a “missing Marx” by incorporating other concepts from his oeuvre. His writings on alienation help to address one of two major research questions posed in this dissertation. The first being: why is it that freelance writers in Canada are willing to work for such low levels of remuneration? Historically, a dichotomous rendering has prevailed as to whether exploitation or alienation provides a better explanatory framework for understanding the experiences of workers—in this case, freelance writers. One of the aims of this work is to bring alienation and exploitation into conversation with one another. This requires an analytical investigation of the journalistic labour process. Ideas of craft have helped shape identity and understandings of work in the journalistic field over a few centuries now. This understanding segues into the second research question: at this juncture of deepening capitalist crises, and subsequent renewed interest in craft modes of production, what relevance do these forces have in the lives of contemporary freelance writers? This dissertation addresses both of the above research questions as well as the aforementioned phenomenon through interviews of Canadian freelance writers in the spirit of Marx’s workers’ inquiry. These 25 interviews in combination with documentary analysis of the historically changing conditions of journalism explore the pertinence of the field’s craft sensibility upon its freelance workforce under circumstances of intensifying alienation. Statements from informants reveal the craft dimensions of the labour process as both a source of domination and of resistance as well as playing a possible future role in the enactment of broader class struggles.

While precarious work is a phenomenon often associated with non-professional workers, the emerging case of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) calls for a new framework building on scholarship on both precarious work and the professions. An in-depth case study of NTTF in southern Ontario shows how a new phenomenon of ‘precarious professionals’ is emerging. Drawing on sixty semi-structured interviews with faculty members, university administrators and union representatives across southern Ontario, I analyze workers’ experiences in temporary contract work in the academic profession, and their views on the way certain types of professional work are valued. Building off previous literature on precarious work, gender and work, and professional work, this thesis defines precarious professionals as highly skilled workers who do professional work that is valued and devalued along lines of gender. Their experiences in temporary contract work marginalize them economically and professionally in complex and compounding ways that trap them between identifying as precarious workers and as professionals. Union organizers and activists draw on a two-pronged approach that addresses both dimensions of precarious worker and professional identities. This thesis shows variation in workers’ experiences, suggesting that not all temporary contract workers become precarious professionals, and shows how that variation can be explained.

This paper critically examines official statistics on workplace fatalities in Canada. Each year the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada reports on the number of workers who die from a work-related injury or illness/disease. The problem, however, is that these data report the number of deaths that were accepted for compensation; it is not a system for tracking all work-related deaths. Drawing from a range of data sources and employing a broad definition of what constitutes death at work we attempt to generate a more accurate estimate of the number of work-related fatalities in Canada. In so doing our goal is not to produce a definitive number of annual deaths at work – an impossibility given the paucity of data sources – but instead to challenge dominant ways of conceptualizing what constitutes a work-related fatality and thus contribute to ongoing efforts to raise academic, political, and public awareness about this important issue. In this sense our goal is to question whether official statistics regarding workplace fatalities are complete when set against a broader understanding of what constitutes death at work.

Examines anti-unionism in professional sport through a case study of ongoing efforts to organize players in the Canadian Hockey League, the world's largest development hockey league.

A specialized agency of the United Nations that predates both the United Nations and the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Labour Organization (ILO) was founded at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and was part of the Treaty of Versailles. This paper is a deliberate exercise in remembering the history of the ILO. It recalls the historical ideal of international labour law (ILL) in the ILO’s founding to explain the renewed relevance of ILL in the midst of global restructuring. The paper traces a similar trajectory through the story of ILL in the Canadian courts. Throughout, the paper suggests that the evolution of ILL, internationally and in Canada, constitutes a crucial basis upon which to build ILL’s transnational futures.

The articles reviews the book, "La désindustrialisation : une fatalité ?," edited by Jean-Claude Daumas, Ivan Kharaba and Philippe Mioche.

The labourers at the heart of this study built the canals and railways undertaken as public works by the colonial governments of British North America and the federal government of Canada between 1841 and 1882. Ruth Bleasdale's fascinating journey into the little-known lives of these labourers and their families reveals how capital, labour and the state came together to build the transportation infrastructure that linked colonies and united an emerging nation. Combining census and community records, government documents, and newspaper archives Bleasdale elucidates the ways in which successive governments and branches of the state intervened between labour and capital and in labourers' lives. Case studies capture the remarkable diversity across regions and time in a labour force drawn from local and international labour markets. The stories here illuminate the ways in which men and women experienced the emergence of industrial capitalism and the complex ties which bound them to local and transnational communities. Rough Work is an accessibly written yet rigorous study of the galvanization of a major segment of Canada's labour force over four decades of social and economic transformation. --Publisher's description

The late 19th and early 20th centuries evidenced extreme changes in industry and urbanization which fueled the movement of people worldwide. Included in this movement was an African Diaspora migration up and out of the Caribbean Basin and into the United States and elsewhere, as people sought to escape economic hardships within the region. Some took the opportunity to make their way to Sydney, Nova Scotia, where they labored for the Dominion Iron and Steel Company. The story of their migration to Cape Breton is of interest because they have remained a footnote in Canadian migration history. This thesis offers an opportunity to look at the lived experiences of these African Caribbean migrants and the community they created in Whitney Pier. This community served to spread notions of racial uplift and Black nationalism, evidenced by its involvement in the then growing Garvey movement.

L’évolution de l’emploi au Québec et au Canada est marquée par la multiplication des statuts d’emploi, la précarisation et la résurgence du phénomène des travailleurs et travailleuses pauvres. Après un rapide rappel des transformations marquant un glissement vers des politiques néolibérales survenues à la fin des années 1970, nous examinons les récentes transformations de la politique sociale liée au travail à l’ère de l’austérité. Pour ce qui est du gouvernement fédéral, nous examinons le programme d’assurance-emploi ainsi que les programmes concernant les travailleurs migrants temporaires. Pour ce qui est du gouvernement du Québec, nous nous attardons surtout sur les politiques d’aide sociale, ainsi que sur les services de garde à l’enfance. Nous traitons ces programmes en tant que politiques d’emploi et mettons en relief le rôle joué par l’État dans l’approfondissement du virage néolibéral amorcé il y a maintenant près de quarante ans.

Cet article vise, en s’appuyant sur L’Enquête Conditions de travail (2013), à construire une typologie des professions relevant d’un statut « ouvrier » ou « employé » à partir du niveau et du type de qualité de l’emploi qu’elles induisent. Cette approche de la qualité d’emploi par les professions apparaît importante pour trois raisons complémentaires : d’abord, parce que la nature de la profession s’avère déterminante au-delà des caractéristiques des individus qui l’occupent pour expliquer les écarts en termes de qualité de l’emploi; ensuite, du fait de l’importance de la nature des professions dans la détermination des règles encadrant le travail; et, enfin, en raison du rôle joué par les politiques publiques dans le soutien de la qualité dans certaines professions.

The objective of this article is, through an empirical study, to further understanding of the actions and decisions taken in the context of Lean implementation projects carried out under joint regulation (Lévesque and Murray, 1998) agreements. We, therefore, attempt to identify factors that may facilitate the organizing work involved in joint regulation of Lean projects to allow workers to develop a broader range of health-minded work methods and habits. Our assumption is that factors which influence joint regulation, such as the union’s capacity for action, management’s attitude and the purpose of the change, also influence the occupational health outcomes of Lean projects. We believe that the organizing work involved in joint regulation (actions and decisions) has an impact on these factors and influences the occupational health outcomes. Our research question is therefore this: What are the actions and decisions involved in joint regulation of Lean implementation projects that lead to closer correspondence with enabling organization criteria? This empirical study was exploratory in nature and had a multiple case study design. Two cases of lean projects were documented through eight individual interviews and the collection of documents. The main results indicate that, while joint regulation appears essential in terms of meeting enabling organization criteria, it alone is insufficient to explain the health effects of Lean projects. All stakeholders need to define the project goals, modes of assessment and management rules, both cooperatively and transparently, and through their involvement in decisions regarding all processes.