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Provides an analysis of labour politics in Québec, arguing that the distinct trajectory of Québec unions caused the movement to adopt political strategies which diverged from those of the Canadian labour movement as a whole. --Editor's introduction

Analyzes the Quebec economy from the mid 1990s to the financial crisis of 2008-09, including stagnant wages and the trend toward precarious work. Emphasis is placed on the ambivalent state of the labour movement. The conclusion calls for the movement to become more inclusive, and to defend the distinctive Quebec model of programs, such as daycare.

Le Lord's Day Act interdit le travail le dimanche en 1906, mais autorise les travaux jugés nécessaires. Les compagnies papetières québécoises peuvent effectuer les travaux d'entretien et de nettoyage, mais ne peuvent pas produire le dimanche. L' industrie papetière exige la production continue et menace de freiner ses investissements au Québec si le gouvernement ne permet pas le fonctionnement des machines le dimanche. Le gouvernement Lesage instaure donc la Commission d'enquête sur l'observance du dimanche dans les usines de pâtes et papiers en 1964. Le jour du Seigneur fut essentiellement traité comme une question religieuse par les historiens, mais l'attachement pour la conservation du repos dominical déborde les questionnements sur le sécularisme ou la piété populaire. Cette commission instaurée pour régler un problème technique cache un profond conflit de valeurs entre les différents acteurs sociaux. Différentes façons de concevoir le bien commun et le progrès social y sont avancées. Aux séances de la commission, plusieurs groupes et individus font valoir leurs points de vue. Les représentants des compagnies papetières exigent unanimement la production le dimanche pour accroître la production. Pour les groupes religieux, la sanctification du dimanche est une manifestation collective vitale pour la cohésion de la famille, de la paroisse et de la société. Quant à eux, les travailleurs et leurs syndicats défendent l' idée d' un repos commun hebdomadaire et dénoncent le travail par rotation d'équipes. Les débats lors de la Commission Alleyn permettent de mettre en relief une confrontation culturelle à l' intérieur d'un rapport économique de production, tout en offrant un éclairage sur le bouleversement des nouveaux rapports sociaux en plein coeur de la Révolution tranquille.

Describes the efforts of agricultural workers to obtain legal protection with particular reference to legislation and proceedings in Ontario. Concludes that despite legal setbacks, the struggle continues through the Agriculture Worker Alliance of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

The Canadian union certification system guarantees workers rights to organise, bargain collectively, and strike only when a majority of co-workers favours unionisation. This contravenes International Labour Organisation standards, in which the freedom to associate is unqualified by majority support. In recent years, the Supreme Court of Canada has drawn on ILO principles to interpret constitutional rights as covering organising and collective bargaining activities related to freedom of association under section 2(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, it has not as yet ordered Canadian governments to enact labour relations laws consistent with these new constitutional rights. Neither has there been a general call for such legislative change. Instead, many fear that statutory support for non-majority unionism would lead to multi-union representation and intensified inter-union competition, but fail to consider that sharing the workplace might actually promote inter-union cooperation against a common adversary in management. This study addresses this shortcoming by looking at the extent and nature of inter-union collaboration in New Zealand, where non-majority, non-exclusive representation exists already. Collaboration was found to be common, not only over bargaining and lobbying, but also in organising. Implications for Canada are explored.

The article reviews the book, "La confiance en gestion : un regard pluridisciplinaire," by Anne Gratacap and Alice Le Flanchec.

Considers the intersection of relevant conventions of the International Labour Organization, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and labour case law of the Supreme Court of Canada. Asserts that the Canadian government is bound by ILO membership to promote collective bargaining, and that the Supreme Court's reliance on ILO principles was fully justified in Dunmore and BC Health Services. Concludes that, although the court's decision on Fraser fails to implement these principles, the right to strike in Canada will eventually be constitutionally recognized.

Every year, 30,000 agricultural migrant workers arrive in Canada as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Low Skill Pilot Project. Although the TFWP is intended to address short-term labour demands, most of these workers return to the same communities year after year, sometimes for more than 25 years. As a result, growing numbers of migrant farm workers are permanently temporary. The increased presence of temporary workers will most certainly have an impact on Canadian communities and workplaces for years to come. Is there a way to conceptualize integration in the context of these migration patterns? How does the TFWP fit into Canada’s multicultural landscape and its goals of integration and social cohesion? In this study, Jenna Hennebry draws on experience with agricultural workers to address some of these questions. The author uses empirical data, interviews and research on the situation in Ontario, the province with the largest number of agricultural migrants, to examine the degree of integration of migrant farm workers. She finds that their inclusion in the communities where they live and work is poor, despite laudable efforts by nongovernmental organizations, community groups and unions – notably the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada union, which has sponsored some unique transnational initiatives.

This paper situates Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) within the policy and scholarly debates on “best practices” for the management of temporary migration, and examines what makes this programme successful from the perspective of states and employers. Drawing on extensive qualitative and quantitative study of temporary migration in Canada, this article critically examines this seminal temporary migration programme as a “best practice model” from internationally recognized rights-based approaches to labour migration, and provides some additional best practices for the management of temporary labour migration programmes. This paper examines how the reality of the Canadian SAWP measures up, when the model is evaluated according to internationally recognized best practices and migrant rights regimes. Despite all of the attention to building “best practices” for the management of temporary or managed migration, it appears that Canada has taken steps further away from these and other international frameworks. The analysis reveals that while the Canadian programme involves a number of successful practices, such as the cooperation between origin and destination countries, transparency in the admissions criteria for selection, and access to health care for temporary migrants; the programme does not adhere to the majority of best practices emerging in international forums, such as the recognition of migrants’ qualifications, providing opportunities for skills transfer, avoiding imposing forced savings schemes, and providing paths to permanent residency. This paper argues that as Canada takes significant steps toward the expansion of temporary migration, Canada’s model programme still falls considerably short of being an inspirational model, and instead provides us with little more than an idealized myth.

[H]istorian Craig Heron tells the story of Canada's workers from the mid-nineteenth century through to today, painting a vivid picture of key developments such as the birth of craft unionism, the breakthroughs of the fifties and sixties, and the setbacks of the early twenty-first century. This new edition has been completely updated, including a substantial new chapter that covers the period from 1995 to 2011. In this chapter, Heron describes the rise of globalization and the restructuring of the private sector that began in the nineties and continues today. The results have been catastrophic for Canadian working people as plants closed and union activities were curtailed. As the political right succeeded in dominating public debate during this period, workers suffered ever greater losses: fewer and more precarious jobs, rising unemployment, stagnating wages, and increases in poverty. Only with the crash of 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement has space for the political left and labour begun to open up once again. [This] is the definitive book for anyone who is interested in understanding the origins, achievements, and challenges of labour and social justice movements in Canada.--Publisher's description

Subjective career success has beneficial consequences on several individual and organizational outcomes. It is closely related to what people value as important at work, but maybe more difficult to achieve when they experience workplace discrimination. Using a sample of 300 women employees working in a large French company, we thus investigated the relationship between perceived gender discrimination, subjective career success and career anchors. We found that perceived gender discrimination was negatively related to subjective career success overall. However, the relationship between the two variables was moderated by career anchors. Some anchors (i.e. managerial, technical and lifestyle) enhanced the impact of perceived gender discrimination, while other anchors (i.e. security and autonomy) lessened it. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The global financial crisis beginning in 2008 resulted in a ballooning public debt and government efforts to constrain public expenditures. Responses to the financial crisis and its impact on human services in Ontario demonstrate the complex interactions across key actors -- employers, government, unions, and family advocates. The case explores the role of end-users, including families and people with developmental disabilities, as actors in the industrial relations system. At the strategic level, end-users have precipitated significant public policy changes, including the closure of large, state-run institutions. End-users have displaced agency managers as employers at the organizational level. Finally, the case shows how end-users have changed the nature of the work process itself, shifting direct support from custodial care to a model of individual and community development.

The article reviews the book, "Canadian Immigration: Economic Evidence for a Dynamic Policy Environment," edited by Ted McDonald, Elizabeth Ruddick, Arthur Sweetman, and Christopher Worswick.

The future of worker health and safety as a fundamental human right is dependent upon revitalizing labor rights in the working environment. A new global direction is needed to move the international norms and in turn national labor policy models away from market voluntarism and towards models that protect human rights in the working environment as first principles. What is needed is a foundational dialog on the boundaries of labor rights as they relate to the working environment because the current international labor and human rights jurisprudence is lacking. --From author's conclusion

Background: This article introduces the idea of human rights to the topic of workers' compensation in the United States. It discusses what constitutes a human rights approach and explains how this approach conflicts with those policy ideas that have provided the foundation historically for workers' compensation in the United States. Methods: Using legal and historical research, key international labor and human rights standards on employment injury benefits and influential writings in the development of the U.S. workers' compensation system are cited. Results Workers' injury and illness compensation in the United States does not conform to basic international human rights norms. Conclusions: A comprehensive review of the U.S. workers' compensation system under international human rights standards is needed. Examples of policy changes are highlighted that would begin the process of moving workers' compensation into conformity with human rights standards.

“the 18 women and two men attending a course called History of Women in Canada” at the University of Toronto, wrote a Globe and Mail reporter in spring 1976,“could hardly wait to comment on their own experiences when instructor Sylvia Van Kirk introduced the subject of women’s rights in Canada.” The journalist, Constance Mungall, went on to describe the course—a new third-year seminar being offered by the (now defunct) interdisciplinary studies department at the University of Toronto—and the class (“After the vote: Did it make any difference?”) she had just observed. Sylvia had promoted discussion in the seminar by noting that “in the 1930s suffragette Nellie McClung had said the place of women in dating is ‘to wait… wait… wait’” and then asking if they thought it was still true today. Various students jumped in with their opinion and “the consensus was that it’s still the same and it’s hypocritical.” Mungall had attended the class as the course was nearing its end. By then, the seminar had covered a series of topics that would become standard fare for survey courses in Canadian women’s history, including Native women in the fur trade (a topic that, of course, Sylvia’s own research had helped make possible), white settler pioneers, and women in education, medicine, waged work, and moral and political reform movements. But these were also early days for women’s history and Sylvia was drawing on limited resources—still convincing people of the value of the field—and introducing little known historical female. --Introduction

This dissertation examines the intersection of gender, employment law and public health policies through an analysis of the federal government's efforts to regulate the work/leisure relationship. The study asks how and why, despite over 50 years of state interventions to regulate leisure and healthy lifestyle, concerns about 'work-life balance' have surfaced in labour policy arenas in recent years. The study builds a feminist political economy framework for understanding changes in policy developments over time. I use the concepts of social reproduction and time- and work-discipline as lenses with which to probe the relationship between the changing temporal dimensions of paid and unpaid work and efforts to manage the new realities of the labour market through the institutions of the state. The dissertation considers how the changes in the gendered organization of social reproduction, the nature and regulation of employment, and the power of organized labour to advocate on behalf of workers have influenced the types of policies used to manage the work/life interface. The empirical dimension of this study traces the emergence of a framework for regulating social reproduction through state-led management of the work/life relationship. Following the evolution of such frameworks through federal policy debates, policy papers and program materials, I trace the continuities and changes in dominant leisure discourses and policy mechanisms through four phases of federal policy development: early fitness policies (pre-1960); ParticipACTION (1960 to early 1970s); employee fitness experiments (mid-1970s to 1990); and the Work/Life Balance Strategy (1990s to mid-2000s). The central argument put forward in this dissertation is that the gender- neutral and individualized framework for regulating the healthy reproduction of workers, developed in Canadian law and policy since the 1950s, has produced highly gendered outcomes through its failure to address the changing dynamics of work and family life. By continuing to uphold the notion of a worker 'unencumbered' by familial and household responsibilities, 'new' work-life balance policies exacerbate the tensions between paid and unpaid work and contribute to the ongoing marginalization of women in the labour market.