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In this dissertation, I outline a history of the labour union organizing efforts of journalists at the Thomson Newspapers chain in Canada from 1963 to 1995. Such organizing efforts provide an entry point into examining control over employment conditions in the newspaper industry. To undertake this study, I develop an analytical framework that I call a “labour union standpoint to news organizations” and a “labour union standpoint methodology.” I conduct a historical and labour union standpoint analysis of nine labour organizing campaigns, situating them within their broader political, economic, and social-historical contexts. I draw on union archival documents, newspaper content, corporate and government documents, and a critical review of the published body of literature. Between 1963 and 1995, Thomson adopted a long-term strategy of vertical growth, expanding from radio broadcasting and newspapers into other media. The corporation also adopted a strategy of horizontal growth, building a newspaper chain through acquisitions, and typically obtained a monopoly or oligopoly in the markets in which it operated. Thomson consistently had double-digit profit margins and was among the “big three” newspaper chains in Canada with regard to number of daily newspapers owned, share of total daily newspaper circulation, or share of total revenues. In response, Thomson journalists organized labour unions to protect their employment conditions. Accordingly, I consider the labour organizing tactics that journalists’ unions adopted to “bite back” at the corporation and the communication tools that they used to facilitate those tactics.My analysis reveals that journalists’ unions contested and negotiated control over employment conditions within news organizations. The outcomes of union organizing efforts were contingent upon the local circumstances of the journalists, unions, and management at a particular newspaper within the chain. While journalists’ union organizing campaigns were sometimes unsuccessful, journalists were more successful when they focused on building bridges with community members rather than developing communication tools such as strike newspapers. Some journalists’ unions challenged the established social relations and advanced social transformation by mobilizing massive community support, connecting their workplace struggles to broader social issues, and creating publicity campaigns to communicate these struggles to the public.

Over the past decade in Canada, student work has become a topic of public criticism, legal action, academic research, and labour activism. Cultural industry employers’ use of unpaid, low-paid, and flexibilized labour in the form of internships and other kinds of ‘work experience’ raises questions about the future of work in already precarious fields such as news production, advertising, television, and film. Against the backdrop of neoliberal processes still shaping universities and labour markets, the student worker emerges as a strategic figure in the contested politics of cultural work. This thesis offers a theoretical and empirical investigation of the dominant discourse and counter-discourse through which work experience is constructed, legitimized, critiqued, and re-visioned. Drawing on autonomist Marxist theory, critical philosophies of education, and feminist political economy, I situate cultural work experience as a discursive site where struggles over knowledge production and labour rights become visible and urgent.

The article reviews the book, "Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice," by Christo Aivalis.

This chapter describes the multi-faceted dynamics of anti-unionism in Canada, and considers how the labour movement might respond. Authors Larry Savage and Stephanie Ross describe the history of anti-unionism in politics, law, and Canadian culture while paying special attention to employer union avoidance tactics and the influence of mainstream media on the public perception of unions

This chapter examines union avoidance strategies in Canada's growing casino gaming sector through a case study of six successive failed unionization drives at Niagara's casinos between 1996 and 2016. --Authors

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) has taken on new life as people experience greater inequality and greater exploitation than ever before—combined with the recurrence of the historically-cyclical fear of mass unemployment driven by rapid advancements in automation technologies. But the idea of providing every person with a certain amount of money, regardless of their socioeconomic status or (in)ability to or (dis)interest in working, is far from universally-accepted by socialists. This essay offers replies to three common socialist criticisms of various basic income proposals, in an effort to defend the radical potential of UBI; a potential that is consonant with the fundamental goal of the socialist project—achieving a democratic, non-exploitative world beyond capitalism.

Canadian universities are relying heavily on precariously-employed faculty on campus. Once among the most secure professions in the country, by 2016-17 contract jobs in the sector accounted for the majority (53.6 percent) of all university faculty appointments, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information requests to all 78 publicly-funded Canadian universities. The findings show that reliance on contract faculty is a foundational part of the system, and has been for at least a decade. This report is the first-ever snapshot of the prevalence of university contract jobs, where they’re located, and what departments are more likely to offer contract work instead of permanent, secure academic appointments.

Organizations continue to be challenged and enriched by the diversity of their workforces. Scholars are increasingly focusing on inclusion to enhance work environments by offering support for a diverse workforce. This article reviews and synthesizes the inclusion literature and provides a model of inclusion that integrates existing literature to offer greater clarity, as well as suggestions for moving the literature forward. We review the inclusion literature consisting of the various foci (work group, organization, leader, organizational practices, and climate) and associated definitions and how it has developed. We then describe themes in the inclusion literature and propose a model of inclusion. Finally, we end by discussing theoretical and practical implications.

The article reviews the book, "Unions and the City: Negotiating Urban Change," edited by Ian Thomas MacDonald.

This article reviews the book, "Empty Promises: Why Workplace Pension Law Doesn't Deliver Pensions" by Elizabeth Shilton.

When members of the Office and Professional Workers Organizing Committee (opwoc), employed by the Banque Canadienne Nationale (bcn), set up picket lines at branches in Montreal on 30 April 1942, they began the first strike in the Canadian banking industry. This article analyzes the four-week strike, and the organizing drive that preceded it, as a way of exploring how changes in the relationship between labour, capital, and the state during the Second World War helped or hindered unionization in unorganized industries – areas with limited or non-existent levels of union representation and often predominantly female and racialized workforces. By examining this failed white-collar strike in relation to the substantial increase in labour organizing that occurred in the 1940s and the concomitant changes to the labour relations system, we can consider the effect that these changes had for different types of workers. A closer look at the first Canadian bank strike shows that the changes made to the labour relati...

This article reviews the book, "Hesitant Comrades: The Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement" by Geoffrey Bell.

The article reviews the book, "Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City," by Steve Early.

The article reviews the book, "The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism," edited by Kevin Skerrett, Johanna Weststar, Simon Archer, and Chris Roberts.

The article reviews the book, "Globalization and Labour in the Twenty-First Century," by Verity Burgmann.

Are students with a permanent disability more likely to drop out of post-secondary education than students without a permanent disability? Once they are out of postsecondary education, do their experiences in the labour market differ? Answers to these questions are necessary to evaluate current policies and to develop new policies. This paper addresses these two questions using a unique data set that combines administrative records from the Canada Student Loans Program with survey responses. Our measure of permanent disability is an objective one that requires a physician’s diagnosis. The survey data supply information on the students’ education and labour market status. Simple descriptive statistics suggest that, compared to students without a permanent disability, students with a permanent disability are equally likely to drop out of postsecondary education, but less likely to be in the labour force and more likely to be unemployed. We use propensity score matching to address potential selection into the group of students who documented their disability. The results using propensity score matching are consistent with the descriptive statistics. Our story is one of an underpublicized success—the rising number of students with disabilities in postsecondary institutions and their equal likelihood of graduation—and a persistent problem—the continued disadvantage that people with disabilities, even those with the same educational attainment as people without disabilities, face in the labour market.

Models of reference dependence have improved the connection between economic theory and documented labour supply behaviour. In particular, the Kőszegi and Rabin (2006, 2007, 2009) [hereafter "KR"] theory of expectation based reference dependent preferences appears to be a disciplined way to unify the conflicting wage elasticity estimates, and recent laboratory and natural experiments suggest this theory may work in practice as well. I take this theory to the field in a pair of laboratory-like experiments designed to test if expectations determine the effort of a group of impoverished individuals involved in piece-rate work in Northeast Brazil. I use Abeler, Falk, Goette, and Huffman's (2011) experimental mechanism, which is a clear test of KR preferences in effort provision, in two experiments: first to test if rational expectations act as a reference point that influences effort, and second to test if adaptive expectations act as a reference point that influences effort. In both experiments, I find that although people do not behave in accordance with KR preferences, they do not behave as though they make their decisions following canonical lines either. I then outline a speculative rationale for the observed behaviour in these experiments—the adaptive heuristic of regret matching—where workers are able to evaluate their ex-post feelings of regret, even if they do not know the source of those feelings, to optimize behaviour going forward.

The articles reviews the book, "Labour Arbitration in Canada," by Morton Mitchnick and Brian Etherington.

The article reviews the book, "Conflits et résistances au travail," by Yvan Sainsaulieu.

The article reviews the book, "Managing Performance through Training and Development," 7th ed., by Alan M. Saks and Robert R. Haccoun.