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We study public-sector bargaining and contract outcomes using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. We have a number of interesting results, but our principal findings are from our analysis of wage settlements. We find that the essential services designation, which only allows non-essential members of a bargain unit to strike, is associated with decreases in wages. Our estimates also suggest that there is an arbitration wage premium and that making adjustments to the ability to pay criterion used by arbitrators to determine awards does not affect this premium. We also discuss the implications of our estimates.

We examine the effects of collective bargaining legislation, such as (among others) bans on replacement workers and reinstatement rights, on private sector strike activity and wage settlements using Canadian data from 1978 to 2008. Our estimates indicate that this legislation does not have a statistically significant effect on the incidence of strikes. However, we do find that some of the policy variables have a statistically significant effect on strike duration and wage settlements.

This paper examines the Amalgamated Transit Union’s (ATU) discussion of environmental issues since the mid 1980s. We explore the trialectic relationship between capital, labour and nature in Canada’s public transit unions, primarily through the lens of labour geography. In a review of union documents and Canadian newspapers we find the state uses the environment as a wedge issue in its ‘war or position’ with unions, representing workers’ strike actions as harmful to the environment and the community. The state’s positioning of ATU members as crucial to both the functioning of communities and environmental sustainability lends itself to counter-hegemonic campaign strategies. We examine a recent campaign by Toronto’s ATU Local 113 entitled “Protecting What Matters” as a local union’s community and environmental strategies during a period of austerity. The paper concludes with lessons learned from a labour geography perspective and calls for a more community based approach to resistance.

The article discusses the relation of comic books and graphic novels to academic research and political activism. Topics include educational theorist Paulo Freire's notion of conscientization, "The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book," written and illustrated by Gord Hill, and "Shift in Progress: A Not-So-Comic Book," by J. D. Gysbers and M. von Gaza. The comic book "A People's History of American Empire," by Howard Zinn with Paul Buhle and Mike Konopacki is noted.

This thesis investigates different statutory models Canadian legislatures have enacted to address workplace harassment. It adopts a qualitative, comparative case study approach, providing an in-depth comparative analysis of legislation from Québec, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. Through this analysis, this thesis outlines the ways in which workplace harassment has been regulated in Canada, why that model was adopted by the jurisdiction and how that model measures against other models for legislating workplace harassment. Through an examination of existing literature relating to workplace harassment stemming from three theoretical paradigms and an analysis of a model legislative framework, this thesis creates a tool for scholars and lawmakers to use for future research and enactments of workplace harassment legislation. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that the varying and complex nature of the enacted legislation in the aforementioned Canadian jurisdictions leaves room for improvement for future enactments and amendments of workplace harassment legislation.

This case study explores some of the strategies, challenges, and paradoxes of producing and mobilizing alternative knowledge in the prosecution of a “war of position" against neoliberal hegemony. Since its founding in 1980, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has become the key labour-supported “think tank” of the left in Canada, contributing to the process of social democratization by acting as a collective organic intellectual for a wide range of oppositional groups and networks that, we suggest, make up a social democratic community of practice. The CCPA has developed a number of strategies aimed at democratizing knowledge production, perhaps unique in the context of Canadian policy groups. Nonetheless, it faces a number of challenges in following through with these strategies and potential paradoxes in simultaneously engaging both the mainstream (general public and policymakers) and the various counterpublics that make up its community of practice.

This paper examines a relative rarity in recent Canadian labour-state relations: the successful resistance by public sector workers and their allies to government-driven employment precarity. At stake was Toronto mayor Rob Ford's determination to contract out a thousand jobs held by city cleaners. In response, the cleaners and the city's labour movement launched a Justice and Dignity for Cleaners campaign to preserve these jobs as living wage employment. Effective coalition building behind a morally compelling campaign, together with some fortuitous political alignments, has forestalled city efforts to privatize a significant yet undervalued segment of the workforce. Our examination of the Justice and Dignity for Cleaners campaign reveals that resistance to precarity is not futile, notwithstanding some attendant ambiguity of what constitutes a labour victory.

For the purpose of trade union renewal, it is suggested that trade unions need to convert themselves from being institutions centred on employer-employee relations to open source ones engaged with broader social justice issues. In this article, we offer two elements to the debate on trade union revival: first, we focus on two rapidly emerging economies with a corporatist and state-centered union structure (i.e., Brazil and India); second, in the context of these two countries, we challenge the idea that informal workers are a burden for trade union organizations. We consider the possible contributions that informal workers could make towards the renewal of trade unions in these two countries. We argue that trade unions could take advantage of these contributions if they overcome the employee horizon, which originated in Western countries and excludes millions of workers from its purview in Brazil and India. We propose the concept of "homo faber" as a new horizon for trade union organization, which is inclusive of both formal as well as informal workers.

[Explores] the ongoing push and pull over the meaning of the Charter's freedom of assocation guarantee for the labour movement. --Introduction

Presents a historical overview of unions' lead role in advancing human rights in Canada, not only in the workplace through bargaining and litigation, but also by using their organizational strength to promote legal reform through education, lobbying, and social action to secure protections for all Canadians. --Introduction

This article reviews the book, "Weavers of Dreams, Unite! Actors' Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America," by Sean P. Holmes.

Argues that academic historians should accept some of the responsibility for the cuts to heritage institutions under the Harper government. Urges historians to make changes to their teaching and publishing, including the reward system for publication, as well as to the curriculum design for history in the public school system.

Équité en emploi - Équité salariale, by Marie-Josée Legault, is reviewed.

The goal of this research was to challenge notions of “contributing” in active citizen discourse. This was done by exploring how individuals experiencing homelessness give back to their communities while surviving through social exclusion and life on the streets. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals who experienced homelessness between the ages of 40-64. This research found that respondents gave back to others through various forms of labour in ways that were mutually beneficial. Contributing to the well being of others helped respondents to cope with homelessness by gaining opportunities, resources, information, networks and developing a sense of well being, confidence or support. The findings suggest a need to re-conceptualize “contributing” in ways that recognize alternative forms of citizenship activities and participation. By doing so, all people, including people without homes, can be recognized as contributing citizens in their communities.

[This book] traces the history of sex discrimination in Canadian law and the origins of human rights legislation, demonstrating how governments inhibit the application of their own laws, and how it falls to social movements to create, promote, and enforce these laws. Focusing on British Columbia – the first jurisdiction to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex – Clément documents a variety of absurd, almost unbelievable, acts of discrimination. The province was at the forefront of the women’s movement, which produced the country’s first rape crisis centres, first feminist newspaper, and first battered women’s shelters. And yet nowhere else in the country was human rights law more contested. For an entire generation, the province’s two dominant political parties fought to impose their respective vision of the human rights state. This history of human rights law, based on previously undisclosed records of British Columbia’s human rights commission, begins with the province’s first equal pay legislation in 1953 and ends with the collapse of the country’s most progressive human rights legal regime in 1984. This book is not only a testament to the revolutionary impact of human rights on Canadian law but also a reminder that it takes more than laws to effect transformative social change. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- "No Jews or dogs allowed": anti-discrimination law -- Gender and Canada's human rights state -- Women and anti-discrimination law in British Columbia, 1953-69 -- Jack Sherlock and the failed Human Rights Act, 1969-73 -- Kathleen Ruff and the Human Rights Code, 1973-79 -- Struggling to innovate, 1979-83 -- Making new law under the Human Rights Code -- The politics of (undermining) human rights : the Human Rights Act, 1983-84 -- Conclusion.

This article reviews the book, "The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor," by Chris Rhomberg.

During the Spring of 2012, Québec experienced one of the most important social movements of its contemporary history. The Maple Spring started as a student protest against tuition fee hikes but ended up as a much broader social upheaval against austerity and the authoritarianism of the provincial government. This article investigates the role and position of the labor movement during the Maple Spring. It argues that the events of the Maple Spring demonstrate how the Québec labor movement was put under pressure by the politics of austerity and revealed its internal contradictions. More broadly, this article makes the case for a dialectical approach to understanding the labor movement that takes into consideration its internal diversity and tensions.

We assessed the degree of alignment of organizational strategies with telework using Statistics Canada's 2005 Workplace and Employee Survey data. We consider telework to be 'employee-oriented' when an employee works at home to address his and her family-related or personal wants or needs, and 'employer-oriented' otherwise. We found that employers focusing on innovation were significantly more likely to use both types of telework, with greater emphasis on employee-oriented telework, whereas employers favouring an involvement strategy were somewhat less likely to use either type of telework. We did not find a statistical relationship between a cost containment strategy and telework. Overall, the results suggested that employers are not universally aligning the implementation of the two types of telework with their organizational strategies.

The article reviews the book, "Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict In Quebec: 1840-1914," by Darcy Ingram.

Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term?recognition? shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples' right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics--one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism. Coulthard demonstrates how a place-based modification of Karl Marx's theory of primitive accumulation throws light on Indigenous-state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon's critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power. In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization. --Publisher's description.