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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.

While post-secondary institutions are places of learning, they also employ thousands of people across a broad spectrum of job classifications. This report explores the extent to which workers in Canada’s post-secondary institutions are experiencing precarity. More precisely, it asks whether employment on university and college campuses in Ontario is becoming more precarious, for whom and for what reasons. This report combines quantitative analysis of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data with qualitative accounts of the lived experience of precarity from post-secondary employees. Overall, the LFS data analysis suggests that 53% of post-secondary education workers in Ontario are, to some extent, precariously employed. Specifically, the report identifies a rise in work categories that are more precarious (e.g., research assistants and teaching assistants) alongside a decline in others that have traditionally been less precarious (e.g., librarians).

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.

L’histoire est bien connue. En 1833, peu avant que ne débute la saison de la construction, les compagnons charpentiers-menuisiers de Montréal annoncent qu’ils ne travailleront plus au-delà de dix heures par jour, faute de quoi ils recourront à la grève. À la suite d’une victoire partielle auprès des employeurs, le mouvement reprend de plus belle en 1834 et s’étend même aux maçons, aux cordonniers, aux tailleurs et aux boulangers de Montréal. Une alliance de plusieurs maîtres fera toutefois échouer ce mouvement pour la journée de dix heures, dès le mois de mai 1834. Contrairement à ce que prétendait jadis Catherine Vance dans un article de la revue The Marxist Quarterly, rédigé en 1962, nous croyons que l’enjeu de la grève des charpentiers-menuisiers dépassait la seule réclamation de la journée de dix heures. Une enquête approfondie dans les sources nous révèle que nous avons affaire en fait à une lutte de pouvoir entre une nouvelle oligarchie d’entrepreneurs-architectes et une coalition de compagnons et de petits entrepreneurs artisans qui souhaitaient faire reconnaître leur légitimité, dans un contexte où les traditions et les coutumes mutualistes reliées à la pratique du métier de charpentier-menuisier étaient menacées pour la première fois par l’action souterraine de l’économie marchande. Il ressortira de ce conflit deux visions du monde : une conception républicaine du bien commun et de la justice sociale, et une conception libérale du droit de propriété et de l’autorité.