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  • Bryan M. Evans, Stephen McBride, and their contributors delve further into the more practical, ground-level side of the austerity equation in Austerity: The Lived Experience. Economically, austerity policies cannot be seen to work in the way elite interests claim that they do. Rather than soften the blow of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 for ordinary citizens, policies of austerity slow growth and lead to increased inequality. While political consent for such policies may have been achieved, it was reached amidst significant levels of disaffection and strong opposition to the extremes of austerity. The authors build their analysis in three sections, looking alternatively at theoretical and ideological dimensions of the lived experience of austerity; how austerity plays out in various public sector occupations and policy domains; and the class dimensions of austerity. The result is a ground-breaking contribution to the study of austerity politics and policies. Contents: Austerity as lived experience: An introduction / Bryan Evans and Stephen McBride. Pt. 1. Theory and ideology. Introduction: Manufacturing the common sense of austerity / Bryan Evans and McBride -- Articulating austerity and authoritarianism: Re-imagining moral economies? / John Clarke -- Speaking austerity: Policy rhetoric and design beyond fiscal consolidation / Sorin Mitrea -- No deal capitalism: Austerity and the unmaking of the North American middle class / Eric Pineault -- Framing the economic case for Austerity: The “expansionary fiscal contraction hypothesis” / Ellen Russell. Pt. 2. Impact and consequences. Introduction: Austerity on the ground / Evans and McBride -- Care and control in long term care work / Donna Baines -- ‘Negotiate your way back to zero’: Teacher bargaining and austerity in Ontario, Canada / Brendan A. Sweeny and Robert S. Hickey -- Austerity and the low wage economy: Living and other wages / Bryan Evans, Stephen McBride, and Jacob Muirhead -- Immigration in an age of austerity: Morality, the welfare state and the shaping of the ideal migrant / Susan Barrass and John Shields -- Pension reforms in the context of the global financial crisis: A reincarnation of pension privatization through austerity / Yanqiu Rachel Zhou and Shih-Jiun Shi. Pt. 3. Class, resistance, alternative. Introduction: The old strategies don’t work. So what’s possible? / Bryan Evans and Stephen McBride -- From austerity to structural reform: The erosion of the European social model(s) / Christophe Hermann -- Austerity of imagination: Quebec’s struggles in translating resistance into alternatives / Peter Graefe and Hubert Rioux -- Social democracy and social pacts: Austerity alliances and their consequences / Bryan Evans -- Austerity and political crisis: The radical left, the far right and Europe’s new authoritarian order / Neil Burron -- Conclusion.

  • Have Indigenous people in Canada been active as wage labourers and union members? If so, what have been the circumstances? When and where and for what reasons have Indigenous people worked for wages and been union members and how have they fared in these roles? In this short paper we examine a wide range of recent studies that have looked at various aspects of these questions. In particular, we examine the role that unions have played with Indigenous wage workers, and with Indigenous people who have sought to work for wages, and we consider some recent initiatives that unions have taken to meet the needs of Indigenous workers. Such efforts are especially significant in an era when the numbers of Indigenous workers entering the labour market are growing rapidly, and when the labour force as a whole is becoming increasingly diverse. --Introduction

  • The article reviews the book, "Radical Theatrics: Put-ons, Politics and the Sixties," by Craig J. Peariso.

  • This article reviews the book, "Civic Labors: Scholar Activism and Working-Class Studies," edited by Dennis Deslippe, Eric Fure-Slocum, and John W. McKerley.

  • In the employment context in Ontario, jurisdiction over human rights claims is now shared between the Human Rights Tribunal, the courts, and labour arbitra- tors. This paper compares human rights damages awarded by statutory tribunals, civil courts, and labour arbitrators in Ontario with a view to identifying trends and to understanding whether remedial outcomes are likely to vary depending on the litigant's choice of forum. After reviewing the statutory basis for the awarding of human rights damages, and the criteria which adjudicators have developed in quantifying the appropriate amount of compensation, the author turns to a detailed analysis of cases in which such damages were ordered by statutory tribunals, arbi- trators, and judges. The author finds that while decision-makers apply largely the same remedial principles in assessing damages, historically, the amount of monet- ary awards have varied considerably across fora. The author suggests, however, that the Ontario Court of Appeal's recent decision in Strudwick, explicitly adopt- ing the remedial principles articulated by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and making a substantial award of damages, may promote greater consistency and predictability in the assessment of human rights damages.

  • The article reviews the book, "The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild," by Miranda J. Banks.

  • Background: How the media frames and presents a subject influences how society sees and responds to that issue. Analysis: This study uses frame analysis to examine how Canadian English language newspapers portrayed workplace injuries between 2009 and 2014. Three frames emerge: Under Investigation, Human Tragedy, and Before the Courts. There is also a meta-frame casting injuries and fatalities as isolated events happening to “others” with no cause, thus the public ought not be concerned about workplace safety. Conclusion and implications: The article concludes that media frames obscure issues of cause and fault, thereby denying workers a full understanding of why injuries happen in the workplace. These frames serve the interests of employers by obfuscating the employer’s role in creating workplace injury and death.

  • In 2007, the Alberta government and the Alberta construction industry developed a ten-year strategy to increase the participation of women, youth, Indigenous peoples, and immigrants in construction occupations. At the same time, construction employers began turning to temporary foreign workers (tfws) as an alternative labour supply, and the number of tfws working in Alberta construction jumped dramatically. This article examines the labour market effects of the influx of tfws on employment rates of other marginalized groups in construction occupations. Alberta is a valuable case study because it employed greater numbers of tfws in construction between 2003 and 2013 than any other province. Drawing upon labour market segmentation theory, this study finds that the proportion of traditionally underrepresented workers in construction occupations was essentially unchanged over the study period. These groups of workers experienced higher-than-average employment volitility and remain a secondary source of labour supply. This study also finds that tfws have become a new, hyperflexible source of secondary labour. The article discusses possible explanations for the findings and evaluates the effectiveness of the government's ten-year strategy.

  • The paper examines the experience of C.B. Wade (1906–1982), a chartered accountant and university instructor who was recruited to work for organized labour during the period of transition from wartime mobilization to postwar reconstruction at the end of the Second World War. In hiring Wade in 1944, District 26 of the United Mine Workers of America became one of the first Canadian unions to employ a research director to help address the challenges of the new age of industrial legality and advance their social democratic agenda. The paper discusses Wade's background, including his involvement in the Workers' Educational Association, and documents his contributions to the work of the coal miners' union, including the efforts to promote public ownership of the industry. In addition, the paper discusses Wade's unpublished history of the union, a manuscript that has had a long life as an underground classic. While the negotiation of the postwar compromises between labour, capital and the state gave union staff such as Wade an increasingly central role in labour relations, this was not a stable context, and the paper also considers the deepening Cold War conditions that led to the end of his employment in 1950. In the context of labour and working-class history, Wade can be associated with a relatively small cohort of politically engaged intellectuals who made lasting contributions to the research capacity of unions and to the field of labour studies.

  • This research project examines systemic forms of racism that limit the employment chances of racialized workers in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) labour market. Through a situated analysis of racialized workers, institutional actors, and public policies, I explore the nuances of racialized individuals encounters with discriminatory hiring practices and job promotion procedures that exist in the labour market. Through the perspectives of racialized workers lived experiences, and by bringing into question the employment practices of hiring managers and human resource personnel, this project addresses the following key questions: 1) How do racialized workers negotiate their movement through places of employment in the Toronto CMA? 2) How might we understand the operation of racism in hiring practices and what are the mechanisms under which it remains institutionally entrenched? This research critiques the organizational cultures of private companies that are configured as spaces of whiteness.

  • This article reviews the book, "Daunting Enterprise of the Law: Essays in Honour of Harry W. Arthurs," edited by Simon Archer, Daniel Drache and Peer Zumbansen.

  • Policies for the southern Ontario automotive cluster support multiple collaborative research projects designed for the application of enabling technologies. However, these initiatives cater to a small percentage of highly innovative automotive suppliers and exclude much of the traditional manufacturing base. This stands in contrast to automotive clusters in Detroit, MI; the West Midlands, United Kingdom; and Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where applied research collaborations target the entire supply chain. With respect to policy implications, we argue that new forms of industrial coordination emerging in competitor regions may offer critical policy lessons for Ontario on how to stem the erosion of innovation capabilities in its automotive supply base.

  • This article reviews the book, "The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West," by Ryan Dearinger.

  • This dissertation examines the impact of the development of diamond mines in the Yellowknife region, Northwest Territories (NWT), asking two questions: how has the diamond-mining regime affected the gendered social relations in the regional racialized mixed economy? And, how can violence against Indigenous women living in the region be situated in the context of structural shifts in the mixed economy? The analysis developed in response to these questions is informed by a theorization of the mixed economy as a dynamic set of social relations characterized by tension between the temporal imperatives of capitalist production and the place-based imperatives of subsistence. Taking a decolonizing, feminist political economy (FPE) approach, this dissertation responded to these questions by drawing on documentary analysis, interviews, and talking circles to examine the often invisibilized labour performed by Indigenous women that reproduces the mixed economy. The central contention is that the diamond-mining regime represents a new imposition upon daily and intergenerational social reproduction performed by Indigenous women, an imposition that is sometimes violent, and that is met with resistance. The dissertation unfolds in six substantive chapters. Building on a theoretical and historical grounding offered in chapters one and two, chapters three-five draw on field research to examine shifts in local relations of capitalist production, social reproduction, and subsistence production. The analysis reveals that the Fly-In-Fly-Out (FIFO) diamond-mining regime, itself a spatial articulation of the capitalist separation between (masculinized) capitalist production and (feminized) social reproduction, introduces, or, in some cases, intensifies a nuclear male-breadwinner/female-caregiver structure. Woven through this analysis is an examination of the relationship between structural and embodied violence. Indeed, the structural shifts imposed by the diamond-mining regime characterized in this dissertation as structural violence contribute to Indigenous womens experiences of embodied violence in the Yellowknife region. At the same time, Indigenous women meet these shifts with decolonizing resistance in the form of the day-to-day labours they perform to reproduce the place-based social relations of the mixed economy.

  • This article focuses on the campaigns of national Canadian unions and other labour organizations against the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta). Changes in the strategic orientation of these unions and labour organizations are traced from the period following the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement and contextualized in post–Cold War trends in North American labour more broadly. These developments are viewed through the lens of scale shift and political process models of social movement theory. Though some transnational links were developed before nafta was implemented, these linkages were expanded following the agreement's passage. Additionally, these organizations took advantage of political opportunities originating from the new structures of nafta itself. Canadian unions and associated anti-free-trade coalitions worked alongside their regional counterparts to construct alternatives to neoliberalism and build consensus. Following the failure of domestic political opportunities to prevent the passage of nafta, some Canadian unions and labour organizations used emerging international political opportunities to deepen collaborations with their counterparts in countries experiencing trade liberalization.

  • Domestic and caregiving work have been part of the Canadian fabric since our colonial founding and have long represented one of the most easily accessible routes for migration open to women. Until very recently the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) operated as the primary program in Canada facilitating this labour migration. While the LCP has been replaced by the Caregiver Program (CP), it has yet to be determined how these changes will impact migrant caregivers. We suggest that many lessons can be drawn from our knowledge of migrant caregivers’ experiences under the LCP that can help us understand the dynamics of new immigration policies. Using the global care chain framework, we consider here whether Canada’s caregiver migration policy demonstrates a concern for the wellbeing of migrant caregivers as workers, as family members and as citizens. Our analysis suggests that the CP does not adequately address the concerns raised through the global care chain critique. Rather, the CP continues and deepens the trend of using immigration policy to hold people in substandard employment, with very little care for migrant caregivers whether in terms oftheir labour rights, their family relationships or their sense of belonging and citizenship.

  • The article reviews the book, "Free Spirits: Spiritualism, Republicanism, and Radicalism in the Civil War Era," by Mark A. Lause.

  • Members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are injured in the course of service are treated inequitably on two levels: first, during their military careers, by the operation of a statutory exemption that enables the CAF to sidestep the duty to accommodate disabilities, including widespread mental injuries such as PTSD; and second, following their medical release from service, by the failure to provide adequate compensation. Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, the duty to accommodate is expressly made subject to the principle of "uni- versality of service," whereby CAF members "must at all times and under any circumstances perform any functions that they may be required to perform." Universality (or the "soldier first" rule) thus provides the CAF with an auto- matic bona fide occupational requirement (BFOR) defence to discrimination claims, and permits the CAF to engage in prima facie discriminatory conduct without having to prove that it accommodated a member to the point of undue hardship. The author argues that universality cannot be justified as reasonably necessary to achieve operational objectives, having regard to staffing require- ments and level of risk, and to the fact that the CAF routinely ignores its own risk tolerance mandate by granting medical waivers. Compensation for CAF members post-release is currently provided through the New Veterans Charter. The benefits scheme created by the NVC is, in the author's view, seriously flawed: it is less generous than the predecessor legislation, excessively complex, raises unfair evidentiary burdens, and fails to ensure timely resolution of claims. The author concludes by exploring opportunities for reform, and proposes that a "presumptive" burden of proof be implemented for claimants with PTSD, similar to that which has recently been adopted in several provinces for first responders under workers' compensation legislation.

  • This article reviews the book, "Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests," by Erik Loomis.

  • The article reviews the book, "Nursing and Empire: Gendered Labor and Migration from India to the United States," by Sujani Reddy.

Last update from database: 11/25/24, 4:10 AM (UTC)

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