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Canada's major cities have faced the humanitarian disaster of homelessness for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare a massive deficit in social programs and widespread inattention to human rights. Are municipal public services designed to essentially produce displacement? Or can we do something to end the growing problem of urban homelessness in Canada? In Displacement City, outreach worker Greg Cook and street nurse Cathy Crowe illuminate this infrastructure of displacement through prose, poetry, and photography. Contributors to the book, including those with lived experience of homelessness in Toronto, report on the realities of the situation and how people responded: by providing disaster-relief supplies and tiny shelters for encampments, by advocating for shelter-hotels where people could physically distance, by taking the city to court, and by rising up against encampment evictions. The book provides particular insight into policies affecting Indigenous peoples and how the legacy of colonialism and displacement reached a critical point during the pandemic. This collection of first-hand accounts shows how people are fighting back for homes. It also mourns the hundreds of preventable deaths that resulted from an unjust shelter system and the lack of a national housing program. Offering rich stories of care, mutual aid, and solidarity, Displacement City provides a vivid account of a national tragedy. -- Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Grossières indécences : Pratiques et identités homosexuelles à Montréal, 1880–1929," by Dominic Dagenais

This dissertation brings together multiple discourses, including surveillance studies, autonomist Marxism and posthumanism, as the groundwork for a novel discussion of contemporary visual art— in particular surveillance art, that is, art that addresses and problematizes the omnipresent digital monitoring now part of everyday life. Because in this dissertation contemporary art is defined as necessarily political, aesthetic (in the Kantian sense) and responsive to conditions of current history and society, I use Marxist theory to identify the particular features of contemporary capitalism that this art is responding to. I first characterize post-Fordist capitalism, focusing on the increasing reliance on extracting network value from what Maurizio Lazzarato called immaterial labour. I discuss Marx’s theories of formal and real subsumption vis-a-vis their impacts on production, technology and subjectivity, and conclude that we need a new term that adequately emphasizes the novel imbrication of technology and subjectivity. In particular, I claim that surveillance capitalism, rising from military technologies and research, characterizes capitalist valorization under hypersubsumption. I then look at the impact of surveillance on labour and subjectivity, with a particular focus on unwaged immaterial activities. Do these activities count as work? To answer that, I propose looking at a combination of Marx’s concept of unproductive labour with a modified type of constant capital. I conclude that the effects of hypersubsumption on labour, consumption and production have produced a new type of capitalist subjectivity: coerced posthumanism, which I contrast with Marx’s authentic species-being. In order glimpse a post-capitalist species-being, I articulate a theory of contemporary art by bringing together Jacques Rancière’s dissensus with Peter Osborne’s notion of contemporary art; both theorists show how contemporary art is necessarily political— what’s more, it is oriented towards an open future. I then apply their ideas to particular artists who have responded to capitalist surveillance by creating ‘artveillance’ (art about surveillance). I evaluate the political effectiveness of three categories of artveillance as experiments in post-capitalist sensoriums.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted employment across Canada. While several reports show an increase in job loss and unemployment, there is little mention of changes in types of employment during the pandemic. Drawing on the Canadian Labour Force Surveys from 2017-2021, this article explored how the pandemic affected nonstandard employment rates while examining whether these impacts differed by certain sociodemographic variables. Namely, differences in rates of nonstandard employment were explored by gender, immigrant status, and age group. The main finding was that rates of nonstandard wage work (temporary and part-time employment) decreased during the first initial lockdown and returned to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2020. Meanwhile, own-account and part-time self-employment increased during the first wave of the pandemic. While these increases were uniformly experienced across different groups of workers, there is some evidence of widening or narrowing gaps in rates of nonstandard employment depending on the sociodemographic group.

The article reviews the book, "The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and The Fracture of Society," by Binyamin Appelbaum.

This article reviews the book, "The Third Pillar. How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind," by Rajan Raghuram.

Canada’s largest and most famous example of class conflict, the Winnipeg General Strike, redefined local, national, and international conversations around class, politics, region, ethnicity, and gender. The Strike’s centenary occasioned a re-examination of this critical moment in working-class history, when 300 social justice activists, organizers, scholars, trade unionists, artists, and labour rights advocates gathered in Winnipeg in 2019. Probing the meaning of the General Strike in new and innovative ways, For a Better World includes a selection of contributions from the conference as well as others’ explorations of the character of class confrontation in the aftermath of the First World War. Editors Naylor, Hinther, and Mochoruk depict key events of 1919, detailing the dynamic and complex historiography of the Strike and the larger Workers’ Revolt that reverberated around the world and shaped the century following the war. The chapters delve into intersections of race, class, and gender. Settler colonialism’s impact on the conflict is also examined. Placing the struggle in Winnipeg within a broader national and international context, several contributors explore parallel strikes in Edmonton, Crowsnest Pass, Montreal, Kansas City, and Seattle. For a Better World interrogates types of commemoration and remembrance, current legacies of the Strike, and its ongoing influence. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the Winnipeg General Strike continues to mobilize—revealing our radical past and helping us to think imaginatively about collective action in the future. --Publisher's description

New labour market intermediaries, such as those using digital platforms, are challenging not only temporary help agencies but also traditional employer–employee relationships. A new conceptual scheme is proposed to distinguish between three functions: a) allocating the work; b) entering into a contract with the worker; and c) managing and organizing the work.

The article reviews the book, "Inclusion des personnes d’origine étrangère sur le marché de l’emploi. Bilan des politiques en Wallonie.," edited by Altay Manço et Leïla Scheurette.

The article reviews the book, "Dissenting Traditions: Essays on Bryan D. Palmer, Marxism, and History," edited by Sean Carleton, Ted McCoy, and Julia Smith.

Analyzes Indigenous women's activism during the period of the the Royal Commission on the Status of Women as well as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women founded in 1972. Issues of colonialism and the Indian Act are explored.

Pays tribute to co-editor Joan Sangster, who retires with the publication of this issue. Comments that the COVID-19 pandemic has not dimmed the journal's quality, and that it remains committed to fostering scholarship, dialogue and debate on injustices and inequities which, if anything, have become more apparent in the present context. Reports the cancelation of a workshop on the carceral state in Canada due to the pandemic, but that the first of the papers that were to be delivered appear in the issue.

In the early 1920s in St. Antoine, Montreal, train porters Junior Massey and Zeke Garret, and their families, colleagues, and community pursue diverging paths to a better life. --Website description. The 8-episode series depicts the history of Black Canadian and African-American men who worked as Pullman porters in the period following World War I, leading to the 1925 creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as the first Black-led labour union. --From Wikipedia article

The article reviews the book, "The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike," by Jacob A. Zumoff.

The article reviews the book, "L’intelligence artificielle et les mondes du travail : perspectives sociojuridiques et enjeux éthiques," edited by Jean Bernier.

Examines the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women's proposals on child care, which included tax measures, a child allowance, and establishment of a national daycare program. Provides background and argues that the taxchange introduced by the federal government (which was not what the report had recommended) exacerbated inequality and reinforced the notion that childcare was a private matter.

Notre article s’intéresse à la manière dont le dialogue social se transforme lorsque les échanges se déroulent en ligne. Jusqu’à très récemment, le dialogue social avait largement résisté aux appels de la numérisation. Cependant, avec la COVID-19, les rencontres en personne ont dû être remplacées par des interactions à distance. En raison de ce changement soudain, notre article propose d’examiner comment les rituels de dialogue social se transforment lorsque les interactions entre les employeurs et les syndicats deviennent virtuelles. Pour mieux cerner cette problématique, nous mobilisons le cadre théorique développé par Goffman (1973) dans lequel le monde social est métaphoriquement comparé à un théâtre. Ainsi, nous proposons d’étudier l’évolution dramaturgique des relations entre les syndicats et les employeurs lorsque la scène et les coulisses du dialogue social se dématérialisent. Pour analyser empiriquement cette question, nous avons réalisé 23 entretiens avec des acteurs impliqués dans le dialogue social en France, dont 13 qui représentent la partie syndicale et 10 qui représentent la partie patronale. Nos résultats mettent en évidence trois mécanismes qui, sur la scène, contribuent à l’étiolement de la dramaturgie du dialogue social : la perte du caractère théâtral des interventions syndicales, l’isolement des représentants des salariés et la désynchronisation de leurs interventions. Notre étude empirique souligne aussi comment, dans les coulisses du dialogue social, le passage au numérique se traduit globalement par un appauvrissement des échanges, à l’exception des relations basées sur des liens forts. Fort de ces constats, notre article contribue à la littérature en postulant que les changements observés concourent à une perte de pouvoir pour la partie syndicale. En outre, derrière une pacification de façade des interactions patronales-syndicales, nous soulignons que la perte du caractère théâtral du dialogue social pourrait éloigner les acteurs d’une dynamique intégrative et les enfermer dans un mode plus distributif. S’appuyant sur les écrits de Goffman, notre article s’intéresse à la manière dont le dialogue social évolue lorsque le théâtre des interactions entre syndicats et employeurs devient numérique, comme ce fut le cas à la suite de la pandémie de COVID-19. Se basant sur 23 entretiens, notre article met en évidence trois effets du numérique sur le jeu scénique des acteurs syndicaux : la perte du caractère théâtral des prises de parole, l’isolement des acteurs et la désynchronisation de leurs interventions. Notre étude conclut également à un appauvrissement global des échanges en coulisse. Cet article contribue à la littérature en montrant comment le mode à distance modifie les relations de pouvoir entre les syndicats et les employeurs ainsi que la nature même de leurs relations.

The article reviews and comments on "Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s," by Traci Parker, "Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism," by Touré F. Reed, and "Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America," by Joe William Trotter, Jr.

We studied 14 universities across Canada and Australia to examine how the COVID-19 crisis, mediated through management strategies and conflict over financial control in higher education, influenced workers’ job security and affective outcomes like stress and happiness. The countries differed in their institutional frameworks, their union density, their embeddedness in neoliberalism and their negotiation patterns. Management strategies also differed between universities. Employee outcomes were influenced by differences in union involvement. Labour cost reductions negotiated with unions could improve financial outcomes, but, even in a crisis, management might not be willing to forego absolute control over finance, and it was not the depth of the crisis that shaped management decisions.

In this qualitative study of 27 bank employees, we investigated how learning algorithms affected their working conditions, their autonomy and the meaning of their work. We show that employees responded to the AI-induced changes through job crafting behaviours (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Employees reshaped their task and relationship boundaries, and cognitively reframed their jobs, to maintain their autonomy, their desired social relationships and the meaning of their work. By considering the effects of learning algorithms on the employees’ work experience from their perspective, we provide a novel application of job crafting theory. Employees’ concerted response across the three job crafting dimensions underlines the importance of synergy across job crafting dimensions if they are to be successful in altering employees’ experience of work and enhancing the human value of their services.