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This thesis explores the relationship between Newfoundland’s Irish Catholics and the largely English-Protestant backed Fishermen’s Protective Union (FPU) in the early twentieth century. The rise of the FPU ushered in a new era of class politics. But fishermen were divided in their support for the union; Irish-Catholic fishermen have long been seen as at the periphery—or entirely outside—of the FPU’s fold. Appeals to ethno-religious unity among Irish Catholics contributed to their ambivalence about or opposition to the union. Yet, many Irish Catholics chose to support the FPU. In fact, the historical record shows Irish Catholics demonstrating a range of attitudes towards the union: some joined and remained, some joined and then left, and others rejected the union altogether. Far from being beholden to the whims of clerics, political elites, or the structural dictates of the economy and of region, Irish-Catholic fishermen made their own decisions about membership. Nevertheless, the pressures of class and ethno-religious solidarities mediated their decisions to engage with the union. This thesis uses a combination of newspaper sources, church correspondence, oral histories, censuses, and election data to unearth the history of Irish Catholics’ complex relationship with the FPU, and argues that this relationship is an example of the entanglements of ethnicity and class in pre-Confederation Newfoundland.

Cet article s'intéresse à la façon dont les discours en circulation au Québec parlent de la pauvreté urbaine dans un contexte de prospérité. Il met en lumière la coexistence, pendant les années qui suivent la Seconde Guerre mondiale, d'une vision « individualisante » de la pauvreté avec une conception plus « socialisante » assimilant ce phénomène à une injustice. Il soutient aussi qu'un changement de paradigme s'effectue dans les années 1960 et 1970, la pauvreté commençant à être appréhendée en lien avec la société de consommation en voie de consolidation. Dans ce contexte, la pauvreté qui perdure en dépit de mesures prises pour l'enrayer dérange de plus en plus et en vient à être assimilée à un phénomène social dont l'injustice est exacerbée par les valeurs de la consommation de masse et la prospérité ambiante qui le rendent d'autant plus inacceptable.

This dissertation explores the effects of lack of citizenship on the wages of low-skilled Non-Permanent Residents (NPRs) in Canada—a category that includes temporary foreign workers, refugee claimants, and people with temporary resident visas on humanitarian grounds. The dissertation uses the 2006 census and quantitative methods (cross-tabulation and regression analysis) to evaluate wage differences between low-skilled workers without citizenship and low-skilled workers with citizenship or permanent resident status. Differences are calculated at the industry sector level and occupation level. The analysis further considers a set of intrinsic characteristics of low-skilled workers (including sex, level of education, official language ability and country of birth) and their occupations (provincial location, rural/urban setting). Empirically, this dissertation confirms that there is a penalty attached to lack of citizenship for low-skilled workers. In absolute terms, low-skilled NPRs earn low wages. In relative terms, these NPRs earn less than both the Canadian-born and immigrants low-skilled workers employed in the same occupations. Among low-skilled NPRs themselves, the Canadian labour market exhibits a hierarchy of wages and labour experiences on the lines of workers' country of birth, province of residence, and rural/urban place of work. Among low–skilled workers born in the same country, wages improve when either citizenship or the rights attached to permanent residence are acquired. From a policy perspective, the dissertation identifies the policy origins and drivers of low wages among low-skilled non-citizens. The thesis makes the case for the relevance of quantitative outcomes analyzed through a critical social lens. From a theoretical perspective too, the dissertation also shows how the state as a biased broker (towards capital) facilitates the implementation of non-citizenship as a means to accessing cheap labour.

This paper provides evidence of the impact of three important and general policies shaping the degree of labor market rigidity on the labor share: welfare expenditures, government ex- penditures on active labor market programs, and passive labor market measures. It analyses the impact of regulation, such as the intensity of employment protection, and evaluates whether trade unions and minimum wage institutions play a role in the relationship between all measures and the labor share. The labor income share has experienced a declining trend since the mid- 1970s in most advanced economies, and the existing literature found little if no correlation of this decline to general labor market characteristics. However, the present paper finds that some in- stitutions are correlated to the downward trend, depending on the welfare system adopted, and that welfare and employment protection counteract the decline. Moreover, many countries saw an upsurge in their labor share after the burst of the financial crisis. Evidence of whether the effect of the policies weakened or reinforced the labor share after 2007 is reported.

This article examines the efforts of feminist unions to organize childcare workers in 1970s Vancouver, British Columbia, and highlights the entrenched opposition to union organizing by women considered to be “just babysitters.” These workers’ efforts challenged the “love-versus-money” divide that hampered women’s organizing efforts in the care sector. Vancouver childcare workers, working in alliance with parents, insisted on the public importance of their traditionally private work. In doing so, they connected their fight for better working conditions with the fight for universal childcare. They linked women’s struggles in the workplace to calls for the redistribution of society’s caregiving responsibilities away from families and the market and toward the state. Government intransigence prevented meaningful childcare policy reform, but workers’ efforts highlighted a key moment in Vancouver’s feminist and labor history when the fair treatment of care workers was linked to the liberation of all women.

This article reviews "Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America," by Andrew J. Cherlin, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," by J.D. Vance, "Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working-Class Citizenship," by Robert Bussel, "Conservative Counterrevolution: Challenging Liberalism in 1950s Milwaukee," by Tula A. Connell, and "Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph," edited by Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang.

This article reviews the book, "Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces," by Jason Foster and Bob Barnetson.

This article reviews the book, "Dialogue social, relations du travail et syndicalisme : perspectives historiques et internationales," edited by Paul-André Lapointe,

Thiis article reviews the book, "Quand travailler enferme dans la pauvreté et la précarité : travailleuses et travailleurs pauvres au Québec et dans le monde," by Carole Yerochewski.

Higher-education systems in Canada and the United Kingdom share much in common, but there are important differences that faculty on both sides of the Atlantic should appreciate. The UK experience can wake Canadian academics up to the urgency of resisting university corporatization and to the opportunities for resistance that remain.

Taverns and inns were centres of neighbourhood life, places for travellers seeking meals, drink, and accommodation and commercial and domestic spaces where keepers and their families earned a living and that they called home. Women figured largely in public houses as patrons, servants, family members, and publicans in their own right. The article focuses on a sample of 90 female publicans who held tavern licences from 1840 to 1860, arguing that keeping these establishments afforded them distinct levels of economic independence and power. It considers broadly those characteristics that constituted ideal female keepers in mid-nineteenth-century Montreal and how they maintained a respectable status precisely at a moment when alcohol consumption and associated licensed and unlicensed commercial sites were coming increasing under scrutiny by temperance advocates, authorities of the criminal justice system, and elites. To retain their licences, female keepers had to negotiate the landmines of respectability by following licensing regulations, maintaining a reputable demeanour, and regulating the public house’s culture and clientele.

This article reviews the book, "In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs," by Stephen M. Ward.

Precarious employment is on the rise in Canada, increasing by nearly 50% in the last two decades. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which it can impact upon geographical mobility. Employment-related geographical mobility refers to mobility to, from and between workplaces, as well as mobility as part of work. We report on a qualitative study conducted among 27 immigrant men and women in Toronto that investigates the relationship between precarious employment and daily commutes while exploring the ways in which gender, class and migration structure this relationship.Interview data reveal that participants were largely unable to work where they lived or live where they worked. Their precarious jobs were characterized by conditions that resulted in long, complex, unfamiliar, unsafe and expensive commutes. These commuting difficulties, in turn, resulted in participants having to refuse or quit jobs, including desirable jobs, or being unable to engage in labour market strategies that could improve their employment conditions (e.g. taking courses, volunteering, etc.). Participants’ commuting difficulties were amplified by the delays, infrequency, unavailability and high cost of public transportation. These dynamics disproportionately and/or differentially impacted certain groups of workers. Precarious work has led to workers having to absorb an ever-growing share of the costs associated with their employment, underscored in our study as time, effort and money spent travelling to and from work. We discuss the forces that underlie the spatial patterning of work and workers in Toronto, namely the growing income gap and the increased polarization among neighbourhoods that has resulted in low-income immigrants increasingly moving from the centre to the edges of the city. We propose policy recommendations for public transportation, employment, housing and child care that can help alleviate some of the difficulties described. // L’emploi précaire poursuit sa croissance au Canada, augmentant de près de 50% au cours des deux dernières décennies. Toutefois, nous connaissons mal les mécanismes par lesquels cette forme d’organisation du travail peut influer sur la mobilité géographique des travailleurs. La mobilité géographique liée à l’emploi renvoie ici aux divers déplacements que doivent effectuer les travailleurs depuis et entre les lieux de travail, ainsi que les déplacements intrinsèques à l’exercice de l’emploi lui-même. Les résultats qui suivent proviennent d’une étude qualitative effectuée auprès de 27 hommes et femmes immigrants vivant à Toronto, étude qui s’est attardée à la relation entre l’emploi précaire et les déplacements quotidiens qui y sont rattachés, tout en explorant les façons par lesquelles le genre, la classe sociale et la migration structurent cette relation.Les données en provenance des entrevues indiquent que les participants étaient généralement incapables de travailler près de leur lieu de résidence, ou encore d’habiter près de leur lieu de travail. Leurs emplois précaires se caractérisaient par des conditions qui donnaient lieu à des déplacements quotidiens longs, complexes, peu familiers, dangereux et coûteux. En retour, les difficultés liées aux déplacements quotidiens faisaient en sorte que les participants devaient souvent refuser ou quitter des emplois, parfois intéressants, ou s’avéraient incapables de s’investir dans des stratégies qui auraient pu leur permettre d’améliorer leurs conditions de travail (par exemple, suivre des cours, faire du bénévolat, etc.). De plus, les difficultés vécues par les participants se trouvaient amplifiées par les délais, la rareté, l’indisponibilité et les coûts élevés des transports en commun. Ces dynamiques à l’oeuvre affectaient de manières différentes et/ou disproportionnées certains groupes de travailleurs.L’emploi précaire pousse les travailleurs à absorber une part toujours plus importante des coûts associés à leur emploi. L’étude met clairement en relief ces coûts tels le temps, l’effort et l’argent dépensés à voyager vers et depuis le lieu travail. Nous traitons ensuite des facteurs qui sous-tendent la répartition spatiale des emplois des travailleurs à Toronto, notamment l’écart grandissant des inégalités de revenus et l’accroissement de la polarisation des quartiers, phénomènes qui ont entraîné le déplacement des immigrants à faible revenu du centre vers les limites de la ville. Nous proposons des recommandations concernant le transport en commun, l’emploi, le logement et les services de garde à l’enfance susceptibles de contribuer à atténuer certaines des difficultés décrites.

Objective. We sought to document pathways between under/unemployment and health among racialized immigrant women in Toronto while exploring the ways in which gender, class, migration and racialization, as interlocking systems of social relations, structure these relationships. Design. We conducted 30 interviews with racialized immigrant women who were struggling to get stable employment that matched their education and/or experience. Participants were recruited through flyers, partner agencies and peer researcher networks. Most interviews (21) were conducted in a language other than English. Interviews were transcribed, translated as appropriate and analyzed using NVivo software. The project followed a community-based participatory action research model. Results. Under/unemployment negatively impacted the physical and mental health of participants and their families. It did so directly, for example through social isolation, as well as indirectly through representation in poor quality jobs. Under/unemployment additionally led to the intensification of job search strategies and of the household/caregiving workload which also negatively impacted health. Health problems, in turn, contributed to pushing participants into long-term substandard employment trajectories. Participants’ experiences were heavily structured by their social location as low income racialized immigrant women. Conclusions. Our study provides needed qualitative evidence on the gendered and racialized dimensions of under/unemployment, and adverse health impacts resulting from this. Drawing on intersectional analysis, we unpack the role that social location plays in creating highly uneven patterns of under/unemployment and negative health pathways for racialized immigrant women. We discuss equity informed strategies to help racialized immigrant women overcome barriers to stable work that match their education and/or experience.

This dissertation traces the reoccurrence of logics which attempt to justify white settler occupation and the extraction, theft and harm of Indigenous lands and life in the Athabasca region and in relation to the extraction, transportation and marketing of bitumen. By tracing the entrenchment of notions of white entitlement to land and life in this context, the repetitiveness of normalized epistemic and ontological colonial violence comes into view as just as much a part of the contemporary neoliberal moment as it was during the founding of the nation-state. The Athabasca region is home to the worlds second largest deposit of oil and is being aggressively extracted despite being an unconventional oil source that requires massive amounts of energy, water, toxic chemicals and irreversible environmental damage to extract. Herein, historical narratives of empire and nation-building are examined and linked to extractive industries over time, first within a colonial mercantilist economy, then within a capitalist economic structure and finally within the contemporary neoliberal context. The relationships between private capital and the white settler government are explored as deeply interconnected and as mutually involved in the creation and maintenance of normalized white settler colonialism. Furthermore, the dissertation examines the extractive practices of white settler colonialism as always already informed by logics of white supremacy, and develops the concept of racial extractivism as a theoretical lens through which race, racism and racialization as well as colonialism may be centered in studies of resource extraction and nation-state building. Influenced by Cedric Robinsons (1983) theorization of racial capitalism, racial extractivism contributes to studies of political economy, settler colonialism, and to cultural studies and is utilized in analyzing the more regionally specific context of tar sands extraction and the contemporary discursive strategies supporting it and marketing it domestically and internationally. Lastly, the project examines neoliberalism and the securitization of the industry and attempts to think about racial extractivism intersectionally, as white settler state power combines with the forces of private oil and gas companies to discursively and affectively normalize ongoing colonial violence.

In May 1919, businessman and former munitions manufacturer Thomas Russell was brought before the Royal Commission on Industrial Relations (Mathers Commission) to provide insight into the largest collection of strikes in Canadian history. Russell was one of Canada’s pioneering automakers, first employed as general manager of the Canada Cycle and Motor Co. (CCM) and later as vice-president when the company was reorganized to become the Russell Motor Car Co. (RMCC). Russell had been actively engaged in business and political discourse for nearly two decades and played a leading role in implementing industrial reforms during the First World War. The RMCC became the largest private producer of shell fuses in Canada and employed one of the country’s largest female workforces. While these progressive reforms increased the productivity and profitability of munitions manufacturers, they had been implemented with little regard to their dramatic transformation of wartime labour conditions. As the war came to a close, Russell suspended his seemingly “progressive” program in favour of protecting his companies’ enormous late war profits. When asked what he believed to be the cause of labour unrest, he told the Mathers Commission that the strikes were not the fault of employers’ wartime industrial policies, but rather an unavoidable “natural desire for betterment” among dissatisfied workers and the unemployed. Contrary to Russell’s testimony, employers were very much responsible. This project explores the origins of progressive ideals in Canadian business at the turn of the 20th century and their impact on industrial reform during the First World War. As war manufacturers, business progressives failed to address the devastation their industries caused in the post-war period. Their post-war factory closures and reluctance to compromise with the growing labour movement substantially contributed to the outbreak of the 1919 labour revolt and fueled future advocacy for government intervention in the Canadian economy.

This edited collection introduces and explores the causes and consequences of precarious employment in Canada and across the world. After contextualizing employment precarity and its root causes, the authors illustrate how precarious employment is created amongst different populations and describe the accompanying social impacts on racialized immigrant women, those in the non-profit sector, temporary foreign workers and the children of Filipino immigrants. --Publisher's description. Contents: Preface: The PEPSO Story -- Part 1: Precarity in Canada. Origins of Precarity: Families and Communities in Crisis / Wayne Lewchuk, Stephanie Procyk and John Shields -- Part 2: Creating Precarity and its Social Impact. “No One Cares about Us”: Precarious Employment among Racialized Immigrant Women / Yogendra B. Shakya and Stephanie Premji -- Precarious Undertakings: Serving Vulnerable Communities through Nonprofit Work / John Shields, Donna Baines and Ian Cunningham -- Sacrificing the Family for the Family: Impacts of Repeated Separations on Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada / Aaraón Díaz Mendiburo, André Lyn, Janet McLaughlin, Biljana Vasilevska, and  Don Wells -- Precarious Students and Families in Halton, Ontario: Linking Citizenship, Employment and Filipino Student Success / Jennilee Austria, Philip Kelly and Don Wells -- Part 3: Resisting Precarity. $14 Now!: Voices of the Minimum Wage Campaign / Serene K. Tan -- Re-scripting Care Work: Collaborative Cultural Production and Caregiver Advocacy / Philip Kelly and Conely de Leon -- Cleaners Against Precarity: Lessons from a Vulnerable Workforce / Sean Patterson, Jenny Carson and Myer Siemiatycki -- Austerity, Precarity and Workers’ Voice: Representation for Precarious Workers in Non-Unions Social Services / Ian Cunningham, Donna Baines and John Shields -- The Immigrant Discount: Working on the Edges of the Labour Market / Diane Dyson and Nasima Akter -- Part 4: What To Do About Precarity? Workers’ Precarity: What to Do about It? / Wayne Lewchuk.

In this study, we examine the predictors of unmet demand for unions in non-union workplaces, using the Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey (AWRPS). Unmet demand is defined here, as those employees in non-union workplaces who would be likely to join a union if one were available. We argue that this is the first study in Australia to examine the predictors of unmet demand in non-union workplaces, and, that this is an important line of inquiry given a rise in non-union workplaces and never members in Australia, alongside declining union density and membership numbers. Drawing on three strands of existing literature, namely the individual propensity to unionize, the rise and characteristics of non-union workplaces and alternative forms of representation, and, managerial responsiveness to employees and unions, we develop and test four hypotheses.Our results show, controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, that there are two significant predictors of the willingness to join a union in non-union workplaces: perceived union instrumentality (Hypothesis 2) and perceived managerial responsiveness to employees (Hypothesis 4), whereby employees who perceive that managers lack responsiveness are more likely to want to join a union if one were available.These results show that unions must try to enhance their instrumentality in workplaces and could be more effective in recruiting if they targeted never members. The results also show that unions need to have some gauge (measure) of how responsive managers are to employees, and that they can leverage poor responsiveness of managers for membership gain and the extension of organizing. In the final analysis, an understanding of the predictors of unmet demand for unions in non-union workplaces has implications for Australian unions’ servicing and organizing strategies, and for their future growth prospects. // Cet article cherche à identifier les prédicteurs de la demande non comblée pour la syndicalisation dans les milieux de travail non syndiqués, en ayant recours à l’Enquête sur la participation et la représentation des travailleurs australiens (Australian Worker Representation and Participation Survey-AWRPS). La demande non comblée correspond ici au désir des employés de milieux non syndiqués d’adhérer à un syndicat si une telle possibilité leur était offerte. Nous croyons que c’est la première étude sur ce sujet en Australie et qu’elle est d’autant d’intérêt qu’on assiste actuellement à une croissance du nombre de milieux non syndiqués ou de milieux où les syndicats sont absents, parallèlement au déclin de la densité syndicale et du nombre de personnes membres d’un syndicat. En s’appuyant sur trois axes de la littérature existante, soit la propension individuelle à joindre un syndicat, la montée et les caractéristiques des milieux non syndiqués et les formes alternatives de représentation, ainsi que les réactions des directions face aux employés et aux syndicats, nous développons et testons quatre hypothèses.Nos résultats, après avoir contrôlé une variété de caractéristiques des individus, des emplois et des milieux de travail, font ressortir deux prédicteurs significatifs du désir d’adhérer à un syndicat en milieux non syndiqués : la perception de l’instrumentalité de la syndicalisation (Hypothèse 2) et la perception de la réaction managériale envers les employés et les syndicats (Hypothèse 4), à savoir que les employés qui perçoivent que les gestionnaires n’apportent pas de réponses satisfaisantes à leurs besoins seront plus enclins à vouloir adhérer à un syndicat lorsque cette possibilité leur est offerte.Ces résultats suggèrent également que les syndicats devraient chercher à mieux faire valoir leur utilité dans les milieux de travail et ils pourraient devenir plus efficaces dans leur recrutement de nouveaux membres s’ils ciblaient davantage les travailleurs qui n’ont jamais été membres d’un syndicat. Ils montrent aussi que les syndicats devraient jauger (mesurer) à quel point les directions répondent aux besoins des employés, et qu’ils pourraient bâtir sur une faible réponse managériale afin d’effectuer des gains en terme de recrutement de membres et d’expansion de l’organisation syndicale. En dernière analyse, la compréhension des prédicteurs de la demande non comblée pour la syndicalisation dans les milieux de travail non syndiqués comporte des implications pour les stratégies d’organisation et d’offre de services des syndicats australiens, ainsi que pour la croissance future des organisations syndicales.

First published in 1974, this best-selling book was lauded by Choice as 'an important, ground-breaking study of the Assiniboine and western Cree Indians who inhabited southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan' and 'essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Canadian west before 1870.' Indians in the Fur Trade makes extensive use of previously unpublished Hudson's Bay Company archival materials and other available data to reconstruct the cultural geography of the West at the time of early contact, illustrating many of the rapid cultural transformations with maps and diagrams. Now with a new introduction and an update on sources, it will continue to be of great use to students and scholars of Native and Canadian history. --Publisher's description

The article reviews the book, "Worker Voice: Employee Representation in the Workplace in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US, 1914–1939," by Greg Patmore.