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The so-called “gig-economy” has been growing exponentially in numbers and importance in recent years but its impact on labour rights has been largely overlooked. Forms of work in the “gig-economy” include “crowdwork”, and “work-on-demand via apps”, under which the demand and supply of working activities is matched online or via mobile apps. These forms of work can provide a good match of job opportunities and allow flexible working schedules. However, they can also pave the way to a severe commodification of work. This paper discusses the implications of this commodification and advocates the full recognition of activities in the gig-economy as “work”. It shows how the gig-economy is not a separate silo of the economy and that is part of broader phenomena such as casualization and informalisation of work and the spread of non-standard forms of employment. It then analyses the risks associated to these activities with regard to Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, as they are defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and addresses the issue of misclassification of the employment status of workers in the gig economy. Current relevant trends are thus examined, such as the emergence of forms of self-organisation of workers. Finally, some policy proposals are critically analysed, such as the possibility of creating an intermediate category of worker between “employee” and “independent contractor” to classify work in the gig-economy, and other tentative proposals are put forward such extension of fundamental labour rights to all workers irrespective of employment status, and recognition of the role of social partners in this respect, whilst avoiding temptations of hastened deregulation.

The article reviews the book, "The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894," by Sam Mitrani.

Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser l’influence de la culture organisationnelle sur les problèmes d’épuisement professionnel dans la main-d’œuvre. Ceci est important pour explorer des pistes d’intervention qui vont au-delà des employés eux-mêmes et des conditions de travail ainsi qu’afin de mieux comprendre comment les éléments du contexte organisationnel peuvent influencer le développement de l’épuisement professionnel dans les organisations. En intégrant à la fois la culture organisationnelle et les conditions de l’organisation du travail, il est possible d’examiner comment la culture influence les différentes composantes des conditions de l’organisation du travail et comment celles-ci peuvent, ensuite, donner lieu au développement ou à l’aggravation des différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel. Cette étude s’appuie sur le courant fonctionnaliste, selon lequel la culture existe dans l’organisation par ses manifestations et artefacts — qui expriment les valeurs et les croyances partagées —, et sur lesquels la haute direction peut avoir une emprise. Des analyses de régression multiples de type multi-niveaux ont été conduites à partir de données recueillies dans 60 établissements privés canadiens auprès de 1824 individus lors de l’étude SALVEO (2009-2012). Les résultats montrent que les cultures groupales, rationnelles et développementales s’associent aux différentes dimensions de l’épuisement professionnel. Ainsi, les cultures organisationnelles groupales et développementales, qui sont caractérisées par la flexibilité, s’associent indirectement à un niveau plus faible d’épuisement émotionnel et de cynisme et à un niveau plus élevé d’efficacité professionnelle. La culture rationnelle, qui est caractérisée par la performance, s’associe indirectement à un niveau plus élevé d’épuisement émotionnel et de cynisme. La culture hiérarchique, quant à elle, ne s’associe pas avec l’épuisement professionnel. Les résultats obtenus démontrent l’importance d’intégrer des variables reliées au contexte organisationnel dans les études portant sur l’épuisement professionnel.

The article reviews the book, "Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement," by Thomas Geoghegan.

The main response (Mantsios 2015) to neoliberalism and the marginalization of labor studies in higher education has been the call for a “new” labor college—one that integrates “workforce development” and liberal arts, yet separates worker education from its working-class roots. This article interrogates the state of worker education and the impact of neoliberalism on various civic engagement efforts at colleges and universities. The authors argue for a critical reevaluation of workers’ education and labor studies programs, calling for organized workers to retake control of such projects to avoid the deradicalization of class politics now ascendant in neoliberal institutions.

The article reviews the book, "Empire of Cotton: A Global History," by Sven Beckert.

This article reviews the book, "Reflexive Labour Law in the World Society," by Ralf Rogowski.

This article reviews the book, "Responsabilité sociale des entreprises: mirage ou réalité ?," by Mustapha Bettache.

Au Canada, le 19e siècle constitue une période de transformations profondes. Parmi celles-ci etaient la transition au capitalisme qui simula l’économie coloniale et produisit une richesse nationale alors même que son mouvement engendra d’importantes inégalités sociales. Cette transition se loge au cœur de plusieurs questions qui occupent la sociologie historique sur les façons dont le capitalisme transforma les relations sociales en Occident et au Canada. Nombreuses de ces questions ont déjà été éclairées alors que d’autres demandent toujours à sortir de l’obscurité. Cet article a pour objectif de dresser un portrait des familles ouvrières et de leurs différentes stratégies de reproduction. À l’aide des données recueillies sur la population de la ville de Québec, nous souhaitons comparer différentes pratiques sociales en mettant l’accent sur les caractéristiques d’un nouveau régime temporel et mesurer son influence sur les ouvriers et ouvrières.

The article reviews the book, "Transforming Provincial Politics: The Political Economy of Canada’s Provinces and Territories in the Neoliberal Era," edited by Bryan M. Evans and Charles W. Smith.

The world of paid work has shifted extraordinarily in the last several decades. Globalization, technology, lean production, the intensification of work, mergers and reorganizations and precarious work have all meant a toughening of the conditions for workers. Unions organize in these conditions, confronting issues of concern to workers. Very little has been written about the role unions play in trying to protect the psychological health of their members. The major question of this thesis is whether unions are identifying and combating psychosocial hazards in the workplace. The thesis adds to knowledge on this subject by analyzing two data sets. First I conduct an analysis of grey literature on the Internet about psychological health and safety concerns. Second, I explore a series of questions with union health and safety experts representing every major Canadian union from each sector of the economy. The questions probe how unions are dealing with psychosocial risks in the workplace, how unions are organizing resistance and building solidarity. My inquiry also explores the issue of how unions deal with return-to-work for workers who have been absent for mental health reasons. I am not a neutral observer: I write from the standpoint of workers. My work has a practical utility to the degree that it can be directly applied to these real life problems facing health and safety practitioners. It attempts to theorize that which these union specialists should do. It also tries to anticipate some practical problems they may need to solve in future as a result of current health and safety practices. I observe real life phenomena and develop theory around them. One of these is that unions resist employer restraints and power and in so doing bump up against managementsâ right to control production and dictate work organization. In this thesis, I show the fledgling ways in which unions are challenging managementsâ typical rights in the interests of better working conditions. I give evidence of three promising practices that unions are adopting and propose that these may be adapted further for initiatives in other sectors. I argue that workersâ psychological health is one potential winner of these strategies. I also propose that union representatives be educated to deal more empathically with members that are absent for reasons of psychological ill health, in advocating for them when they return and by building solidarity among co-workers.

With bright, strong imagery, Ginger Goodwin presents the story of labour activist and martyr Albert “Ginger” Goodwin. This accessible and thoughtful graphic history explores Goodwin’s life, work, and death in the mining communities of Cumberland and Trail, British Columbia. Drawing on local history, and exploring the ways the history of labour organizing affects contemporary movements, Ginger Goodwin is a story that needs to be shared. --Publisher's description

The contemporary living wage movement emerged in the United States through the 1990s. It marked a particularly dramatic response at the local and regional level to the erosion in the quality of employment in the American labour market. In many respects it was and is today a rebellion of urban, racialized service sector workers. What is much less discussed are efforts to establish living wage policies in Canada. The Canadian living wage campaigns are much less movements than a strategy of rational policy advocacy. A variety of legal, political and ideological factors make this so. It is not a judgement but an observation meriting some greater interrogation.

The article reviews the book, "Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People," by Michel Hogue.

Union approaches in relation to the global recalibration of work and employment relations and practices over the last three decades are being worked out in practice. The question for unions is by which means they either have leverage or the potential to exercise power in relation to state and corporate decisions and strategies. Unions thus face challenging questions about the ways they organize, exercise their capacities and attempt to meet their purposes. With reference to the Australian maritime sector, the study examines the ways the main union, the Maritime Union of Australia, developed multi-scalar approaches to localized events. The problem unions face is to defend and advance workers’ interests. The task is to organize, to realize their capacities to defend and advance maritime workers’ interests, increasingly in multi-scalar ways. The argument is that leaderships and activity that ‘bridge’ scalar relationships are an important condition in this process. There appears to be a complex set of cross-connections between the local, the national and the international. While transnational connectivity increasingly defines contemporary forms of trade unionism, these scalar relations are defined in relation to the workplace, the everyday world, and by the ways that transport is a defining characteristic of the global world. These relations constitute contemporary class struggle where work and employment relations are always in a process of change and development. Trade unionism, thus, remains a collective expression of power relations, in an increasingly internationalized world of work and employment. Thus, this research presents important lessons for multi-scalar organization and campaigning by unions to realize their capacities and purpose. Nonetheless, this study is only a beginning. While it indicates the processes of bridging, the next step is to investigate the variety of ways that bridging may take place and with what outcomes for the development of multi-scalar activity. // Les approches syndicales en relation avec le rééquilibrage des relations industrielles et des pratiques en matière d’emploi et de travail durant les trois dernières décennies s’élaborent dans la pratique. La question qui se pose pour les syndicats est de savoir quels sont les moyens qui peuvent leur permettre d’influencer ou qui ont un potentiel pour influer sur les décisions et les stratégies de l’État et des entreprises. Les syndicats sont ainsi confrontés à diverses questions concernant les manières d’organiser et d’exercer leurs capacités ainsi que d’atteindre leurs objectifs. En se basant sur l’expérience du syndicalisme maritime australien, cette étude examine la façon dont le principal syndicat, le Syndicat maritime de l’Australie (Maritime Union of Australia), a su développer des approches à paliers multiples pour aborder les situations locales. Le problème auquel les syndicats doivent faire face est celui de défendre et de faire progresser les intérêts des travailleurs. Leur défi principal est d’organiser et de montrer leurs capacités à défendre et faire progresser les intérêts des travailleurs maritimes, en utilisant davantage l’approche à paliers multiples. Notre argumentation est à l’effet que le leadership et les activités qui permettent de faire le pont entre les paliers multiples constituent une importante condition du processus. Il semble exister un ensemble de connexions complexes entre les paliers local, national et international. Alors que la connectivité transnationale définit de plus en plus les formes contemporaines de syndicalisme, ces relations à paliers multiples sont définies en rapport avec les milieux de travail, le monde du quotidien, et par le fait que le transport s’avère une caractéristique du monde global. Ces relations constituent le lieu de la lutte des classes contemporaine où le travail et les relations industrielles s’insèrent continuellement dans un processus de changement et d’évolution. Ainsi, le syndicalisme demeure une expression collective des relations de pouvoir dans un monde du travail et de l’emploi s’internationalisant de plus en plus. Aussi, la présente recherche offre de tirer d’importantes leçons pour les organisations à paliers multiples et pour les syndicats qui cherchent à mettre en oeuvre leurs ressources et leurs objectifs. Malgré tout, cette étude constitue seulement un début. Bien qu’elle procure des indications sur le processus d’harmonisation des paliers multiples, la prochaine étape sera d’étudier les diverses manières dont cette recherche d’harmonisation peut se dérouler et avec quels résultats pour le développement d’activités à paliers multiples.

For the approximately 600,000 migrants currently working in Canada, changes made to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in 2014 have left them more vulnerable to exploitation and have further narrowed their access to permanent residence. These are the findings of Canada’s Choice: Decent Work or Entrenched Exploitation for Canada’s Migrant Workers?, the latest report from human rights lawyer and Metcalf Fellow Fay Faraday, that builds upon her two previous Metcalf papers on the precarious conditions created and perpetuated by Canada’s controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program. “Canada has lost its innocence on temporary labour migration,” says Faraday. “The 2014 reforms do nothing to alleviate – and in many cases exacerbate – insecurity for migrant workers. And exploitation predictably follows.” The report details the continued exploitation faced by migrant workers — including unscrupulous recruitment practices, employment mobility restrictions, and a lack of protection from rights abuses— and provides clear policy recommendations to strengthen protections and build employment security for Canada’s migrant workers. Canada’s Choice is also part of a submission to the Parliamentary Committee that is currently studying the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. With Canada’s labour migration policy at a crossroads, we hope that this timely report will contribute to informing the public discourse and lead to comprehensive reforms that enforce the rights of some of our nation’s most vulnerable workers. --Publisher's description

This article reviews the book, "Working through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective," edited by Teri L. Caraway, Maria Lorena Cook and Stephen Crowley.

The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) has become the dominant approach in comparative political economy and enjoys wide application and attention in disciplines outside of political science and sociology. Indeed the VoC approach has enjoyed much attention in comparative industrial/employment relations (IR). This article undertakes a critical evaluation of the importation of the VoC paradigm into comparative IR. Inter alia, it is argued that the VoC approach, as it is presently configured, may have little to teach IR scholars because its basic theoretical concepts and methodological priors militate against accounting for change. This article begins with a summary of the routine problems researchers in comparative political economy and comparative IR have encountered when attempting to account for change within the constraints of the VoC paradigm. Here the focus is on the limitations imposed when privileging the national scale and the problems engendered by a heavy reliance on comparative statics methodology infused with the concepts of equilibrium and exogenous shocks. The article then goes beyond these routinely recognized limitations and argues that the importation of terminology from neoclassical economic theory, of which the original VoC statement makes foundational reference, further serves to constrain and add confusion to the comparative enterprise; namely, comparative advantage, Oliver Williamson’s neoclassical theory of the firm, the use of the distinction made between (im)perfect market competition in neoclassical economics and the fuzzy distinction made between firms, markets and networks. In the concluding section we argue that the VoC’s narrow focus on the firm and its coordination problems serve to legitimate IRs traditional narrow focus on labour management relations and the pride of place that HRM now enjoys in the remaining IR departments. Ultimately, however, the embrace of the VoC paradigm by comparative IR is a net negative normative move.

The article reviews the book, "Techniciens de l’organisation sociale. La réorganisation de l’assistance catholique privée à Montréal (1930-1974)," by Amélie Bourbeau.