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This article adopts an in-depth clinical perspective based on the theoretical framework of grief in order to examine individuals’ reactions following psychological contract violation over a period of 12 months. By focusing on emotional intra-psychic phenomena our study provides evidence of the enduring effects of psychological contract violation on individuals and the employment relationship. We conducted a total of 60 interviews among 11 managers of a temporary employment agency that has implemented a series of organizational changes, mainly related to restructuring and downsizing decisions. The 11 managers interviewed have been chosen after having reported in a short survey that they experienced a psychological contract violation at work. Our results indicate that psychological contract violation triggers the subject into a grief process only when violation deprives the individual from a highly invested object at work. In these circumstances, the grief process lasts longer than we originally expected since, over 12 months, we were unable to observe the grief process in its entirety among our participants. We also find that the grief process may be accelerated or stopped according to the capacity of the organization and the individual to offer new objects that satisfy the individual’s needs and thus may help the person mourn the loss experienced as a result of the violation. Finally, our results show that the grief process deeply alters the employment relationship and modifies the amount and intensity of energy that the participants of our study devote to their work. // Cet article adopte une perspective clinique fondée sur le cadre théorique du deuil afin de d’examiner les réactions à la violation du contrat psychologique au cours d’une période de 12 mois. En se centrant sur les phénomènes émotionnels propres à l’individu, notre étude apporte des éléments d’observation des effets durables que peut engendrer la violation du contrat psychologique chez les personnes concernées, et de la manière dont ces effets altèrent leur relation d’emploi avec l’entreprise. Nous avons mené, au total, 60 entretiens auprès de 11 gestionnaires d’une agence de travail temporaire qui a mis en place une série de changements organisationnels importants, portant essentiellement sur des restructurations et coupures de poste. Les 11 gestionnaires interrogés furent sélectionnés après avoir vérifié, au préalable lors d’une enquête brève, qu’ils avaient bien vécu un sentiment de violation du contrat psychologique. Nos résultats montrent que la violation du contrat psychologique ne pousse le sujet à effectuer un travail de deuil que lorsque cette violation prive l’individu d’un objet fortement investi au travail. Dans ces circonstances, le deuil est un processus plus long que nous l’avions anticipé, puisqu’à l’issue de la période de collecte (soit 12 mois), nous n’avons pas été en mesure d’observer l’ensemble du processus chez les participants. Nos résultats indiquent aussi que le processus de deuil peut être accéléré ou ralenti selon la capacité de l’organisation et de l’individu à offrir ou trouver de nouveaux objets qui satisfont les besoins de l’individu et l’aident à accepter la perte vécue lors de la violation. Finalement, nos résultats montrent que le processus de deuil conduit à une modification importante de la relation d’emploi et qu’il change tant le contenu que l’intensité de l’énergie que les participants consacrent à leur travail.

The article reviews the book, "Canadian State Trials, Volume IV: Security, Dissent, and the Limits of Toleration in War and Peace, 1914–1939, edited by Barry Wright, Eric Tucker, and Susan Binnie.

Background: Although worker representation in OHS has been widely recognized as contributing to health and safety improvements at work, few studies have examined the role that worker representatives play in this process. Using a large quantitative sample, this paper seeks to confirm findings from an earlier exploratory qualitative study that worker representatives can be differentiated by the knowledge intensive tactics and strategies that they use to achieve changes in their workplace. Methods: Just under 900 worker health and safety representatives in Ontario completed surveys which asked them to report on the amount of time they devoted to different types of representation activities (i.e., technical activities such as inspections and report writing vs. political activities such as mobilizing workers to build support), the kinds of conditions or hazards they tried to address through their representation (e.g., housekeeping vs. modifications in ventilation systems), and their reported success in making positive improvements. A cluster analysis was used to determine whether the worker representatives could be distinguished in terms of the relative time devoted to different activities and the clusters were then compared with reference to types of intervention efforts and outcomes. Results: The cluster analysis identified three distinct groupings of representatives with significant differences in reported types of interventions and in their level of reported impact. Two of the clusters were consistent with the findings in the exploratory study, identified as knowledge activism for greater emphasis on knowledge based political activity and technical-legal representation for greater emphasis on formalized technical oriented procedures and legal regulations. Knowledge activists were more likely to take on challenging interventions and they reported more impact across the full range of interventions. Conclusions This paper provides further support for the concepts of knowledge activism and technical-legal representation when differentiating the strategic orientations and impact of worker health and safety representatives, with important implications for education, political support and recruitment.

In Northern Canada, Indigenous mixed economies persist alongside and in resistance to capital accumulation. The day-to-day sites and processes of colonial struggle, and, in particular, their gendered nature, are too often ignored. This piece takes an anti-colonial materialist approach to the multiple labours of Indigenous women in Canada, arguing that their social-reproductive labour is a primary site of struggle: a site of violent capitalist accumulation and persistent decolonising resistance. In making this argument, this piece draws on social-reproduction feminism, and anti-racist, Indigenous and anti-colonial feminism, asking what it means to take an anti-colonial approach to social-reproduction feminism. It presents an expanded conception of production that encompasses not just the dialectic of capitalist production and reproduction, but also non-capitalist, subsistence production. An anti-colonial approach to social-reproduction feminism challenges one to think through questions of non-capitalist labour and the way different forms of labour persist relationally, reproducing and resisting capitalist modes of production.

The article reviews the book, "Soviet Princeton: Slim Evans and the 1932–33 Miners' Strike by Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat.

In this report, we begin by setting the context of living and working in Greater Victoria, examining low wages, high cost of living, and employment trends, particularly in relation to work in the retail, food service, and hospitality industries. We characterize retail, food service, and hospitality work as “precarious work,” providing workers with very little in the way of wages, benefits, job security, stability, protection, or basic respect and dignity. Existing employment standards are not adequate to protect workers in retail, food service, and hospitality. The key contribution of this report is its exploration of key areas of concern – low-wages, lack of benefits, unstable scheduling practices, unfair job expectations, disregard for workersʼ health and safety, poor treatment, workplace justice – through the workersʼ own experiences and voices. We would like to thank these workers for sharing their experiences with us. By bringing these various and similar experiences together, we hope this report will help provide a grounding to fight for workplace justice.

The article reviews the book, "La « rébellion de 1837 » à travers le prisme du Montreal Herald. La refondation par les armes des institutions politiques canadiennes, by François Deschamps.

The article reviews the book, "Capitalism: A Short History," by Jürgen Kocka.

Après plusieurs décennies de formation et de mises en pratique de la NBI dans les relations patronales-syndicales, cette étude cherche à comprendre la résonnance pratique de cette approche auprès des négociateurs syndicaux ainsi que comment elle est réellement utilisée dans le cadre de négociations collectives. Rapportant les résultats d’une étude empirique menée auprès de quarante-cinq négociateurs syndicaux œuvrant dans le secteur privé et ayant, pour la plupart, mis en pratique à plusieurs reprises la NBI au cours des dernières années, les résultats de cette recherche soulignent à la fois les limites et les retombées multiples de cette approche sur la pratique de la négociation collective en entreprise. Les résultats de notre étude démontrent que les négociateurs syndicaux n’hésitent pas à s’approprier la NBI et à modeler ses principes et procédés en fonction de leurs besoins et du contexte dans lequel ils interviennent. Cette « appropriation imaginative » de la NBI ainsi que les pratiques innovantes auxquelles elle donne lieu montrent, non seulement l’existence de frontières poreuses entre les approches distributive et intégrative et l’existence de « négociation mixte » (ou mixed motive bargaining), mais également les différentes formes que peuvent prendre cette négociation mixte dans le cadre de la négociation collective. Enfin, si les négociateurs syndicaux interrogés rapportent très peu de cas d’application intégrale de la NBI, cette recherche révèle néanmoins à quel point cette approche s’avère, à travers ses diverses formes d’appropriation, une source fondamentale de l’évolution de la pratique de la négociation collective.

This article examines the development of the ILO’s Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health through the lens of social exclusion. Social exclusion is a transversal concept across the social sciences. The article integrates the study of exclusion as an essential element of institutional analysis in industrial relations. After discussing the treatment of the study of exclusion in labour and employment relations scholarship, it presents an analytic frame using four mechanisms of exclusion taken from sociology: 1- encoding; 2- framing pathways; 3- non-decision making; and 4- mining actualities. Observations are presented from a qualitative study of 125 preparatory and legal texts created through the development of the Global Strategy between 2000 and 2015. The method of analysis is a socio-historic interpretation following the principles of analysis of primary source documents outlined by Marc Trachtenberg in his book The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method. Exclusionary dynamics are observed in three areas: 1- managing the meaning of OSH policy integration; 2- shaping the role of collective labour rights in OSH policy; and 3- sidestepping the development of specific OSH hazard protections. Comparisons are made at key points with recent normative work by UN human rights bodies, including the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and their General Comment No. 23 on the human right to just and favourable conditions of work. The result is a Global OSH Strategy with promotional strengths, but also neoliberal values interwoven in its policy framework. // Cet article examine le développement de la Stratégie globale en matière de sécurité et de santé au travail de l’Organisation internationale du Travail (OIT) à travers le prisme de l’exclusion sociale. L’exclusion sociale est un concept transversal dans les sciences sociales. L’article intègre l’étude de l’exclusion comme une composante essentielle d’une analyse institutionnelle en relations industrielles. Il présente un cadre analytique en utilisant quatre mécanismes d’exclusion repris de la sociologie : 1- l’encodage ; 2- les voies encadrant ; 3- la non-prise de décision ; et 4- les actualités minées. Les observations sont présentées à partir d’une étude qualitative de 125 textes juridiques préparatoires rédigés dans le cadre du développement de la Stratégie globale entre 2000 et 2015. Notre méthode s’avère être une interprétation socio-historique suivant les principes de l’analyse des documents primaires articulés par Marc Trachtenberg dans son livre The Craft of International History : A Guide to Method. Des dynamiques d’exclusion furent observées dans trois domaines : 1- la gestion du sens de l’intégration des politiques en matière de SST ; 2- l’élaboration du rôle des droits collectifs du travail dans la politique en matière de SST ; et 3- le développement des protections spécifiques de danger en matière de SST. Le résultat a donné une Stratégie globale en matière de SST avec des forces de promotion, mais aussi des valeurs néolibérales entrelacées dans le cadre de sa politique.

This ethnographic thesis project critically examines the experiences of Jamaican migrant farmworkers employed in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia via the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). First introduced in 1966, the SAWP is the oldest and longest-standing labour migration regime in Canada and the principal agricultural stream of the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Drawing upon the salient work of numerous activists and scholars who have contended that the SAWP facilitates a form of transnational indentureship by bonding migrant workers to their employers, I argue that the SAWP farm site constitutes a peculiar and totalizing institution that capitalizes on the unfreedom of black labour. I apply critical race theory to situate workers’ experiences of surveillance, immobilization, and hyper-exploitation in addition to their characterization of farm life as “prison life” within a postslavery context. I conclude that only by acknowledging the role of racism and its relationship to the border can we ever hope to truly achieve justice for migrant farmworkers in Canada.

The article reviews the book, "Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era," by Jacob A.C. Remes.

Historians have analyzed working-class masculinities from multiple perspectives, but few have examined how these masculinities were viewed and experienced by working-class women. Ida Martin (nee Friars), a working-class diarist from Saint John, New Brunswick, commented on the work-related activities and social behaviours of her husband, Allan Robert Martin (AR), a longshoreman and odd-jobber. Ida’s diaries reveal that older forms of working-class masculinity persisted in the postwar period in Saint John, including participation in a homosocial recreational culture; risk-taking behaviour; and a commitment to direct action as a form of labour unrest. Moreover, Martin’s diaries illustrate that AR’s participation in these forms of masculinity threatened the stability of the family economy. By documenting AR’s various injuries, the diaries also highlight the impact that physically demanding and dangerous work had on working-class male bodies.

The article reviews the book, "Welcome to Resisterville: American Dissidents in British Columbia," by Kathleen Rodgers.

Theoretical developments and case studies have started to explore the complexity and intricacies of new forms of labour regulation in Global Value Chains (GVCs). This paper builds on these to integrate what we know into a coherent framework that can guide practice and future research. We bring together existing knowledge on new forms of labour standards regulation—such as Private Social Standards (PSSs) and International Framework Agreements (IFAs)—into a framework that integrates and disentangles the contextual determinants, processes, regulatory mechanisms, and outcomes of such regulation in GVCs. Of special significance is the distinction between regulatory processes—vicarious voice, workers’ voice, coordinated international campaigns—, and regulatory mechanisms—IFAs and PSSs. Extant literature tends to deal with existing forms of regulation without much clarity on their respective roles. Our framework identifies two pathways from regulatory processes to regulatory mechanisms: the labour power and the customer power pathways. Our framework also establishes clear connections between concepts, underlining links of causality and moderating effects. We explore the impact of value chain structure, and specifically, the connections between workers’ and vicarious voice, on regulatory outcomes. With regard to the structure of supply chains, we examine the coupling of operations and the sensitivity of value chain participants to reputational risk and drive within value chains. We add the significant dimension of ‘internal drive’ to existing understandings of drive to capture the possible internal discrepancies leading managers in multinational companies (MNCs) to apply mixed incentives to their suppliers to comply with labour standards. Additionally, we introduce the concept of ‘vicarious voice’, which we define as a situation where workers’ voice is substituted by that of actors who, unlike local unions or activist unionism, do not have a close representative link with workers. Vicarious voice may be composed of ethical consumerism, social advocacy, and international union federations. // Certains développements théoriques et des études de cas récentes ont commencé à explorer la complexité et les subtilités des nouvelles formes de régulation du travail dans les chaînes de valeur mondiales (CVM). À partir de ces analyses, le présent article cherche à intégrer ce que nous savons déjà dans un cadre cohérent qui puisse guider la pratique et la recherche à l’avenir. Nous y intégrons les connaissances actuelles sur les nouvelles formes de régulation du travail — telles les normes sociales privées (NSP) et les accords-cadres internationaux (ACI) — dans un cadre cohérent qui intègre, tout en les démêlant, les déterminants contextuels, processus et mécanismes de régulation, ainsi que les résultats de cette régulation dans les CVM. S’avère particulièrement importante la distinction entre les processus de régulation — tels la voix du salariat (workers’ voice en anglais), la voix par procuration (vicarious voice), les campagnes coordonnées au niveau international — et les mécanismes de régulation — tels les NSP et ACI. La littérature existante a tendance à traiter ces diverses formes de régulation sans grande nuance quant à leurs rôles respectifs. Notre cadre identifie deux avenues permettant de passer des processus de régulation aux mécanismes de régulation : le pouvoir des travailleurs et le pouvoir des consommateurs. Il établit également des connexions claires entre concepts, liens de causalité sous-jacents et effets modérateurs. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à l’impact des structures des chaînes de valeur, des connexions entre voix du salariat et voix par procuration, sur les résultats de la régulation. En ce qui ce qui a trait aux structures des chaînes de valeur, nous examinons le couplage des opérations, la sensibilité des participants à l’intérieur de ces chaînes au risque à la réputation, ce qui procure une influence (drive en anglais) à l’intérieur de ces chaînes de valeurs. Nous ajoutons la dimension significative de « l’influence interne » aux termes déjà convenus du sens de l’influence, cela afin de mieux pouvoir saisir les divergences internes possibles pouvant conduire les gestionnaires principaux dans les multinationales à mettre en place divers types d’incitatifs pour leurs fournisseurs afin de satisfaire aux normes du travail. De plus, nous introduisons le concept de voix par procuration (vicarious voice en anglais), que nous définissons comme une situation dans laquelle le moyen traditionnel qu’est la voix du salariat — tel le syndicalisme local ou l’activisme syndical en tant qu’agent de représentation des travailleurs — se voit remplacé par des acteurs qui n’ont pas de lien de proximité avec les travailleurs. La « voix par procuration » peut s’exprimer par le consumérisme éthique, les groupes de pression sociale, ou les fédérations syndicales internationales.

Discusses the conflict between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Describes the union's vision of the postal service (in particular, postal banking) in "Delivering Community Power: How Canada Post Can Be the Hub of Our Next Economy," released on the website, deliveringcommunitypower.ca, on Feb. 29, 2016.

SummaryUsing the large-scale Korean Workplace Panel Survey, this study examines the interplay between international diversification, labour flexibility, and workplace-level performance in the context of advanced emerging markets. Filling the gap in the literature on the international diversification-performance (IDP) relationship, which focuses primarily on firm-level characteristics and overlooks the role of labour factors as contingent variables, we draw attention to the workplace level dynamics by exploring how the two types of labour flexibility—functional and numerical flexibility—moderate the impact of international diversification on performance. The results show that when workplaces invest in training for job enlargement and employee involvement programs that lead to the enhancement of functional flexibility, the link between international diversification and performance can be strengthened.This finding supports the assertion in the international HRM literature that, in the ever-globalized business environment, investment in human capital is a better strategy for improving financial performance in the long run. Furthermore, we find that numerical flexibility, as measured by in-house subcontracting arrangements, has a negative impact on the IDP relationship. Overall, our study suggests that the quality of human resources and a well-designed workplace configuration may still help improve performance in the context of international diversification, whereas excessive dependence on employment externalization for cost reduction is likely to hurt not only financial performance but also long-term sustainability. We also believe that our findings on the advanced emerging market economy complement insights from previous studies, which are largely based on Western developed economies, thus enriching current theories on labour flexibility. // En s’appuyant sur une enquête à grande échelle, le « Panel d’enquête coréen sur les milieux de travail » (Korean Workplace Panel Survey), la présente étude examine l’interaction entre diversification internationale, flexibilité du travail et rendement au travail en contexte de marchés avancés émergents. Afin de combler les écarts dans la littérature sur la relation entre rendement et diversification internationale — laquelle met principalement l’accent sur les caractéristiques de l’entreprise et néglige le rôle des facteurs liés au travail comme variables conditionnelles —, nous attirons l’attention sur les dynamiques en cours au niveau du milieu de travail en explorant comment les deux types de flexibilité du travail, soit la flexibilité fonctionnelle et la flexibilité numérique, atténuent l’effet de la diversification internationale sur le rendement. Les résultats montrent que lorsque, dans les milieux de travail, on investit dans des programmes de formation en vue de l’élargissement des tâches et la participation des salariés afin d’accroître la flexibilité fonctionnelle, le lien entre diversification internationale et rendement devrait se renforcir.Ces résultats appuient l’assertion de la littérature internationale sur la gestion des ressources humaines à l’effet que, dans un environnement commercial sans cesse globalisé, l’investissement en capital humain constitue une meilleure stratégie pour améliorer la performance financière à long terme. De plus, nous constatons que la flexibilité numérique, telle que déterminée dans les ententes de sous-traitance internes, a une influence négative sur la relation entre rendement et diversification internationale. Globalement, notre étude suggère que la qualité des ressources humaines et une configuration bien conçue du milieu de travail peuvent aider à améliorer la performance dans un environnement de diversification internationale, tandis qu’une dépendance excessive à l’égard de l’externalisation de l’emploi dans le but de réduire les coûts est susceptible de plomber non seulement la performance financière, mais aussi le développement à long terme. Nous pensons également que nos résultats relatifs à une économie de marché émergente avancée ajoutent aux observations rapportées dans d’autres études qui portaient principalement sur les économies occidentales avancées, constituent un enrichissement des théories actuelles sur la flexibilité du travail.

Existing literature in the sociology of sport largely omits any discussion of the relation between the spectator and athlete in professional and high performance sport. This dissertation explores that relation, demonstrating that exploitation in athletic labour and the enduring allure of sport as spectacle are inextricably linked as part of a broader political economy. The labour of professional athletes is theorized as a form of social reproductive labour that offers affective/subjective renewal for fans. Spectators who experience isolation and alienation in their day-to-day lives as capitalist subjects come to sport seeking a sense of meaning, connection, and community. Athletic labour in professional sport provides this to them and enables them to continue to function as productive capitalist subjects by serving as an armature upon which an imagined athletic community of fans can be built. However, for social reproduction to occur for fans, athletes must sacrifice their bodies completely in the performance of their labour. It is only through this sacrifice that the imagined athletic community becomes concretized as something tangible and real and spectators become willing to spend their money on sports fandom. This theoretical understanding of athletic labour and spectatorship is explored through semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight former professional hockey players and eight spectators of sport. The testimony of former players consistently links the political economy of professional sport and the harm and exploitation they experienced in the course of their work. The testimony of spectators, on the other hand, typically fails to acknowledge that the meaning and pleasure derived from watching professional sport is predicated on the destruction of athletic bodies. This study ultimately suggests that a form of alienation exists between athletes and spectators. The spectator grasps for an elusive sense of community within a society structured to deny that form of connection by placing vicarious investment in the bodies of athletes. Yet, this act of investment instrumentalizes and commodifies the athlete. Athletes understand this process as it occurs because it denies them their humanity by transforming them into something both more (the heroic vessel) and less (the abject failure) than human.

Announces the appointment of Charles Smith and Joan Sangster as co-editors of the journal.

Announces Sean Cadigan's resignation as editor. Bryan Palmer and Gregory Kealey to be interim co-editors until a new appointment is made. Takes note of the Canadian Labour Studies database, an open access bibliography of labour studies resources produced by Laurentian University librarians Desmond Maley and Dan Scott.