Your search

In Bureaucratic Manoeuvres, John Grundy examines profound transformations in the governance of unemployment in Canada. While policy makers previously approached unemployment as a social and economic problem to be addressed through macroeconomic policies, recent labour market policy reforms have placed much more emphasis on the supposedly deficient employability of the unemployed themselves, a troubling shift that deserves close, critical attention. Tracing a behind-the-scenes history of public employment services in Canada, Bureaucratic Manoeuvres shows just how difficult it has been for administrators and frontline staff to govern unemployment as a problem of individual employability. Drawing on untapped government records, it sheds much-needed light on internal bureaucratic struggles over the direction of labour market policy in Canada and makes a key contribution to Canadian political science, economics, public administration, and sociology.

Although the health of the trade union movement may rest on its ability to include women in membership and leadership, little attention has been paid to women-only labour education. This original collection contains vibrant example of labour education events and the women involved who develop, implement, research, evaluate and facilitate at them. All the contributors speak from first-hand experience with women-only programs in unions across Canada, the United States and the world. They identify the methods used in pursuit of learner empowerment and transformation, and frankly discuss the outcomes. These real-life examples offer practical guidance and inspiration for all who create and support activist learning within unions and other social-justice organizations. -- Publisher's description

Although Canadian womens history is now nearly forty years old, no volume exists that reflects explicitly upon the fields evolution and assesses its historiographical context. This retrospective is not merely summative; the essays in this collection are analytical engagements with the current state of the field, which draw on its rich past to generate new knowledge and propose innovative avenues for inquiry. The dual purposes of this collection are to contemplate the fields past and to contribute productively to its future. These thirteen original essays are written by scholars at all career stages. The diversity of these authors perspectives illustrates the contributions that Canadian scholarship has had in international dialogues about womens and gender history and that it continues to be a vibrant area of research. The collection includes chapters about the principal sub-fields in Canadian womens and gender history, including specialized chapters on Québecois, Indigenous, Black, and immigrant womens histories, religious history, labour history, war and society, history of sexuality, the history of reproductive labour and reproductive justice, two essays on the history of feminism that, taken together, cover the period from 1850 to the present, and a thematic essay on the colonial period. --Publisher's description

The mining industry continues to be at the forefront of colonial dispossession around the world. It controls information about its intrinsic costs and benefits, propagates myths about its contribution to the economy, shapes government policy and regulation, and deals ruthlessly with its opponents. Brimming with case studies, anecdotes, resources, and illustrations, Unearthing Justice exposes the mining process and its externalized impacts on the environment, Indigenous Peoples, communities, workers, and governments. But, most importantly, the book shows how people are fighting back. Whether it is to stop a mine before it starts, to get an abandoned mine cleaned up, to change laws and policy, or to mount a campaign to influence investors, Unearthing Justice is an essential handbook for anyone trying to protect the places and people they love. --Publisher's description

Debut collection of poetry from Thomas Leduc, City of Greater Sudbury's past Poet Laureate and the fourth generation of a mining family. Stagflower captures a city struggling to grow beyond its past and become more than just a mining town, while reflecting the internal human conflict to be more than family history, more than a past. --Publisher's description. "At one time, this city / had a single plan / for every young man; / a straight, well-worn path / from their front doors / to an open rock face / at the end of a mine shaft. / A path chiselled out of stone, / a path paved in nickel. / Every young man / wanted his millwright ticket, / studied the ticking of gears, / the composition of rock; / had the culture of mining / drilled into him. / Plans were passed down / from lunch pail / to lunch pail. / Fathers and sons dug the same holes / fought the same fights. / How many boys / has this rock hardened / into men." -- Chiselled Out of Stone, poem by Thomas Leduc. Table of contents: Birthmark -- Rite of passage -- Buffalo souls -- The taste of sulfur -- Slagflower.

In May 1919, 30,000 Winnipeg workers walked away from their jobs, shutting down large factories, forcing businesses to close and bringing major industries to a halt. Mounted police and hired security, at the behest of the ruling class, violently ended the protest after six weeks. Two men were killed. What started as trade union revolt, the Winnipeg General Strike became a mass protest and was branded as a revolution. In Magnificent Fight, Dennis Lewycky lays out the history of this iconic event, which remains the biggest and longest strike in Canadian history. He analyzes the social, political and economic conditions leading up to the strike. He also illustrates the effects the strike had on workers, unions and all three levels of government in the following decades. Far from a simple retelling of the General Strike, Magnificent Fight speaks to the power of workers' solidarity and social organization. And Lewycky reveals the length the capitalist class and the state went to in protecting the status quo. By retelling the story of the Strike through the eyes of those who witnessed it, Lewycky's account is both educational and entertaining. --Publisher's description

In Canada’s liberal dream, the law extends its benefits to everyone. But the law also determines who is included in that “everyone.” Migrant workers, long welcomed in Canada for their labour, are often excluded from both workplace protections and basic social benefits such as health care, income assistance, and education due to their lack of permanent status. Enforcing Exclusion recasts what migration status means to both the state and to non-citizens. Through interviews with migrants and their advocates, Sarah Marsden shows that migrants face enforcement through law, policy, and practice, affecting their ability to address adverse working conditions and their interactions with institutions such as hospitals, schools, and employment standards boards. Canadian immigration laws create a status hierarchy; those at the bottom experience markedly different access to the protections and benefits of law. This book documents the impact of Canada’s system of migration enforcement on people’s lives and questions the adequacy of human-rights-based responses in addressing its exclusionary effects. -- Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction -- The Creation and Growth of Precarious Migration in Canada: “Illegal” Migration and the Liberal State -- Status, Deportability, and Illegality in Daily Life -- Working Conditions and Barriers to Substantive Remedies -- Exclusion from the Social State: Health, Education, and Income Security -- Multi-Sited Enforcement: Maintaining Subordinate Membership -- Rights and Membership: Toward Inclusion? -- Postscript -- Appendix A: Migrant Participant Profiles -- Appendix B: Sample Interview Script.

Ten-year-old Cassie lives with her working-class family in 1919 Winnipeg. The Great War and Spanish Influenza have taken their toll, and workers in the city are frustrated with low wages and long hours. When they orchestrate a general strike, Cassie--bright, determined and very bored at school--desperately wants to help. She begins volunteering for the strike committee as a papergirl, distributing the strike bulletin at Portage and Main, and from her corner, she sees the strike take shape. Threatened and taunted by upper-class kids, and getting hungrier by the day, Cassie soon realizes that the strike isn't just a lark--it's a risky and brave movement. With her impoverished best friend, Mary, volunteering in the nearby Labour Café, and Cassie's police officer brother in the strike committee's inner circle, Cassie becomes increasingly furious about the conditions that led workers to strike. When an enormous but peaceful demonstration turns into a violent assault on Bloody Saturday, Cassie is changed forever. Lively and engaging, this novel is a celebration of solidarity, justice and one brave papergirl. -- Publisher's description

Au cours des dernières décennies, de nombreux changements économiques, politiques et culturels ont bouleversé la nature du travail, la manière de l’organiser ainsi que la relation d’emploi. Ces transformations nécessitent de revoir, de critiquer et d’actualiser les principaux concepts à partir desquels la sociologie analyse le monde du travail. Dans cet ouvrage, les concepts revisités sont les suivants : salariat, précarité, informalité, conflit, contrôle et organisation du travail, qualification et compétence, rapport au travail, parcours professionnel, insertion professionnelle, temporalités. Chacun des concepts retenus est analysé selon une perspective critique, qui consiste à remettre en question les assises théoriques et empiriques de ceux-ci, et une perspective analytique, qui vise à arrimer ces concepts fondamentaux aux nouvelles réalités du monde du travail. --Publisher's description

In 2012, journalist Hugo Meunier went undercover as a Walmart employee for three months in St. Leonard, Quebec, just north of Montreal. In great detail, Meunier charts the daily life of an impoverished Walmart worker, referring to his shifts at the box store giant as “somewhere between the army and Walt Disney.” Each shift began with a daily chant before bowing to customer demands and the constant pressure to sell. Meanwhile Meunier and his fellow workers could not afford to shop anywhere else but Walmart, further indenturing them to the multi-billion-dollar corporation. Beyond his time on the shop floor, Meunier documents the extraordinary efforts that Walmart exerts to block unionization campaigns, including their 2005 decision to close their outlet in Jonquiere, QC, where the United Food and Commercial Workers union had successfully gained certification rights. A decade later he charts the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that exposed the dubious legal ground on which Walmart stood in invoking closure and throwing workers out on the street. In Walmart: Diary of an Associate, Meunier reveals the truths behind Walmart’s low prices. It will make you think twice before shopping there. --Publisher's description

In this edited collection, Leslie Nichols weaves together the contributions of accomplished and diverse scholars to offer an expansive and critical analysis of women’s work in Canada. Students will use an intersectional approach to explore issues of gender, class, race, immigrant status, disability, sexual orientation, Indigeneity, age, and ethnicity in relation to employment. Drawing from case studies and extensive research, the text’s eighteen chapters consider Canadian industries across a broad spectrum, including political, academic, sport, sex trade, retail, and entrepreneurial work. Working Women in Canada is a relevant and in-depth look into the past, present, and future of women’s responsibilities and professions in Canada. Undergraduate and graduate students in gender studies, labour studies, and sociology courses will benefit from this thorough and intersectional approach to the study of women’s labour. Features include tables, case studies, a glossary of key terms, and chapter introductions and conclusions to assist with student comprehension encourages further learning by concluding each chapter with discussion questions, a list of additional key readings, and an extensive reference list provides a broad portrait of women’s work in Canada with contributions from over 20 scholars. --Publisher's description

Confronting Canadian Migration History means two things. First, engaging with the history of population movements into, through, and from this territory, and their importance for our history as a multiethnic settler society. This has been one of the central projects of migration historians in Canada in recent decades. Second, to make and maintain a place for that historical knowledge in contemporary discussions of migration, and in doing so confront the present with the past. That latter goal is at the heart of this collection, which assembles in one volume fifteen texts published on ActiveHistory.ca over the last four years. --Publisher's description, Contents: Introduction / Daniel Ross. [Part] 1. Refugee migrations. Canada’s complicated history of refugee reception / Stephanie Bangarth -- Using old photographs to gain new perspectives on refugees, past and present / Sonya de Laat -- When to speak, when to act: Reflections on the recent MS St. Louis apology / Andrea Eidinger and Laura Madokoro -- Remembering the Prague Spring refugees / Jan Raska -- Little Bear’s Cree and Canada’s uncomfortable history of refugee creation / Benjamin Hoy. [Part] 2. Migration experiences and representations. Creating the Canadian mosaic / Ryan McKenney and Benjamin Bryce -- Conversations with Egyptian Uber drivers: Why emigrate? Why Canada? / Michael Akladios -- Old stock Canadians: Arab settlers in Western Canada / Sarah Carter -- Not so accidental: Farmworkers, car crashes, and capitalist agriculture / Edward Dunsworth -- Arab-Canadian foodscapes and authenticity / Michael Akladios. [Part] 3. Nativism and exclusion White Supremacy, political violence, and community, 1907 and 2017 / Laura Ishiguro and Laura Madokoro -- Immigration and White Supremacy: Past and present / David Atkinson -- Pork cuts: The sharp edges of nativism in Southern Europe / Aitana Guia -- X-Rays and the discriminatory science of migration / Laura Madokoro -- Baba wore a burqa, and Nona wore a niqab / Franca Iacovetta and Karen Dubinsky.

A stirring, heartfelt manifesto written by a man who fervently believes in what workers with their civil society allies can achieve for the good of all. Sid Ryan, one of Canada's most courageous and progressive union leaders, draws on the experience of his varied and colourful life to show what is right with the labour movement, what is wrong, and what has to change if it is to avoid becoming irrelevant. He calls for the adoption of Social Movement Unionism, in which labour forges an alliance with other progressive elements in civil society, taking up the cause of young people, precarious workers, and immigrants. He demands a renewed commitment to the NDP, the party that was built by unions, and he argues that the Leap Manifesto should become the pillars of the movement in Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Foreword by Gerry Adams -- Growing up in Ireland -- A new life in Canada -- President of CUPE Ontario -- Bob Rae and the social contract -- At home in the world -- OFL president -- The grander vision.

With Masters and Servants, Scott P. Stephen has revealed startling truths about the men of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rather than dedicating themselves body and soul to the Company's interests, these workers hired out like domestic servants, joining a 'household' with its attendant norms of duty and loyalty. Through painstaking documentary research, Stephen shines welcome light on the lives of these largely overlooked historical actors. The household system produced a remarkably stable political-economic entity, connecting early Canadian resource extraction to larger trends in British imperialism and its emerging social relations. An essential book for labour historians, Masters and Servants will appeal to scholars of early modern Britain, the North American fur trade, Western social history, or business history, and anyone intrigued by the reach of the HBC. -- Publisher's description

In a period characterized by growing social inequality, precarious work, the legacies of settler colonialism, and the emergence of new social movements, Change and Continuity presents innovative interdisciplinary research as a guide to understanding Canada's political economy and a contribution to progressive social change. Assessing the legacy of the Canadian political economy tradition — a broad body of social science research on power, inequality, and change in society — the essays in this volume offer insight into contemporary issues and chart new directions for future study. Chapters from both emerging and established scholars expand the boundaries of Canadian political economy research, seeking new understandings of the forces that shape society, the ensuing conflicts and contradictions, and the potential for social justice. Engaging with interconnected topics that include shifts in immigration policy, labour market restructuring, settler colonialism, the experiences of people with disabilities, and the revitalization of workers' movements, this collection builds upon and deepens critical analysis of Canadian society and considers its application to contexts beyond Canada. --Publisher's description.

The memoirs of union organizer Marino Toppan, during the union organizing days of the residential construction "jungle" in Toronto: 1955-1980.

For nearly fifty years, Professor Harry Glasbeek has been at the forefront of legal scholars and public intellectuals challenging assumptions and understandings about the injustices embedded in the economic, social, political and legal orders of Western capitalist democracies. His writings and teachings have influenced generations of law students, academics and activists. [This book] brings together eleven incisive contributions from pre-eminent scholars across several disciplines activated by the same desire for democracy and justice that Glasbeek advances, showing how capitalism shapes the law and how the law protects capitalism. This collection foregrounds a class analysis of the laws responses to corporate killing, workplace violence, surveillance, worker resistance and income inequality, among other issues. --Publisher's description

The Canadian Labour Bibliography was an initiative of the Committee on Canadian Labour History in the 1970s. The initial efforts to create an annual reading list of publications dealing with Canadian labour topics led to the creation of The Labour Companion: a bibliography of Canadian labour history based on materials printed from 1950 to 1975. ...The enthusiasm that greeted The Labour Companion prompted Greg Kealey, then teaching at Dalhousie University, to obtain a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant for a much larger product – a comprehensive reading list of books, pamphlets, articles and theses pertinent to the Canadian labour experience (the labour movement, trade unions, living conditions, key legislation, etc.). The intent was to build on the 1980 bibliography and to catalogue the published record on the Canadian working class from earliest times to 1985. Items of more recent vintage have crept in, but no effort was made to deal comprehensively with the entire published record from the late 1980’s forward. To locate that material, researchers should consult Michael Lonardo’s Canadian Labour History Bibliography, an electronic compilation covering 1976 to 2009, found at Memorial University Library https://www.library.mun.ca/qeii/labour/ --Introduction

In an original and striking study of migration management in operation, Disrupting Deportability highlights obstacles confronting temporary migrant workers in Canada seeking to exercise their labor rights. Leah F. Vosko explores the effects of deportability on Mexican nationals participating in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Vosko follows the decade-long legal and political struggle of a group of Mexican SAWP migrants in British Columbia to establish and maintain meaningful collective representation. Her case study reveals how modalities of deportability—such as termination without cause, blacklisting, and attrition—destabilize legally authorized temporary migrant agricultural workers. Through this detailed exposé, Disrupting Deportability concludes that despite the formal commitments to human, social, and civil rights to which migration management ostensibly aspires, the design and administration of this "model" temporary migrant work program produces conditions of deportability, making the threat possibility of removal ever-present. --Publisher's description

Few occurrences in modern times have produced the social upheaval, fear, and hatred that were seen during the Red Scare of 1919. Few events have brought forth such a frenzy of mob action and intolerance, or can match the excitement and drama. One of life's coincidences led me to study one of the manifestations of the Red Scare: the trials that grew out of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Their prominent place in Manitoba's legal history has made them deserving of the title "The Great Canadian Sedition Trials." --From author's prologue