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In Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan (SFL v. Saskatchewan, 2015), the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that freedom of association in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes a collective ability for workers to strike. This decision was the latest in a series of cases in which the Supreme Court ruled that workers’ abilities to collectively bargain and strike are essential components of the constitutional protection of freedom of association. Using these decisions as a starting point, this paper reviews the uneven way that the court has elevated the associational freedoms of workers. The paper argues that the court’s balancing act between the collective freedoms of workers and the individual rights of employers conceals the material imbalance that has historically shaped capitalist social relations both inside and outside of the state. The paper argues further that these decisions have opened an important legal space for new mobilization strategies for working-class activists.

Announces the co-editorship of Charles Smith and Joan Sangster for this volume, and gratefully acknowledges the work of former editors as well as funding from OPSEU. The journal is a joint partnership of the Canadian Committee on Labour History and the Canadian Association of Work Studies. Seeks submissions that reflect new directions in the study of the workplace and labour, including analyses of labour and the state, feminist political economy, strikes and workplace conflict, union renewal, new models of worker organizing, environmental justice, Indigenous struggles inside and outside the workplace, global workers’ movements, anti-racism campaigns, lgbtq2s struggles. Also welcomes contributions on the social world of work, e.g., popular and working-class cultures, the gendered and racialized experiences of workers, the intersections between colonialism and labour, and the many permutations of labour in the past and present – informal, paid, unpaid, coerced, voluntary.

This article reviews the book, "Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers," edited by Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, and Silke Neunsinger.

The article reviews the book, "The Future of Work: Super-Exploitation and Social Precariousness in the 21st Century," by Adrián Sotelo Valencia.

This article reviews the book, "Worth Fighting For: Canada's Tradition of War Resistance from 1812 to the War on Terror," edited by Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, and Catherine Gidney.

The article reviews the book, "Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex," by Nick Dyer-Witheford.

Paid work associated with digital platform businesses (in taxi, delivery, maintenance and other functions) embodies features which complicate the application of traditional labour regulations and employment standards. This article reviews the extent of this type of work in Australia, and its main characteristics. It then considers the applicability of existing employment regulations to these ‘gig’ jobs, citing both Australian and international legislation and case law. There is considerable uncertainty regarding the scope of traditional regulations, minimum standards and remedies in the realm of irregular digitally mediated work. Regulators and policymakers should consider how to strengthen and expand the regulatory framework governing gig work. The article notes five major options in this regard: enforcement of existing laws; clarifying or expanding definitions of ‘employment’; creating a new category of ‘independent worker’; creating rights for ‘workers’, not employees; and reconsidering the concept of an ‘employer’. We review the pros and cons of these approaches and urge regulators to be creative and ambitious in better protecting the minimum standards and conditions of workers in these situations.

This article reviews "Liberating Temporariness?: Migration, Work, and Citizenship in an Age of Insecurity," edited by Leah F. Vosko, Valerie Preston, and Robert Latham, "When Care Work Goes Global: Locating the Social Relations of Domestic Work," edited by Mary Romero, Valerie Preston, and Wenona Giles, and "Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship: Precarious Legal Status in Canada," edited by Luin Goldring and Patricia Landolt.

The Canadian automotive industry underwent substantial restructuring between 2005 and 2014. This article draws on establishment-level data to examine these changes as they relate to both automotive assembly and automotive parts manufacturing. It also elucidates the limitations of using official government statistics to study the automotive industry. In addition to analyzing changes to the structure and composition of the industry, our data demonstrate that the industry employs far more people than are reported in official government statistics. We conclude that improvements to data collection methods are important for policy-makers to develop effective supports for the automotive industry.

This article provides a brief overview of the development of the Canadian approach to nonunion employee representation. For a century or more, nonunion representation vehicles have been used by workers and employers, without the attention, oversight and statutory regime that characterizes union-management relations. Nonunion representation rarely intersects with the law, and usually does so only when there is a collision between nonunion vehicles and trade unions during union organizing. Otherwise, the law is silent about nonunion representation. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's contemporary analyses that commenced in 2001 with Dunmore, and moved through B.C. Health, Fraser, MPAO, and Meredith, the status of nonunion representation has not changed; these vehicles remain lawful. But there is considerable uncertainty about future directions. Might nonunion representation vehicles now be protected as collect- ives under the Charter, or will their somewhat sub-rosa nature remain? Should policy-makers and courts respect their maneuverability, or regulate them as inferior to unions? Certainly the Supreme Court has expressed distaste for these vehicles, as in the 2015 MPAO decision, but to what extent will this opprobrium find its way into Canadian law? We are at a crossroads, and if there is a legal challenge involving the status of nonunion collectives, there is no way of pre- dicting the outcome. In this article, the author discusses how an argument might be made that nonunion associations' activities could achieve Charter protection, and raises questions to which there are no clear answers.

Depuis plus d’un siècle, l’évolution de la recherche concernant la santé publique, en général, et les risques du travail, en particulier, est largement dominée par les besoins et stratégies des industriels. Ceux-ci interviennent, non seulement dans le financement des études menées, mais aussi dans leur conception, parvenant à faire subsister le doute là où la mise en danger est manifeste. L’un des principaux points d’appui de cette incertitude indéfiniment reconduite réside dans l’invisibilité des pathologies liées au travail, en particulier les cancers professionnels.S’appuyant sur des enquêtes pluridisciplinaires en sciences sociales et sciences de la vie — qui mettent en question le modèle dominant monocausal de compréhension des liens entre cancer et facteurs de risque — la première partie de cet article démontre comment une interprétation réductrice de la causalité du cancer permet cette incertitude indéfiniment reconduite, inscrite dans le « paradigme du doute », tout en faisant obstacle à la connaissance et à la reconnaissance des cancers professionnels. Deux études de cas dans le secteur minier français illustrent ensuite la remise en cause, toujours possible, de la dangerosité de cancérogènes parfaitement identifiés, et le déni de droits à la reconnaissance en maladie professionnelle des travailleurs atteints, les maintenant dans l’invisibilité. Ainsi, le paradigme du doute, qui domine la santé publique, permet-il aux industriels, mais aussi aux acteurs étatiques — aujourd’hui comme hier — de s’appuyer sur l’incertitude pour envisager favorablement la réouverture de sites miniers dans des régions habitées, sans prise en compte des enjeux sanitaires. L’épidémie de cancer ne cesse de progresser atteignant, en France, une incidence estimée de 385 000 nouveaux cas par an en 2015 (contre 150 000 en 1984). Mais le doute entretenu sur les effets sanitaires de risques industriels, dont les dangers sont pourtant avérés, favorise encore actuellement la poursuite des conditions de production de cancers futurs, en particulier chez les premiers concernés par l’exposition aux cancérogènes, à savoir les travailleurs.

Thiis article reviews the book, "Hell’s History: The USW’s Fight to Prevent Workplace Deaths and Injuries from the 1992 Westray Mine," by Tom Sandborn.

The article reviews the book, "Income Inequality: The Canadian Story," edited by David A. Green, W. Craig Riddell and France St.-Hillaire.

This article discusses beauty contests held by the Communist Party (cp) in British Columbia during World War II. It presents two arguments. First, the article argues that the beauty contests symbolized the Communist Party's viewpoint on the role of women in left movements, and in society in general. Thus, cp beauty pageants possessed a two-sided nature. On one level, cp women appropriated these pageants to present a hybrid version of the beauty contest where women could present leftist views. On the other hand, the pageants show that the cp only held marginally more progressive views on women than the mainstream. Second, the article suggests that Communist women and men had contrasting ideas about what the pageants meant to the party. cp men used women's bodies in pageants in order to promote and raise money for the party; in effect, Communist men saw these pageants as related to women's physical beauty. Communist women, by contrast, did not view the pageants as related to beauty at all. Indeed, these women saw the pageants as simply a way to promote the party's political program of higher wages and better working conditions. The article concludes that leftist men and women had different ideas about what constituted beauty, and that seemingly conservative cultural productions, like beauty pageants, can have radical goals.

The article reviews the book, "Polarity, Patriotism, and Dissent in Great War Canada, 1914–1919," by Brock Millman.

The gig economy describes forms of contingent work arrangements that require digital platforms, representing an evolution in contingent work, both in moving up the educational scale and in increased visibility. It has engaged many workers who are highly educated and might previously have been in traditional employer–employee relationships, and appears to increase their vulnerability to wage theft, independent contractor misclassification, job insecurity, and lack of occupational health protections. As occupational health physicians, our need to develop, evaluate, and implement interventions to address the needs of workers in non-traditional employment relationships is growing.

The Christian Labour Association of Canada (clac) has historically had a relatively small presence in Canada's labour movement. Increasing interest in clac over the last decade is due to its expanded membership, largely in western Canada and Ontario: the union claims to represent 60,000 workers. Further, the tactics used to achieve this growth have been controversial within organized labour. In fact, clac was expelled from central labour bodies for its employer accommodationist strategies. This article expands the understanding of clac beyond a characterization of classic "company" unionism. In this article we find that clac integrates elements of populism into a specific geographic strategy for expansion in ways that complicate analysis. We focus on labour board records of disputes between clac and other unions, a recent case where the union backed employer-friendly legislation in Ontario, and the union's rhetorical devices and propaganda.

The global weakness of collective bargaining and state regulation has spawned growing interest in employment protection though private governance. However, scepticism about the efficacy of unsupervised codes of conduct has triggered debate about external discipline through state regulation. This article seeks to contribute to debates about the processes that shape the nexus between private governance and state regulation.It is based on an empirical study of Australian harvest workers who formally benefit from state regulation of pay and occupational health and safety (OHS). However, industry changes have undercut standards. Product market pressures from supermarkets squeeze growers’ capacity to pay. Also, the labour market is increasingly supplied by vulnerable Asian temporary migrants (including undocumented workers), often supplied to growers by unscrupulous temporary work agencies. While pay and OHS practices vary, many harvest workers are exploited. Nor is private governance (which extends to horticulture through the codes of conduct of supermarkets and peak temporary work agency bodies) effective. All codes draw their standards from minimum legal employment conditions, and all possess loopholes allowing breaches to escape attention and rectification.In 2015, media and political attention fell on the working conditions of temporary migrants in horticulture. Government inquiries found evidence of exploitation, but were divided over solutions. Progressive politicians (influenced by unions) favoured stronger state enforcement powers and temporary work agency licensing. Conservative politicians (influenced by business lobbies) claimed these steps would fail, and favoured the status quo. Political reform therefore stalled.This study illustrates the importance of political processes in shaping the nexus between state regulation and private governance. In this case, a political stalemate leaves both regulation and governance deficient. Lacking protection from either source, harvest workers remain exposed to exploitative employment conditions.

Canada depends on Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs), also known as migrant workers, to fill labour shortage in agriculture, hospitality, construction, child/senior care, and other low-skilled occupations. Evidence shows that TFWs, especially women live-in caregivers (LC), constitute a vulnerable population. Their health is compromised by the precarious and harsh working and living conditions they encounter. There is a paucity of research on the mental health of LCs, their support systems and access to mental health services.

This paper explores ongoing tensions in the Canadian common law of employment between two key principles: the obligation of a constructively dis- missed employee in some circumstances to remain in the employment where it is reasonable to do so in order to mitigate damages, and the possibility that the employee's decision to advance a legal claim alleging constructive dismissal may, in and of itself be treated as a repudiation of the contract so as to disentitle the employee from damages. As explained by the author, this tension reflects the competing influences on employment law of different theories of contract - the classical, the neoclassical, and the relational - and is further complicated by the friction in the case law between the "elective" and the "automatic" theories of contract termination in employment, i.e. can the agreement be terminated only on the election of the innocent party or does any repudiatory breach auto- matically result in the agreement's termination? As a practical matter, these unresolved conflicts make it difficult to predict the outcome of a particular case, and force employees and their legal counsel to make an unnecessarily convo- luted series of decisions in attempting to determine the appropriate course of action. The author argues that many of these issues would be greatly simplified if the courts embraced relational contract law theory in the constructive dis- missal context. This would enable employees to "stand and sue," that is, obtain a determination of a claim without having to resign and without risking loss of the employment in the event that the claim was ultimately unsuccessful.