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The world is desperate for cobalt. It fuels the digital economy and powers everything from cell phones to clean energy. But this 'demon metal,' this 'blood mineral,' has a horrific present and troubled history. Then there is the town in northern Canada, also called Cobalt. It created a model of resource extraction a hundred years ago--theft of Indigenous lands, rape of the earth, exploitation of workers, enormous wealth generation--that has made Toronto the mining capital of the world and given the mining industry a blueprint for resource extraction that has been exported everywhere. Charlie Angus unearths the history of the town and shows how it contributed to Canada's mining dominance. He connects the town to present-day Congo, with its cobalt production and misery, to horrendous mining practices in South America and demonstrates that global mining is as Canadian as hockey. -- Publisher's description

In recent decades an increasing share of Canada’s agricultural workforce has been made up of temporary foreign workers from the Global South. These labourers work difficult and dangerous jobs with limited legal protections and are effectively barred from permanent settlement in Canada. In Harvesting Labour Edward Dunsworth examines the history of farm work in one of Canada’s underrecognized but most important crop sectors — Ontario tobacco. Dunsworth takes aim at the idea that temporary foreign worker programs emerged in response to labour shortages or the unwillingness of Canadians to work in agriculture. To the contrary, Ontario’s tobacco sector was extremely popular with workers for much of the twentieth century, with high wages attracting a diverse workforce and enabling thousands to establish themselves as small farm owners. By the end of the century, however, the sector had become something entirely different: a handful of mega-farms relying on foreign guest workers to produce their crops. Taking readers from the leafy fields of Ontario’s tobacco belt to rural Jamaica, Barbados, and North Carolina and on to the halls of government, Dunsworth demonstrates how the ultimate transformation of tobacco - and Canadian agriculture writ large - was fundamentally a function of the capitalist restructuring of farming. Harvesting Labour brings together the fields of labour, migration, and business history to reinterpret the historical origins of contemporary Canadian agriculture and its workforce. --Publisher's description

Cet ouvrage dresse un portrait des allumettières de la E.B. Eddy de Hull en abordant leurs conditions de vie et de travail entre 1854 et 1928. Cette étude s'appuie principalement sur un portrait démographique basé sur les recensements canadiens, mais aussi sur diverses archives (gouvernementales, privées, paroissiales, journaux scientifiques et à grand tirage, etc.) qui nous permettent de mieux comprendre la vie et le travail de ces ouvrières. En raison du nombre restreint d'études sérieuses sur les allumettières et l'industrie de l'allumette au Canada, cet ouvrage se base largement sur les sources historiques et l'analyse approfondie de ces dernières. Cette monographie présente l'histoire des allumettières par le biais de différents grands thèmes : leur rôle au sein de la classe ouvrière, leur vie au quotidien, leurs différents rôles dans la manufacture, les dangers de l'emploi (principalement ceux associés au phosphore blanc), leurs conditions de travail (salaires et heures) ainsi que leur expérience syndicale qui durera de 1918 au départ de la manufacture en 1928. À travers ses sept chapitres, cette monographie vise à peindre un portait détaillé et nuancé de cette main-d'œuvre anonyme, mais aussi à présenter les filles et les femmes qui ont occupé cet emploi. En somme, cette étude permettra de mieux saisir qui sont celles souvent présentées sous les traits de jeunes filles exploitées ou de militantes syndicales engagées. -- Description de l'éditeur

A powerful, personal critique of capitalist patriarchy as seen through the eyes of a queer radical. Capitalism has infiltrated every aspect of our personal, social, economic, and sexual lives. By examining the politics of gender, environment, and sexuality, we can see the ways straight, cis, white, and especially male upper-class people control and subvert the other - queer, non-binary, BIPOC, and female bodies - in order to keep the working lower classes divided. Patriarchy and classism are forms of systemic violence which ensure that the main commodity of capitalism - a large, disposable, cheap, and ideally subjugated work force - is readily available. There is a lot wrong with the ways we live, work, and treat each other. In essays that are both accessible and inspiring, Lori Fox examines their confrontations with the capitalist patriarchy through their experiences as a queer, non-binary, working-class farm hand, labourer, bartender, bush-worker, and road dog, exploring the ugly places where issues of gender, sexuality, class, and the environment intersect. In applying the micro to the macro, demonstrating how the personal is political and vice versa, Fox exposes the flaws in believing that this is the only way our society can or should work. Brash, topical, and passionate, This Has Always Been a War is not only a collection of essays, but a series of dispatches from the combative front lines of our present-day culture. -- Publisher's description

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, diamonds have been lauded as a "glistening" driver of the northern Canadian economy. Canadian diamonds are cast with an imagined purity as though they had emerged by magic. However, these diamonds are mined on Dene land, extracted by people who fly in from afar, separated from their families for long periods of time. Adopting a decolonizing and feminist approach to political economy, Refracted Economies analyses the impact of diamond mining in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The book centres Indigenous women's social reproduction labour--both at the mine sites and at sites of community, home, and care--as a means of understanding the diffuse impacts of the diamond mines. Grounded in ethnographic work, the narratives of northern Indigenous women's multiple labours offer unique insight into the gendered ways northern land and livelihoods have been restructured by the diamond industry. Rebecca Jane Hall draws on documentary analysis, interviews, and talking circles in order to understand and appreciate the--often unseen--labour performed by Indigenous women. Placing this day-to-day labour at the heart of her analysis, Hall shows that it both reproduces the mixed economy and resists the gendered violence of settler colonialism as exemplified by extractive capitalism. --Publisher's description

For educators seeking to build anti-racism learning into Canadian history classes, this 8-book set of classroom materials is an invaluable resource. Each book addresses a major instance of official racism and discrimination spanning more than 150 years. ...Titles included: Righting Canada's Wrongs: The Komagata Maru; Righting Canada's Wrongs: The Chinese Head Tax; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Anti-Semitism and the MS St. Louis; Righting Canada's Wrongs: The LGBT Purge; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Africville; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Italian Canadian Internment; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Residential Schools; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Internment; Righting Canada's Wrongs: Resource Guide. --Publisher's description

Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighbourhood with a strong Irish and French presence, and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighbourhood that is home to the city's English-speaking Black community, face each other across Montreal's Lachine Canal, once an artery around which work and industry in Montreal were clustered and by which these two communities were formed and divided. Deindustrializing Montreal challenges the deepening divergence of class and race analysis by recognizing the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles, and racial inequality. Fundamentally, deindustrialization is a process of physical and social ruination as well as part of a wider political project that leaves working-class communities impoverished and demoralized. The structural violence of capitalism occurs gradually and out of sight, but it doesn't play out the same for everyone. Point Saint-Charles was left to rot until it was revalorized by gentrification, whereas Little Burgundy was torn apart by urban renewal and highway construction. This historical divergence had profound consequences in how urban change has been experienced, understood, and remembered. Drawing extensive interviews, a massive and varied archive of imagery, and original photography by David Lewis into a complex chorus, Steven High brings these communities to life, tracing their history from their earliest years to their decline and their current reality. He extends the analysis of deindustrialization, often focused on single-industry towns, to cities that have seemingly made the post-industrial transition. The urban neighbourhood has never been a settled concept, and its apparent innocence masks considerable contestation, divergence, and change over time. Deindustrializing Montreal thinks critically about locality, revealing how heritage becomes an agent of gentrification, investigating how places like Little Burgundy and the Point acquire race and class identities, and questioning what is preserved and for whom. -- Publisher's description

Prisons don’t work, but prisoners do. Prisons are often critiqued as unjust, but we hear little about the daily labour of incarcerated workers — what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and under which conditions. Unions protect workers fighting for better pay and against discrimination and occupational health and safety concerns, but prisoners are denied this protection despite being the lowest paid workers with the least choice in what they do — the most vulnerable among the working class. Starting from the perspective that work during imprisonment is not “rehabilitative,” this book examines the reasons why people should care about prison labour and how prisoners have struggled to organize for labour power in the past. Unionizing incarcerated workers is critical for both the labour movement and struggles for prison justice, this book argues, to negotiate changes to working conditions as well as the power dynamics within prisons themselves. --Publisher's description

In October 1890, Eugene T. Kingsley’s life changed irrevocably while working as a brakeman on the Northern Pacific Railway when he was injured in a fall between two rail cars. While recuperating in hospital after the amputation of both legs, he began reading the works of Karl Marx. Joining a popular socialist movement, his activism eventually brought him to Vancouver, B.C. where he founded the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). Kingsley, known as a passionate orator, went on to become one of the most prominent socialist intellectuals of his day. Class Warrior is a collection of Kingsley’s writing and speeches that underscores his tremendous impact on Canadian political discourse. --Publisher's description. Contents: Foreword: E. T. Kingsley: Canadian Marxism’s “Old Man” / Bryan D. Palmer -- Introduction: Re-evaluating the British Columbia School of Socialism: E. T. Kingsley, Disablement, and the “Impossiblist” Challenge to Industrial Capitalism in Western Canada / Benjamin Isitt and Ravi Malhotra. Part 1: Selected Writings of E. T. Kingsley. Part 2: Selected Speeches of E. T. Kingsley. Part 3: The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery. Part 4: On the World Situation. Appendix: Partial Record of E. T. Kingsley’s Public Speeches and Lectures; Kingley's Speeches.

The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a gay man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you'll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment. Baxter's name isn't George. But it's 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he'll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with "George." On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two gay men, Baxter's memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can't part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor. --Publisher's description

This book takes its title from the phrase for “I work” in Lunaape, the traditional language of Munsee Delaware people, and was inspired by the work of the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. Written for the descendants and communities of children who attended Mount Elgin and intended as a resource for all Canadians, Nii Ndahlohke tells the story of student life at Mount Elgin Industrial School between 1890 and 1915. Like the school itself, Nii Ndahlohke is structured in two sections. The first focuses on boys’ work, including maintenance and farm labour, the second on girls’ work, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. In Nii Ndahlohke readers will find a valuable piece of local, Indigenous, and Canadian history that depicts the nature of “education” provided at Canada’s Indian residential schools and the exploitation of children’s labour in order to keep school operating costs down. This history honours the students of Mount Elgin even as it reveals the injustice of Indian policy, segregated schooling, and racism in Canada. --Publisher's description

Canada's major cities have faced the humanitarian disaster of homelessness for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare a massive deficit in social programs and widespread inattention to human rights. Are municipal public services designed to essentially produce displacement? Or can we do something to end the growing problem of urban homelessness in Canada? In Displacement City, outreach worker Greg Cook and street nurse Cathy Crowe illuminate this infrastructure of displacement through prose, poetry, and photography. Contributors to the book, including those with lived experience of homelessness in Toronto, report on the realities of the situation and how people responded: by providing disaster-relief supplies and tiny shelters for encampments, by advocating for shelter-hotels where people could physically distance, by taking the city to court, and by rising up against encampment evictions. The book provides particular insight into policies affecting Indigenous peoples and how the legacy of colonialism and displacement reached a critical point during the pandemic. This collection of first-hand accounts shows how people are fighting back for homes. It also mourns the hundreds of preventable deaths that resulted from an unjust shelter system and the lack of a national housing program. Offering rich stories of care, mutual aid, and solidarity, Displacement City provides a vivid account of a national tragedy. -- Publisher's description

Canada’s largest and most famous example of class conflict, the Winnipeg General Strike, redefined local, national, and international conversations around class, politics, region, ethnicity, and gender. The Strike’s centenary occasioned a re-examination of this critical moment in working-class history, when 300 social justice activists, organizers, scholars, trade unionists, artists, and labour rights advocates gathered in Winnipeg in 2019. Probing the meaning of the General Strike in new and innovative ways, For a Better World includes a selection of contributions from the conference as well as others’ explorations of the character of class confrontation in the aftermath of the First World War. Editors Naylor, Hinther, and Mochoruk depict key events of 1919, detailing the dynamic and complex historiography of the Strike and the larger Workers’ Revolt that reverberated around the world and shaped the century following the war. The chapters delve into intersections of race, class, and gender. Settler colonialism’s impact on the conflict is also examined. Placing the struggle in Winnipeg within a broader national and international context, several contributors explore parallel strikes in Edmonton, Crowsnest Pass, Montreal, Kansas City, and Seattle. For a Better World interrogates types of commemoration and remembrance, current legacies of the Strike, and its ongoing influence. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate that the Winnipeg General Strike continues to mobilize—revealing our radical past and helping us to think imaginatively about collective action in the future. --Publisher's description

Income inequality has skyrocketed in Canada over the past decades. The rich have become richer, while the average household income has deteriorated and job quality, plummeted. Common explanations for these trends point to globalization, technology, or other forces largely beyond our control. But as Jobs with Inequality shows, there is nothing inevitable about inequality. Rather, runaway inequality is the result of politics and policies, and what governments have done to aid the rich and boost finance, and what has not done to uphold the interests of workers. Drawing on new tax and income data, John Peters tells the story of how inequality is unfolding in Canada today by examining post-democracy, financialization, and labour market deregulation. Timely and novel, the book explains how and why business and government have rewritten the rules of the economy to the advantage of the few, and considers why progressive efforts to reverse these trends have so regularly run aground. -- Publisher's description

Low-wage work and precarious employment are among the most urgent issues of our time. Canadian Labour Policy and Politics serves as essential reading for undergraduates who need to understand the politics of inequality in Canada’s labour market. This comprehensive textbook traces the rise of these pressing problems, reveals the resulting inequalities, and outlines the solutions for a sustainable future. Written by leading experts and practitioners, the text demonstrates how and why laws and public policy – intended to protect workers – often leave workers vulnerable with little economic or social security. Based on up-to-date data and international comparisons, chapters provide readers with real-world examples and case studies of how globalization, labour laws, employment standards, COVID-19, and other challenges affect workers on and off the job. Canadian Labour Policy and Politics also engages students in defining a far-reaching policy agenda for developing greater economic equality, political inclusiveness, and a green recovery in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Accessible and clearly written, it is a must-read for students as well as researchers, practitioners, activists, and policymakers. Key features include chapter summaries and outlines, suggestions for further reading, and glossaries. Students and scholars of Canadian politics and public policy, labour studies, political economy, and sociology will find this an invaluable addition to their bookshelves. The volume is a core text for second-, third-, and fourth-year level university labour and inequality courses. The fresh and insightful overview of Canada’s labour market and policies will also be essential reading for government policymakers, NGO representatives, union researchers and practitioners, and journalists. --Publisher's description

In 1977, Bonnie Robichaud accepted a job at the Department of Defence military base in North Bay, Ontario. After a string of dead-end jobs, with five young children at home, Robichaud was ecstatic to have found a unionized job with steady pay, benefits, and vacation time. After her supervisor began to sexually harass and intimidate her, her story could have followed the same course as countless women before her: endure, stay silent, and eventually quit. Instead, Robichaud filed a complaint after her probation period was up. When a high-ranking officer said she was the only one who had ever complained, Robichaud said, "Good. Then it should be easy to fix." This timely and revelatory memoir follows her gruelling eleven-year fight for justice, which was won in the Supreme Court of Canada. The unanimous decision set a historic legal precedent that employers are responsible for maintaining a respectful and harassment-free workplace. Robichaud's story is a landmark piece of Canadian labour history--one that is more relevant today than ever. --Publisher's description

In 1938, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) came to organize the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Mine Mill) in Trail, British Columbia. Six years later it was recognized as the legal representative of more than 5,000 workers at a smelter owned by the powerful Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada (CM&S). Smelter Wars aims to unfold the historic struggle of the working people who built the city of Trail. The book recounts the various difficulties of the rural community, providing glimpses into the political and social life in the smelter city, as well as the turbulent years marked by economic depression, war, and Cold War intolerance. Ron Verzuh draws upon archival and periodical sources, including the mainstream and labour press, to explore the CIO's complicated legacy in Trail as it battled a wide range of antagonists: a powerful employer (CM&S), a company union, local conservative citizens, and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) leadership. More than a history of a union, Smelter Wars is a cultural study of a community that has been shaped by decades of corporate welfare. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction: A Smelter City Is Born -- A Red Union Comes to Town -- Battling Blaylock's Company Union -- Women War Workers and Ladies Auxiliary Politics -- Mine-Mill Courts Trail's Immigrant Enclave -- A Clash of Ideologies in the Kootenays -- Steel's Cold Warriors Raid Trail's Red Union -- Resisting Canadian -- McCarthyism in British Columbia -- Conclusion: The Complicated History of Local 480.

Throughout history, farm families have shared work and equipment with their neighbours to complete labour-intensive, time-sensitive, and time-consuming tasks. They benefitted materially and socially from these voluntary, flexible, loosely structured networks of reciprocal assistance, making neighbourliness a vital but overlooked aspect of agricultural change. Being Neighbours takes us into the heart of neighbourhood - the set of people near and surrounding the family - through an examination of work bees in Southern Ontario from 1830 to 1960. The "bee" was a special event where people gathered to work on a neighbour's farm like bees in a hive for a wide variety of purposes, including barn-raising, logging, threshing, quilting, turkey plucking, and apple paring. Drawing on the diaries of over one hundred men and women, Catharine Wilson takes readers into families' daily lives, the intricacies of their labour exchange, their workways, feasts, and hospitality. Through the prism of the bee and a close reading of the diaries, she uncovers the subtle social politics of mutual dependency, the expectations neighbours had of each other, and their ways of managing conflict and crisis. This book adds to the literature on cooperative work that focuses on evaluating its economic efficiency and complicates histories of capitalism that place communal values at odds with market orientation. Beautifully written, engaging, and richly detailed and illustrated, Being Neighbours reveals the visceral textures of rural life. -- Publisher's description