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In this chapter, I examine the spatial constraints Amazon is confronted with in its logistics operations within Canada and specifically in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. I argue that central to Amazon's production of logistics work space has been the construction of its own internal labor regime to buttress the effects of Amazon's response to state regulatory constraints, federal and provincial, on its production regime. Amazon seeks to balance the harmful effects of digital Taylorism on workers through what I call “corporate Keynesianism.” Yet, this was insufficient to prevent union organizing, and the company opted to close operations in the province altogether in the wake of a union organizing victory, with claims-making over the impact still pending. The chapter draws on ethnographic research as a community organizer supporting Amazon workers and semi-structured interviews with workers, trade union representatives, and public policy experts.

With the expectation for mothers to participate in the paid labour market while also fulfilling unpaid responsibilities at home, working mothers are subject to “the burden of a double shift, that is, the burden of a life built exclusively on work” (51). This chapter examines the narrated and photographic experiences of 14 sex working mothers in Canada, with the overarching question: “How do these womxn navigate and negotiate the daily work of social reproduction and paid work in precarious conditions?” The chapter argues that the motivations of participants, as complexly positioned workers within capitalism, to pursue sex work are reflective of antiwork tendencies and Kathi Weeks’ proposition for a postwork society. Participants stress their occupational choice as best enabling them to negotiate some of the traditional constraints of working motherhood – granting some participants financial security, greater flexibility, fewer working hours compared to traditional full-time occupations, refusal to overwork, and/or having greater leisure time to invest in themselves and their families. In doing so, this chapter aims to expand current debates on sex work, working motherhood, and anti-capitalist ideologies.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention on June 16, 2011, an act deemed in the literature to be an innovation in regulatory measures. This chapter discusses the ILO’s production of a newly visibilized and highly idealized domestic worker, specifically the Asian migrant/immigrant woman domestic worker in the context of Canada’s gendered, racialized, and capitalist management of multiculturalism and citizenship. This chapter asks, how does this paradoxical embodiment of the domestic worker continue to leave her estranged, or in other words, to leave her persistently needed, but not welcomed? And it further asks, in what ways is the woman domestic worker both a ‘useful’ body and a body that refuses its own usefulness?

Recent debates on ‘socio-ecological fixes’ explore how the reproduction of capital is pursued through the appropriation of land and resources and/or by means of fixing capital within the materiality of ‘Nature’. This chapter questions how the formal and real subsumption of Nature shapes the lives of workers and the politics of labour. These arguments are grounded through investigating two ‘fixes’ in the forests of British Columbia (BC), Canada. First, I examine how the labour of unemployed men in Depression-era BC was enrolled into relief camps in order to establish infrastructure aimed at accelerating the growth of timber production in the 1930s. Second, I explore how the financial acquisition of private forest lands on Vancouver Island in the early 2000s resulted in heavy job losses. Through profiling these two fixes against one another, the chapter explores how the formal and real subsumption of Nature shapes the lives, organisation, and politics of labour.

The author explores the influence of human rights campaigns on Canadian labour leaders' views of immigration in the 1940s. From the start of the labour movement from 1870s to the 1930s, unionists were among the most vocal and energetic opponents to large-scale immigration to Canada. By the 1940s, labour leaders abandoned most of this opposition and especially their racist and exclusionary rhetoric. Goutor shows that human rights activists - many of whom came from within the labour movement itself in the new wave of organizing during the Second World War - played a key role in driving this change. In particular, human rights campaigns convinced labour leaders that racism and anti-immigrant sentiment were social forces that mostly benefited conservatives and would empower social and political forces hostile to the mass unions emerging during the 1940s. --From editors' introduction

...I offer this chapter to new and current faculty members who are interested in learning more about the role of faculty unions, what it means to be a faculty union member, and union activism as a part of an academic identity and career. I begin with a brief history of faculty unionization in Canada, followed by a discussion of the union continuum, and the relevance of faculty unions. Throughout the chapter I share my experiences and a-ha moments as a union member and conclude with lessons learned that I hope readers will find of value as they navigate their own relationship with their faculty union. --Introduction

The governance of labour migration continues to be a complex terrain. This chapter analyses the role of the ILO and its mandate to protect migrant workers amid the tensions generated between delivering on social justice and the consolidation of temporary forms of labour migration as a feature of globalisation. Considering the case of housing, it examines how fragmentation in policymaking restricts the realisation of the right to adequate accommodation for migrant workers under temporary programmes. Accommodation for migrant workers is a key dimension of social policy that only received renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, it has been a preoccupation of the ILO since its inception as a dimension of workers’ living conditions. While contested, ILO action took the form of an international standard under Recommendation No. 115 on Workers’ Housing, in addition to being included as a theme in other international instruments. The housing needs of individuals are influenced by where they work and the nature of their jobs. Similarly, the cost of living and location impact the labour supply and the wages that people can demand. However, these connections are less apparent in the case of transnational temporary migrants, whose agency is restricted. The chapter explores these issues to show that integrating workplace–residence practices with (im)migration regimes through housing is necessary to close labour protection gaps in regulation.

Examines the anti-labour legislation of the the Doug Ford-led Conservative government in Ontario that saw the rollback of workers' rights. Discusses court challenges to the government's Bill 124, which restricted public sector pay increases to 1 percent. Documents the exponential growth of wealth accumulation by the very rich while most Ontarians' wages have stagnated or fallen. Concludes that organized workers and unions must become more militant to combat these trends. The Ontario Council of School Board Unions is cited as an example.

Indigenous resistance to colonization can intersect uncomfortably and often violently with a fight by workers to access Indigenous lands for extraction and jobs. Jobs have always been a literal frontier of settler colonial conflict because, simply put, colonization takes work. When immigrants began to settle through recruitment programmes en masse in Canada, they benefitted from a scale of colonial land seizure unknown anywhere else in the world at that time. The means by which to settle was the work—both required and provided—by corporations like the railroads, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and colonization enterprises. By the late 19th century, the market for wage labour on farms and in the central manufacturing regions was underway as industrialization took hold; the emergence of capitalism was born through its deep reliance on colonial land policy. For this reason, the political economy of colonialism can be studied through a long history of intersecting class formation and colonial land policy in Canada. We might call this dynamic the wages of settlement.

This chapter delves into the retention of long-tenured care workers in Canada. While turnover is a critical challenge for organisations dependent on care workers, profoundly affecting both recipients of care and their families, this chapter shifts focus to the factors that encourage retention. Through in-depth interviews with 15 long-term personal support workers in Ontario, Canada, the chapter uncovers a diverse array of motivations that sustain these workers in their roles. Additionally, it reveals the complex pressures and barriers that may compel care workers to remain in their positions even when they might otherwise consider leaving. This exploration provides valuable insights into the dynamics of retention in the care sector, shedding light on both the incentives and constraints that shape workers’ decisions to stay.

This chapter explores the development of Anglophonic Labour Geography, both as a distinct and identifiable subfield of Anglophonic Human Geography and as an intellectual and political project concerned with how workers actively shape the spatial dynamics of capitalism. I examine how capital-L ‘Labour Geography’ and diverse, small-L labour geographies have evolved to address the issues raised and challenges posed over the last decade, contributing to what Peck (2018, p. 475) called Labour Geography's current ‘more reflective and autocritical phase’. Through narrating my experiences of teaching undergraduates since I developed my first labour geographies course in 2014, I pose two questions of this current phase: in what ways is it expansive, and, relatedly, who sees themselves as ‘labour geographers’?

‘Just transition’ to a green economy has been touted for its perceived ability to shift us towards both green capitalism and an eco-socialist future. The promise of a ‘Green New Deal’, as popularised by progressive politicians, was reinforced at the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Links were quickly made to the importance of reorientating economic production towards health and well-being and the implementation of green investment as a means of stimulating the economy and avoiding a depression – as well as saving the planet. This chapter explores the limits of just transition to a ‘greener’ and more ‘caring’ economy and the persistent challenges that reproduce fragmented labour. A call is made to de-commodify labour as a more transformative response to the current environmental and health crisis.

Les migrations forcées ont façonné la création du Canada en tant qu'État colonisateur et de peuplement. Elles constituent une caractéristique déterminante de nos réalités nationales et mondiales contemporaines. De nombreuses personnes au Canada ont une expérience directe ou indirecte de la réinstallation et de la protection des réfugiés, de la traite des personnes et des déplacements causés par le changement climatique. La migration forcée au Canada est une ressource d'envergure dans le domaine en plein essor des études sur les migrations. L'ouvrage s'appuie sur des perspectives disciplinaires multiples. Des auteures et auteurs issues des mondes de la recherche, de la pratique et des savoirs autochtones mettent en lumière les expériences vécues de déplacement et les politiques migratoires à tous les paliers -- municipal, provincial, territorial et fédéral -- avec une attention particulière portée à l'expérience québécoise et aux minorités francophones du Canada. Depuis les premiers déplacements d'Autochtones et le colonialisme de peuplement, en passant par l'esclavage des Noirs jusqu'à l'apatridie, la traite des personnes et la migration climatique, les chapitres montrent comment la migration humaine est façonnée par des identités et des structures qui se recoupent. Les discussions sur le handicap, la race, la classe, l'âge social et l'identité de genre sont particulièrement novatrices. Situant le Canada dans le cadre de tendances, de normes et de structures internationales plus larges -- à la fois passées et présentes -- La migration forcée au Canada fournit des outils incontournables pour évaluer les informations émanant des journalistes, des représentants du gouvernement, des collègues et d'organisations non gouvernementales. L'ouvrage propose également de nouvelles pistes d'enquête, de discussion, de recherche et d'action. -- Résumé de l'éditeur

An unflinching examination of the impacts of settler colonialism from first contact to the contemporary nation state. On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples is the first installment in a comprehensive collection investigating settler colonialism as a state mandate, a structuring logic of institutions, and an alibi for violence and death. The book examines how settler identities are fashioned in opposition to nature and how eras of settler colonialism have come to be defined. Scholars and thinkers explore how settlers understood themselves as servants of empire, how settler identities came to be predicated on racialization and white supremacy, and more recently, how they have been constructed in relation to multiculturalism. Featuring perspectives from Indigenous, Black, mixed-race, and other racialized, queer, and white European-descended thinkers from across a range of disciplines, On Settler Colonialism in Canada: Lands and Peoples addresses the fundamental truths of this country. Essays engage contemporary questions on the legacy of displacement that settler colonialism has wrought for Indigenous people and racialized settlers caught up in the global implications of empire. Asserting that reconciliation is a shared endeavor, the collection’s final section exposes the myth at the heart of Canada’s constitutional legitimacy and describes the importance of affirming Indigenous rights, protecting Indigenous people (especially women) from systemic violence, and holding the Canadian settler nation state—which has benefited from the creation and maintenance of genocidal institutions for generations—accountable. -- Publisher's description

This chapter provides an extensive but not exhaustive overview of gender equality indices. Two key concerns emerge: frst, the conflation of measures of gender equality and assessments of women’s rights and status; and second, the focus on individual empowerment used in almost all international indices, the indicator for which is frequently political representation.The chapter proposes an alternative frame of collective agency as a measurable dimension that shifts attention from those institutions that reproduce gender inequality to those that promote gender equality. The second part of this chapter argues that trade unions are a key institutional vehicle for women’s collective agency and voice. Union membership increases women’s income and reduces the gender pay gap, a central dimension in all gender equality indices. It also improves the quality and conditions of working life. Union membership, then, helps progress women’s status, supports gender equality, and offers a valuable measure of women’s collective agency. --Introduction

The Canadian university system closely parallels the northern European and British systems which were inherited through the process of colonization in the 18th century. Universities are grappling with the legacy of colonialism and continue to make efforts toward reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Fiscal restraint dominates the discourse across publicly funded universities, which rely increasingly on contingent staff. Meanwhile, the increasing number of PhD graduates are finding it difficult to find permanent work in the academy. Labour unrest is on the rise across a fractured labour market. Canada faces a period of uncertainty and potential structural change in its higher education sector as it deals with these challenges.

Environmental racism is a structural, historical and ongoing fact of life for many Indigenous, Black and racially marginalized communities in Canada. Yet climate change discussions, lacking an anti-racism and intersectional lens, have largely ignored how Indigenous, Black and racially marginalized communities are inequitably impacted by the climate emergency. At the same time, policies to promote a just transition to a sustainable economy provide an opportunity for the creation of good green jobs. Such pathways into the green economy will only be inclusive if the voices of Indigenous, Black and racialized people and their communities are heard. Otherwise, the green economic transformation will only further reinforce the structural racial economic inequalities present in Canadian society and the genocidal impacts of the climate emergency will continue. In the end, we believe that worker power guided by a critical race, class, gender and intersectional analysis is an essential component in a strategy to win and secure a just transition to a green, sustainable and inclusive economy. The scale of the engagement must involve the entire movement working in genuine partnership with community coalition partners to ensure that the new green economy does not look like the old White economy.

New research on the workings of the ‘web of empire’ have revealed that the British Empire was not only sustained by raw materials from India but depended significantly on its manpower working as ‘coolies’, or indentured labourers, in distant plantations in Mauritius, Fiji, West Indies, East and South Africa, and the Straits Settlements. The white dominions of Canada, Australia and the United States (US) similarly depended on low-paid labourers from the East for much of their work of opening up and colonising the prairie wastes. Initially, the bulk of migrants from India in North America came from among the strong and hard-working Sikhs of the Punjab province of India, who found it lucrative to work in these places, lured by the comparatively higher wages than they could obtain at home. However, as the market for labour became saturated by the first decade of the twentieth century, these countries began to erect legal barriers to the free entry of these Indian migrants under pressure from domestic workers, unwilling to face competition from migrants. This came as a great shock to migrant Indians, who had until then been thinking of the empire as a vast field of ‘shared opportunities’. In 1908, Canada tried to exclude Indian migrant labour by legislation, which insisted on ‘continuous passage’ for entering into the ports of the country. This would automatically disable Sikh migrants, who had to change ships to reach Canada. Gurdit Singh’s attempt to charter a Japanese ship, Komagata Maru, in June 1914 to ensure continuous passage for the Sikh migrants to Canada was a challenge to this legal barrier against the migrants. The turning back of this ship from Vancouver shattered the belief of the migrants in an equal imperial citizenship, and it became incendiary material for the revolutionary nationalist propaganda of the Ghadr conspirators, based in San Francisco. Student radicals in Canada and America, such as Lala Har Dayal, Kartar Singh Sarabha, G. D. Kumar and Husain Rahim tried to contact radicals all over the world, in India House in the United Kingdom (UK), France, Egypt, Turkey and Switzerland, and tried to spread their message through journals, like the Ghadr and the Hindustanee from San Francisco and the Al Kasas from Egypt. They even linked their efforts with German imperialist conspirators to gain funding and guidance in their common mission against British imperialism. --Publisher's summary

Spaces of work and economic activity cause the most significant and widespread harm to animals so are particularly significant when thinking about how to both understand and promote solidarity with animals. This chapter begins by establishing what ‘animals at work’ means and then reestablishes the importance of the concept of interspecies solidarity as both a process and goal. It expands on earlier analyses and suggests that the principles of equity and care offer complementary and compelling guidance and impetus to deepen and enrich the application of the concept of solidarity. There are three levels within which these ethical priorities can be translated into meaningful, material changes: the interpersonal, the organizational, and the governmental/legislative (or, the micro, meso, and macro level). Some workplace contexts are ethically indefensible and should be replaced through just humane jobs transitions. Others have more positive potential, and, in these cases, interspecies solidarity could result in meaningful changes.

This collection presents critical and action-oriented approaches to addressing food systems inequities across places, spaces, and scales. With case studies from around the globe, Radical Food Geographies explores interconnections between power structures and the social and ecological dynamics that bring food from the land and water to our plates. Through themes of scale, spatial imaginaries, and human and more-than-human relationships, the authors explore ongoing efforts to co-construct more equitable and sustainable food systems for all. Advancing a radical food geographies praxis, the book reveals multiple forms of resistance and resurgence, and offers examples of co-creating food systems transformation through scholarship, action, and geography. --Publisher's description