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In the decades after World War II, immigrants generally managed to fit into the Canadian labour market without too many obstacles. Even when they were poorly educated, they found adequate jobs in the secondary sector, particularly in manufacturing. Moreover, if they were initially paid less than the natives, they tended to catch up after about fifteen years. In the early 1970s, however, when the thirty-year postwar boom gave way to a period of restructuring the productive system, the ensuing strong expansion of the tertiary sector resulted in fewer suitable employment opportunities for immigrants. The Canadian and Quebec governments responded by putting in place a policy that sought to select their immigrants on the basis of human capital characteristics. This policy continues to this day, especially because the world of work is currently engaged in a new phase of transformation linked to the development of the knowledge economy.

We examine whether a sex-based salary gap identified at the University of Manitoba in 1993 and 2003 persists in 2013. We apply decomposition techniques to analyze the factors contributing to the salary gap in each year and to its changes across the two decades. We find that a smaller but substantial 12 percent gap persists in 2013. In contrast to previous years, the 2013 gap is completely explained by sex differences in faculty, experience, and, more important, type of appointment and rank. The distribution of values of these control variables changed considerably between the earlier years and 2013 in ways that influenced the gap.

Work stress is costly and decreases productivity. Quebecers are much more likely to report high work stress than other Canadians. Using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey spanning 2003–2012, we study the determinants of reported work stress. Chronic disease, mental health, and lifestyle choices all contribute to work stress. Despite including a large variety of influences, living in Quebec is persistently associated with higher work stress. We discuss contextual and cultural factors. No one explanation stands out, but Quebecers are absent from work more often than others, suggesting that the costs of this phenomenon are real.

This article aims to explain whether and to what extent formal and informal labor education and training initiatives help increase union participation among young members. Between 2009 and 2014, twenty-two interviews were conducted with ten national union leaders and twelve young leaders in two trade union organizations operating in the public and private sectors in Quebec. To complement these data, fifty-three focus group discussions were held, involving more than four hundred thirty young members (under the age of thirty). Our results reveal the presence of three areas of tension associated with the internal functioning of these unions. They also point out some factors that may boost the participation of young workers, internally.

There is renewed discussion of a basic or guaranteed income at both the federal and the provincial levels in Canada, but counterarguments about the cost, work disincentives, and electoral appeal of such schemes remain challenging. In this article, we argue that a grand plan for a basic or guaranteed income is unnecessary because self-financing redesign of existing tax credits to be refundable can better target benefits to low-income families while improving tax equity. Using 2015 tax and transfer parameters and estimates of income and population, we assess the federal transfer system as a source of universal income security, identify the revenues that can be raised through the elimination of selected federal tax credits, present four options that could be financed within that budget constraint, assess their performance, and select our preferred universal basic guaranteed income (UGBI) option. We then provide a more detailed assessment of the impact of our preferred UGBI design and discuss the extension of that design to provincial tax and transfer systems. We estimate that the combined federal and provincial UGBI that we propose would effectively target benefits to low-income households and virtually eliminate poverty for all but single non-elderly individuals at a modest efficiency cost in terms of work disincentives.

The recent economic downturn magnified a routine occurrence in the Canadian labour market: job loss resulting from an employer downsizing, moving, or going out of business. Nevertheless, even in times of economic expansion, rates of involuntary job loss persist across a wide range of demographic and labour market groups. Moving is one way individuals may respond to job loss, relocating either to cheaper housing or in search of work. Drawing on data from the 1996–2010 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, this article examines the relationship between job loss and geographic mobility in Canada and provides evidence on the types of neighbourhoods to which individuals move. The findings establish job loss both as a key life course transition motivating residential mobility and long-distance migration in Canada and as a trigger event that initiates entry into high-deprivation areas.

À l'occasion du lancement du Fonds Syndicat du transport de Montréal (Employés-es des services d'entretien - CSN), nous avons cru opportun de présenter une composante de l'histoire de l'action syndicale de ces milliers de travailleurs et travailleuses qui ont concouru durant plus de cent ans au fonctionnement du service de transport en commun à Montréal.

We use two administrative data sets to examine the correlates of (a) taking the high school courses needed for university science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs and (b) applying to and registering in such programs. Staying on the STEM path during high school depends most importantly on math and science grades at each level. Factors such as gender, immigration status, and average neighbourhood income play relatively smaller roles. These two sets of factors play similar roles in the transition to university STEM programs. These results raise challenging questions of what lies behind the differences in critical factors among high school students.

The Knights of Labor became one of the great global working-class movements of the nineteenth century between 1880 and 1900, extending from New Zealand to Belgium, Scotland to South Africa. That story, however, has been told only in fragments, on local, regional, and national levels. No truly global history of the Knights of Labor yet exists. This article brings together what historians have so far uncovered of their activities outside Canada and the United States, provides an outline of what their global history might look like, and shows how that history enriches our understanding of national labor histories across the world and of the Knights themselves in their American home. Finally, this article addresses the wide range of historical topics that would benefit from such a global history, including labor and imperial history and the construction of gender and color lines on an international scale during the nineteenth century.

The recent announcements of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot and Finland's cash grants to jobless persons reflect the growing interest in some form of guaranteed annual income (GAI). This idea has circulated for decades and has now been revived, no doubt prompted by concerns of increased inequality and employment disruptions. The Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment (Mincome), conducted some 40 years ago, was an ambitious social experiment designed to assess a range of behavioural responses to a negative income tax, a specific form of GAI. This article reviews that experiment, clarifying what exactly Mincome did and did not learn about how individuals and households reacted to the income guarantees. This article reviews the potential for Mincome to answer questions about modern-day income experiments and describes how researchers may access these valuable data.

This article reports on a recent survey of Canadian automotive component manufacturing plant managers that focused on issues related to innovation and the influence of public policy on plant-level competitive strategies and performance. Three questions are addressed: (a) Do public policies inhibit or contribute to plant success, (b) does the experience of Canadian-owned plants differ from that of foreign-owned plants, and (c) does the experience of small- and medium-sized plants differ from that of large plants? The analysis is first situated within the context of the industry and recent Canadian automotive and manufacturing policy and concludes with the implications of our findings for public policy development.

During the 1980s, Canada's automotive manufacturing assembly landscape changed when five new manufacturers from outside of North America made large-scale investments. The industry shifted from one focused on US-owned corporations to one with a much more international orientation. Because of the success Canada enjoyed in attracting foreign automotive investment, one might conclude that those engaged in the process did so with a coherent plan and that the period was marked by one success after another. The reality, however, is that several misses also occurred. Layering archival sources and interviews with secondary sources, this article contributes to the history of the economic development of Canada's automotive industry. Through this, important lessons for policy-makers are offered: The process of goal and policy congruence is demonstrated; one sees how dominant personalities can override governance mechanisms, even in large corporations; and one observes the capacity of exogenous factors to affect the best-laid plans.

All three global automakers currently manufacturing vehicles in Australia have announced their total shutdown of operations there by 2017. This shutdown has sparked some fears that Canadian auto manufacturing may follow a similar trajectory. This article reviews the factors contributing to the closures in Australia and considers key structural, economic, and policy differences between the Australian and Canadian cases. The Canadian industry enjoys several structural advantages compared with Australia, chief among them its large and bilateral trade relationship with the United States. These advantages suggest that the Canadian industry has a better prognosis.

English/French abstracts of articles in the Fall 2017 issue.

List of contributors to the current issue.

List of contributors to volume 80.

The article reviews the book, "Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization," by Branko Milanovic.

This article reviews the book, "Canada Since 1960, a People's History: A Left Perspective on 50 Years of Politics, Economics, and Culture," edited by Cy Gonick.

The nature of work has undergone tremendous change in recent decades, and these changes have been well documented and widely debated. Similarly, the adequacy of regulation and institutions of work to operate in the face of these transformations has been questioned. Much attention has been devoted to the condition of this decline. Work and workplaces have been reorganized (in one memorable phrase, "fissured"),' increased intermediation in the traditional employment relationship has made it more difficult to identify the "real employer," and fewer "employees" exist, as precarious work and contracting-out of work has grown. These workers are more difficult to organize, and labour and employment relations regulatory schemes have failed to respond robustly or effectively to these changed conditions. Equal attention has been paid to the causes of the decline in union density: the "globalization of production" through technological and communications innovations, the offshoring of work (even work previously thought to be impervious to this trend), the expansion of the financial sector and the proliferation of its meth- ods and values into the productive or "real" economy (a process called financialization), the privatization of formerly public goods and services, and the reorganization of firms to (re)focus on "core competencies" and contract out peripheral functions. Even if all of these possible causes were overcome, workers' attitudes toward traditional organizations such as unions and even toward workers' identities as such have also changed profoundly, and organizing worker voice and collective bargaining has become more challenging.

L’article propose une grille de lecture des transformations de la relation d’emploi dans le cadre de la globalisation des marchés à partir de la notion de « zone grise d’emploi » (ZGE). Cette notion, forgée à l’origine par le juriste A. Supiot, pour désigner une convergence de situation entre l’« état de subordination » des salariés et des travailleurs indépendants est reprise et discutée dans le cadre élargi d’une « relation d’emploi avec tiers ». Ce cas de figure renvoie à un contexte d’internationalisation de la production où la relation employé-employeur ne se résume pas à une relation de face à face, mais dépend d’un ensemble de parties prenantes impliquées dans les conditions qui président à son organisation et sa gestion. L’article propose une définition de la ZGE qui ne se limite pas à souligner un défaut d’institutionnalisation dans la règle de droit, mais considère que tout « écart à la norme » est devenu la règle et non plus l’exception. La ZGE est définie comme « espace public » entendu comme un espace de délibération où les jeux d’intérêt et les relations de pouvoir se coordonnent ou se confrontent pour la constitution d’un ordre de régulation hybride, public et privé, formel et informel. L’intérêt de cette notion est de porter un autre regard sur les transformations de la relation d’emploi. En prenant la firme Uber comme exemple, l’article montre que l’on ne peut réduire la question de l’emploi des chauffeurs prestataires au paradigme juridique standard qui limiterait le débat entre choisir le statut de travailleur indépendant ou celui de salarié. La diversité, mais aussi la fragilité des jugements prononcés par les tribunaux, leurs caractères partiels et toujours provisoires, laissent deviner que la situation socio-professionnelle des chauffeurs, si elle relève de l’« indécidable » au plan du droit, ne peut être comprise sans prendre en considération l’action des États, des territoires et de la société civile dans le jeu de la régulation.