Your search

The contemporary movement for sex workers' rights organizes around a range of international, national, and localized grievances. They are unified in their efforts to promote and protect sex workers' human and labour rights through the decriminalization and destigmatization of sex industry work. Within the context of social movement theory, literature on the sex worker rights movement has focused mainly on its failure to mobilize due to inadequate resources, small membership base, lack of sex worker leadership and absence of influential allies. In 2007, sex workers in Toronto, Ontario and in Vancouver, British Columbia, launched constitutional challenges to their respective Provincial Superior Courts to strike down Criminal Code of Canada provisions related to adult prostitution. The two court challenges are contrary to what would be predicted based on the extant literature on the sex worker rights movement. That literature supports a conclusion that due to marginalization, ambivalence toward their work, and feelings of inadequacy as political actors, sex workers lack the material and organizational strength to impact state regulation and alter social perceptions of sex work. This dissertation was based on a multi-site ethnographic study examining the processes by which constitutional challenges were initiated, the role of sex workers, and how the cases were perceived by the larger movement of sex worker rights activists in Canada. Drawing on primary and secondary data sources, including interviews with 26 movement activists, I examined constitutional litigation from the perspective of social movement theory, specifically considering the political opportunities, alliances, and resources necessary for these challenges to take place. This research demonstrates some tangible successes for the sex worker rights movement in Canada, despite ongoing social movement obstacles. The history of sex worker rights activism in Canada has produced sex worker-run organizations and political coalitions. These have garnered support from other organizations, researchers, cause lawyers and their teams, making it possible for sex workers, as individuals and via organizations, to mobilize legally against federal prostitution laws.

Universities across Canada are increasingly using contingent, or temporary instructors to teach undergraduate courses (Rajagopal 2002, Muzzin 2008, Lin 2006). Scholars have examined the marginalization of contingent academic faculty members in Canadian universities (Rajagopal 2002, Muzzin 2008). They have also critiqued the ways in which universities use contingent faculty to create surplus value and surplus labour (Rajagopal 2002, Bauder 2006), and support a “primary segment” (Bauder 2006) of the tenured and tenure-track professoriate. In this thesis, I examine the key issues faced by contingent academic faculty members, and how these issues impact on their professional identity. I also investigate into how the use of contingent faculty impacts on teaching practices in higher education. Through the analysis of Labour Force Survey data, I ascertain to what extent contingent academic labour has increased from 1998 to 2008, suggesting that full-time temporary labour is on the rise. I then analyze data gathered from twelve interviews with contingent academic faculty members at Quebec universities to explore how their working conditions and experiences have impacted on their professional identity and perceived quality of instruction. I suggest that professional identity among contingent faculty members is not as static as suggested by Rajagopal (2002) or Gappa and Leslie (1993) Using David Harvey’s (2005) concept of neoliberalism and Ulrich Beck’s (1992) concept of the flexibilization of labour under risk society, I situate the flexibilization of academic labour within the neoliberalization of the university, and also point to linkages between contingent academic labour and the commodification of higher education.

Drawing on a collection of interviews with Canadian feminists, this thesis explores the emergence of a ‘second wave’ of feminist organizing in Canada from 1965 to 1975. Using insights from poststructural feminism and critical race theory, I deconstruct the notion of ‘hegemonic feminism’ and examine how certain women came to inhabit a position of hegemony during the movement’s early years. I focus on key events in feminist organizing during the 1960s-1970s: The Royal Commission on the Status of Women and the founding of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Drawing on oral history interviews and a close reading of the report on the RCSW, I suggest that more nuanced approaches are needed to move beyond the binary thinking that inflects accounts of Canadian feminist history. I conclude with a series of feminist narratives which aim to complicate linear histories and offer an alternative reading of this movement.

Nursing is a high risk profession for injury. A Canadian survey reports many nurses are in poor physical and emotional health; they sustain more musculoskeletal and violence related injuries than other occupational groups. In Ontario, an injury management approach called Early Return to Work (RTW) requires injured workers, including nurses, to go back to work before full recovery. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board cite this approach as beneficial to both the employer and employee. This study uses an institutional ethnographic approach to examine critically the RTW process from the standpoint of injured registered nurses. Through interviews and mapping activities with nurses, other health professionals and managers, a rendering of the social organization of hospital injury management emerges. The findings suggest that the implementation of RTW is complicated and difficult for nurses, their families and hospital employers. Injured nurses engage in significant amounts of domestic, rehabilitation and accommodation work in order to participate in the RTW process. When the returning nurse is unable to engage in full duties hospital operations become disorganized. Collective agreements and human resources procedures limit the participation of injured nurses in creative and/or new roles that could utilize their knowledge and skills. As a result, nurses are assigned to duties, which hamper them from returning to their pre-injury positions and cause their employment with the hospital to be reconsidered. The unsuccessful return of injured nurses to employment is counter to provincial retention initiatives, which seek to sustain an adequate cadre of nurses ready and able to care for the increasing health care needs of an aging population. Sites of change which could support and promote the successful return of these injured workers to nursing work are identified in this study.

This thesis is a study of the role of the United Mine Workers of America, District 18 in the development of Workmen's Compensation legislation in Alberta. It also an investigation into the creation of District 18's Welfare Fund in the post-war period and the fund's relationship to workers' compensation legislation. The miners initiated the movement for workers' compensation in Alberta and the first law in this regard was passed in 1908. After that year, District 18 continued to be prominent in working to improve the content and administration of the legislation as it affected miners and the Alberta working class. As a result of the insufficiency of workers' compensation, District 18 created a Welfare Fund. It was not designed to replace state-provided welfare, but to provide help to members where the law fell short. The fund, as such, was an exercise in working-class agency and mutual aid.

For many years, workers petitioned the Supreme Court of Canada to intervene in labour relations to protect their collective bargaining rights. Finally, the Court answered the call, but the drastic changes made were not what workers expected. This thesis outlines the effect that the Court’s decision to intervene in labour relations had on the existing collective bargaining model. In making this determination, a historical analysis was done of the Court’s attitude towards using section 2(d) Freedom to Associate to protect collective bargaining, followed by a comparative analysis with United States jurisprudence to explain the effect of the Canadian decisions on the statutory provisions. The analysis revealed that the decisions had significantly weakened protections for workers’ rights, and provided the basis to conclude that the Supreme Court of Canada had used the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to deradicalize the existing collective bargaining model.

This thesis explores the revolutionary adult education learning dimensions in a Canadian Black anti-racist organization, which continues to be under-represented in the Canadian Adult Education literature on social movement learning. This case study draws on detailed reflection based on my own personal experience as a leader and member of the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC). The analysis demonstrates the limitations to the application of the Gramscian approach to radical adult education in the non-profit sector, I will refer to as the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) drawing on recent research by INCITE Women of Colour! (2007). This study fills important gaps in the new fields of studies on the NPIC and its role in the cooptation of dissent, by offering the first Canadian study of a radical Black anti-racist organization currently experiencing this. This study fills an important gap in the social movement and adult education literature related to the legacy of Canadian Black Communism specifically on the Canadian left.

Over the past decade the introduction of MP3’s, file sharing networks and illegal downloading has fundamentally changed the music industry, structurally and spatially. In the wake of this restructuring it is now estimated that 95% of all musicians in Canada operate independently of record companies (Canadian Independent Recording Artist Association or ‘CIRAA’). Digital technologies afford independent musicians greater freedom and control over how and where they live and work. Although economic geographers have been quick to examine the impact of the so called ‘MP3 Crisis’ on record sales and the major record labels, little is known about how changes at the macro-scale affect the working lives of individual musicians in specific locations. As a result, this dissertation focuses on the employment experiences and spatial dynamics of independent musicians in Toronto. Drawing on sixty-five in-depth interviews with musicians and key informants in the music industry, the thesis documents the intersections between technology, work and space. In particular, the analysis highlights the ways in which the new creative and spatial freedoms, associated with independent music production, are accompanied by intensified competition and employment risk, which musicians experience in an increasingly individualized way. Surviving in the current marketplace requires independent musicians to perform a range of new tasks and exhibit a higher degree of professionalism. Accordingly, the research outlines some of the reasons why some musicians are rejecting and reworking traditional bohemian lifestyles, spatial patterns and risk mediation strategies. In particular, there is growing evidence of new forms of networking and of the increased importance of strategic collaborations between musicians and fashion designers. There are also signs that some musicians are relocating from the downtown core to the surrounding suburbs, and that musical talent is becoming redistributed across the city-region. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates the need for specialized policies to incubate and retain creative talent in an increasingly global and digital marketplace.

While Canada’s immigration system is shaped primarily by the nation’s economic needs, refugee claimants’ motivations are, by nature, non-economic. Resultantly, refugee claimants are often portrayed as a drain on Canadian resources. Despite this however, refugee claimants’ employment experiences remain underrepresented in the literature. This study explores the employment experiences of refugee claimants in Toronto, and finds that claimants face distinct and unique barriers stemming from their precarious legal status. Additionally, as neither temporary workers nor permanent citizens, this study finds that refugee claimants perceive employment as an integrative expression of belonging and citizenship. Through the lens of refugeeness, this study traces the subjective employment trajectories of refugee claimants. Findings indicate that refugee claimants’ employability is shaped by real and ascribed barriers associated with their citizenship status, creating decidedly unique and often difficult employment experiences.

This thesis explores women's learning in unpaid household work through the lenses of impairment and disability. Informal learning from this standpoint is a perspective that is not yet integrated into the adult learning literature. The impetus for the study came from dissatisfaction with the social undervaluing of unpaid housework and carework, and the largely unrecognized learning behind the work, which is predominantly done by women. Disability and impairment provide unique lenses for making visible what people learn and how they learn in this context. Those who have or acquire impairment in adulthood need to learn how to do things differently. For this study I have taken a segment of data from a 4-year, 4-phase project on Unpaid Housework and Lifelong Learning in which I participated. The participants in this segment are women and men with disabilities who took part in 2 focus groups (11 women), an on-line focus group (20 women), and individual interviews (10 women and 5 men). Learning is explored through three different themes: first, learning related to self-care; second, learning to accept the impaired body; and third, strategies and resources used in the learning process. Analysis of the data shows that the learning that happens through unpaid household work is multidimensional, fluid, and diverse. Learning is accomplished through a complex 4-dimensional process involving a blend of the body, mind, emotions, and the spiritual self. Furthermore, what participants learned and how they learned is influenced by the sociocultural context in which it takes place. Learning, when seen as a 4-dimensional process, provides a framework for challenging traditional Western cultural beliefs about what counts as learning and knowledge. Such beliefs have cultivated the viewpoint that learning is individualistic, cognitive, and based on reason. I contest these beliefs by disrupting the binaries that support them (e.g., mind vs. body, reason vs. emotion). Participants used both sides of the binaries in their learning processes, negating the oppositional and hierarchical categories they establish. The concepts in the binaries still exist but the relationship between them is not oppositional, nor is one concept privileged over another, either within or across binaries.

The concept of home care nursing workload has not been widely studied and no evidence was found that an analysis of the concept had been undertaken. Consequently, there was a knowledge gap regarding the definition and attributes for the concept of home care nursing workload as it is currently experienced. To address that gap, a descriptive, three-phase, mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) study was conducted. In Phase One, Rodgers’ (2000) evolutionary method was used to analyze the concept of home care nursing workload based on the empirical literature. Phase Two was situated within the naturalistic inquiry paradigm and involved observation of ten home care registered nurses during their visits to 61 patients. In Phase three a questionnaire was administered to validate the draft definition and attributes for the concept of home care nursing workload. It was completed by 88 home care nursing experts from clinical practice, education, management and research. Qualitative findings were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively using SPSS. Data triangulation was used extensively within and between the study phases. Of 14 attributes in the phase three draft concept definition, respondents assigned the highest level of relevance to the attribute of cognitive effort and the lowest to physical effort. The final definition contained 20 attributes and includes the following excerpt: “Home care nursing workload is the totality of the cognitive, emotional and physical effort home care nurses expend to meet the expectations of all stakeholders in providing holistic, outcome directed and patient/family focused care within the context of a short or long-term therapeutic relationship.” Respondents reported high levels of agreement with the accuracy and completeness of the definition and the majority indicated the definition would be useful or very useful in their day-to-day work. The comprehensive concept exemplar that emerged from the study includes each of the identified attributes. The study findings provided evidence of the complexity and challenge inherent in quantitatively measuring home care nursing workload. Accordingly, implications of the findings are shared for the management and monitoring of workload and associated outcomes, as well as for nursing practice, education and research.

Over the past decade, mental illness in the workplace has become a key issue in the health and business communities, fueled in part by recognition of the high prevalence rates and significant costs for individuals and organizations. Although research in the field is starting to emerge, there are significant gaps in what is known, particularly with respect to the workplace context and its impact on workers. The overall objective of this study was to characterize, from a sociological perspective, the experiences of healthcare workers with mental health issues, and to account for how their experiences were shaped by the social relations of work. A qualitative approach, based on principles of institutional ethnography, guided exploration of the interactional, structural and discursive dimensions of work within a large mental health and addictions treatment facility. Data collection included in-depth interviews with twenty employees regarding their personal experiences with mental health issues, interviews with twelve workplace stakeholders regarding their interactions with workers, and a review of organizational texts related to health, illness and productivity. Analysis of the transcripts and texts was based on an institutional ethnography approach to mapping social processes; examining connections between local sites of experience and the social organization of work. The study findings revealed a critical disjuncture between the public mandate of advocacy, open dialogue, and support regarding mental health issues, and the private experience of workers which was characterized by silence, secrecy and inaction. Practices of silence were adopted by workers and workplace stakeholders across the organization, and were shaped by discursive forces related to stigma, staff-client boundaries, and responsibility to act. The silence had both positive and negative implications for the mental health of workers, as well as for relationships and productivity in the workplace. In accounting for the practices and production of silence, I argue that silence is complex, multi-dimensional, and embedded within the social relations of healthcare work. It serves to maintain institutional order. This conceptualization of silence challenges current beliefs and practices related to stigma, disclosure, early identification, support, and return to work for employees with mental health issues.

The study examines how Aboriginal workers and workers of colour experience union solidarity and explores the necessary conditions for the remaking of solidarity and the renewal of the labour movement. Grounded in anti-colonial discursive framework, the study analyzes the cultures and practices of labour solidarity through the lived experiences of Aboriginal activist and activists of colour within the Canadian labour movement. Utilizing the research methodologies of participatory action research, arts-informed research and critical autobiography, the research draws on the richness of the participants’ collective experiences and visual images co-created during the inquiry. The study also relies on the researcher’s self-narrative as a long time labour activist as a key part of the embodied knowledge production and sense making of a movement that is under enormous challenges and internal competing tension exacerbated by the neoliberal agenda. The findings reveal sense of profound gap between what participants experience as daily practices of solidarity and what they envisioned. Through the research process, the study explores and demonstrates the importance and potential of a more holistic and integrative critical education approach on anti-racism and decolonization. The study proposes a pedagogical framework on solidarity building with four interlinking components – rediscovering, restoring, reimagining and reclaiming – as a way to make whole for many Aboriginal activists and activists of colour within the labour movement. The pedagogy of solidarity offers a transformative process for activists to build solidarity across constituencies in the pursuit of labour renewal and social justice movement building.

Personal care homes have become increasingly dependent on the employment of immigrant care workers. This qualitative study explored the high concentration of Filipino health care aides in personal care homes from their own perspectives, as well as that of policy stakeholders. In depth interviews were conducted with seven Filipino health care aides working in personal care homes in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Semi-structured interviews with policy stakeholders examined the policy context of the health care aide labour force. The study identified several factors that influenced the migration and employment of Filipino health care aides including: poverty and unemployment, migrant social networks, barriers in the labour market and financial incentives. The lack of regulations for health care aides sustained the flow of immigrant labour and enabled the expansion of social networks. Although their employment decisions were primarily based on financial need, health care aides valued their work and viewed themselves as critical care providers.

Rapid resource development in northern and rural Canada is leading to unprecedented social, political, economic and environmental changes in a number of communities. In particular, gendered identities and divisions of labour in northern Canadian communities are poised to be dramatically altered by increasing labour demands, shifting time-use patterns, and intensifying income inequalities. Through a feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis of print media coverage of gendered issues in Fort McMurray, and semi-structured interviews with thirty-two women working in either the male-dominated oil sector or the female-dominated social services sector, this dissertation examines how women in Fort McMurray, Alberta—the host community for the Athabasca oil sands—negotiate their identities and make sense of the opportunities and challenges associated with the recent oil boom. Drawing on materialist feminist and feminist poststructuralist theory, this dissertation first elaborates a comprehensive analytical framework for investigating gender in the context of natural resource extraction. This framework contends that gendered identities are inherently multiple, and divisions of labour are embedded in particular temporal and spatial contexts. Furthermore, this framework examines discursive and material contradictions in diverse gendered experiences of resource extraction in order to move beyond universalizing gendered interests and identities. Second, this dissertation examines how discursively constructed female subject positions in local and global print media over the past decade adopt a frame of frontier masculinity. I demonstrate that these subject positions become resources upon which women in Fort McMurray draw on to negotiate their identities in ways that perpetuate a sense of dependency and anomalousness. Finally, I explore how neoliberal discourses of individualism and meritocracy provide a potential site of resistance to hegemonic frontier masculinity in women’s narratives of their opportunities and challenges. However, I ultimately argue that neoliberal discourses and practices do not prove transformative of gendered identities and divisions of labour because women are only able to partially engage with neoliberal subjectivity, which neglects collective interests and wellbeing.

Organisations operating in today's market are facing an upcoming shift in workforce demographics. A majority of today's current workforce belong to the Baby Boomer generation (individuals born between 1946 and 1964). Many of these workers have already reached retirement age with many more reaching retirement age in the near future. The workers who are next in chronological line to fill the vacancies created by these departures belong to Generation X. There has been much speculation in the popular press concerning these workers, their work histories, and their workplace expectations. There has also been extensive study of the employment relationship (the psychological contract), a worker's assessment of that relationship, and the outcomes associated with it. However, there is no model directly tying worker experiences to the psychological contract and in turn outcomes of the psychological contract. This case study applied qualitative and quantitative methodologies to investigate the role work experiences play in the formation of the psychological contract with a present employer and the outcomes associated with it. Survey data were collected and in-depth personal interviews were completed with 66 Generation X middle level managers working for one of Canada's top employers competing in the knowledge sector. Findings suggest that several key work experiences in the labour market as well as experiences with a present employer are influential in perceptions of the relationship employees have with their employer, how they assess that relationship, and ultimately the outcomes of engagement and trust. The study concludes with: (1) a model illustrating the relationships between workers' experiences and the psychological contract process, and (2) a typology of worker types based on the effects of previous work experiences and perceptions of experiences with a current employer.

My thesis examines the role and regulation of private, for-profit employment agencies in the British Columbia labour market with respect to the recruitment of temporary foreign workers. In it, I reviewed the historical origins of employment agency legislation in Canada. I go on to describe Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program in connection with the transfer of federal immigration authority to the provinces. I also present a case study demonstrating how temporary foreign workers are recruited for the Live-in Caregiver Program in British Columbia, and use the study as a basis for comparing British Columbia’s employment agency legislation with the agency licensing regimes in the other Western Provinces. I conclude that Manitoba’s recent Worker Recruitment and Protection Act frames a best practice model for the protection of foreign workers during the recruitment process, and I encourage other provinces like British Columbia to develop and legislatively frame a similar set of best practices.

Historically, teachers’ unions have been some of the major organizational sites of social justice leadership in K-12 education (Kuehn, 2007; M. Murphy, 1990; Urban, 1982), but until the mid 1990s, the term “social justice unionism” (Peterson & Charney, 1999) had little currency in teacher union circles. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the concept of social justice unionism in context. In particular, I asked how teacher union activists contributed and responded to the institutionalization of social justice in their organization. I used a critical constructionist (Ball, 1987; Berger & Luckmann, 1966; D. E. Smith, 1987) perspective to analyze 25 career history (Goodson, 1994) interviews with teachers, staff and elected officials affiliated with the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation between 1967 and 2007, and found that successive generations of union-involved activists dedicated to labour solidarity, feminism, multiculturalism, anti-colonialism and anti-homophobia used networks of like-minded colleagues to counter bureaucratic norms within their organization, the education system and society. A qualitative depiction of these changes suggests that they were layered, multi-dimensional and uneven. They played out on a contested, uphill gradient shaped, but not determined, by four factors: the organizational prioritization of teacher welfare over social justice; historically persistent micro-political struggles between two federation caucuses; the centralizing tendencies of union leadership in response to the provincial government’s centralization of educational authority; and broader ruling relations in Canadian society. Still, despite this uphill gradient, all activist networks left a durable trace on federation history. The major significance of this finding for critical theorists and social justice activists is a modestly hopeful alternative to the traditional conceptions of change embedded in organizational theory: revolution, evolution or despair.

This thesis explores the role played by law in the current breakdown of the employment pension system, focusing on the legal status of pension plans within the employment relationship, and on the way lawmakers have defined, shaped and enforced employee pension rights. It traces the legal status of employment pensions from their 19th Century characterization as gifts to reward employees for long and faithful service, to their current 21st Century construction as terms of the contract of employment. The thesis argues that Canadian lawmakers within all three legal regimes structuring rights and obligations within the employment relationship – the common law, collective bargaining law and statute law – have contributed significantly to the overall dysfunction of the system by cultivating both substantive and procedural legal rules that locate critical issues concerning the scope, design, durability and distribution of employee pension rights within the control of employers. Predictably, Canadian employers have used that control to shape pension plans to meet their distinct business needs, needs that frequently collide with worker needs and expectations for good pensions. Even in the heyday of the ‘Fordist’ work structures that fostered employment pension plans, the system delivered benefits very unequally, privileging the interest of elite workers who fit the ‘male breadwinner’ mould, and failing to provide adequate and secure pensions for the majority of Canadian workers. Changes in the organization of work in Canada, including trends towards more precarious work, will continue to exacerbate the problems inherent in the system, escalating its distributional inequalities. In the current round of pension law reform, Canada’s policy makers should abandon the effort to repair a system which is flawed at its core, and should instead seek a new foundation for pensions outside the employment relationship, a foundation which will not subordinate the pension interests of workers to the business interests of employers.

My thesis explores the knowledge, subjectivities and work performances that activist social workers bring to their practice in Ontario, Canada during a period of workplace restructuring that includes cuts to services, work intensification, increased surveillance and the evolving discourses of neoliberalism. A key aspect of my dissertation is the exploration of tensions between the attachments, desires and aspirations of the activist social work self and what that self must do every day to get by. I am interested in how it is that social workers produce and maintain their sense of identities – their integrity, ethics and responsibilities as activists – while also managing to navigate the contradictions of restructured workplaces. My aim is to understand not how power in the form of restructuring policies is imposed on people, but rather, how power acts through subjects who find themselves both implicated in, and struggling to resist neoliberal restructuring. My research lens draws on Michel Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and on feminist poststructural, critical race, and postcolonial theories. I use these theories to see neoliberal strategies of rule as working in diffuse ways through social and health service workplaces, encouraging service providers to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for particular performances that enact specific types of change. My research findings reveal that activist social workers respond to neoliberal strategies of rule in multiple ways while constituting themselves through a variety of competing discourses that exist in their lives. Social workers subjectivities appear to be produced through a range of discourses drawn from their family histories, unique biographies and the intersections of socially produced distinctions that are based on gender, race, class, sexuality, age and nationalism. My dissertation traces some of the many ways that social workers position themselves within and beyond the changing context of neoliberalism. In doing so, my research reveals tentative pathways for building critical resistance practices and suggests future social welfare measures that are based on social justice and equity.