Rethinking the ‘Indian International Student Crisis’ - Bhat, Sheetala; Nithiananthan, Samuel (Canadian Dimension, 2026)
What’s often framed as an “international student crisis” is less about migration numbers than labour. As Canadian universities become revenue engines and work rules shift with market needs, international students are channelled into Canada’s most precarious jobs, propping up low-wage sectors and exposing how exploitation is built into immigration policy itself.

Here’s How Canadian Workers And Unions Fared In 2025 - King, Adam D. K. (The Maple, 2026)
Union wage gains were relatively healthy, but unemployment crept up and workers felt the cost-of-living crunch.

Putting Labour Law to Work: Imperative of Race Conscious Labour Law - Arumugam, Harshini (Dalhousie Law Journal, 2026)
History shows that race and labour are deeply connected in Canada. For the labour movement to advance racial equality, it must contend with this reality. Through a critical race analysis, this paper examines how race-evasive approaches in labour laws and practices have contributed to systemic racial inequality. It argues that race-conscious strategies are essential for addressing the specific experiences and needs of racialized workers. By leveraging existing legal tools and intentionally incorporating race-conscious approaches into areas such as collective bargaining, the collective agreement, and the duty of fair representation, labour law can be a powerful mechanism for achieving racial justice in the workplace.

A Fight for Justice: The Compelling Story of Temporary Foreign Workers & Human Rights - Barrett, Joe (Ronsdale Press, 2026)
How migrant workers, with the support of Canadian unions, won justice in a landmark court decision. In April 2006, 42 Latin Americans landed in Vancouver to excavate tunnels for the Canada Line Skytrain. They thought they'd won the lottery with promised wages far above what they would earn at home. But the reality was miserable wages, unpaid overtime and inadequate living conditions. It was the beginning of the Canadian construction industry's reliance on migrant workers and the treatment of temporary foreign workers has made headlines ever since. Author Joe Barrett, fluent in Spanish and a researcher for BC Building Trades unions, first spoke to three of the Costa Rican workers through a chain link around the worksite. They confirmed the low wages. He shares his unique insider perspective as he joined the team of union organizers and became a liaison between workers, union officials and lawyers throughout the court battles. The workers' resentment grew in the face of employer lies, intimidation, coercion and prejudice. Most of them came from a group of villages in central Costa Rica. They grew up together, sharing a background of poverty and hardship. These common bonds gave them the courage they needed to face fears of employer retaliation as they organized, which resulted in a successful vote for union certification, a first for temporary foreign workers in the Canadian construction industry. But their victory was short-lived and their unity was broken by a series of employer "sticks and sweeteners." The fight for fairness continued at the BC Labour Relations Board (BCLRB) and, ultimately, at the BC Human Rights Tribunal in a race against time before the workers left Canada with the completion of the tunnels. In 2008, the tribunal delivered a triumphant decision, a landmark case in the evolving issue of global migration. Workers were awarded $2.4 million to compensate for discrimination based on country of origin; for wages, inferior accommodations, meals and expenses and injury to dignity and feelings. A Fight for Justice is an inspiring story of collective action and relationships across progressive communities in Canada and Latin America and offers a remarkable story of migrant workers successfully fighting for fairness and equality. –Publisher's description

Unjust Transition: The Future of Fossil Fuel Workers - Bettini, Anna (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Unjust Transition: The Future of Fossil Fuel Workers," by Emily Eaton, Andrew Stevens, and Sean Tucker, eds.

Salud y Shalom: Conversations with Jewish Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - Bick, Sam (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Salud y Shalom: Conversations with Jewish Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade " by Joseph Butwin.

Social Support, Strain, and Surveillance: Peer Relationships and Representation among Migrant Farm Workers in Canada - Borrelli, Erika (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
Workplace representation – the process through which workers voice concerns, negotiate conditions, and participate in decision-making – can be a crucial mechanism for reducing employment strain. Access to such structures is particularly vital for precarious workers, like temporary migrant farm workers in Canada, who face intensified demands owing to employer-tied contracts, congregate living arrangements, and persistent fears of job loss and deportation. Drawing on qualitative interviews and focus groups with migrant farm workers in three agriculturally dense regions in southern Ontario, this study explores the workers’ perceptions of one form of workplace representation: peer representation. While peer representation may foster lateral communication and social support for an otherwise isolated workforce, it is complicated by the structural precarity that intensifies competition and conflict among migrant farm workers. This article demonstrates how the conditions of entry and residency for migrant farm workers in Canada generate lateral surveillance and intra-worker control, amplifying workplace pressures and demands and reinforcing the strain that peer representation might otherwise help to alleviate.
Keywords: employment strain; lateral surveillance; migrant farm workers; precarious employment; workplace representation

The Evolution of Broad-Based Employee Ownership in Canada - Busaan, Lorin; Pek, Simon (International Review of Applied Economics, 2026)
Inspired by the recent national policy framework establishing the Canadian Employee Ownership Trust, we survey the landscape of broad-based employee ownership (BBEO) in Canada, focusing on the two prominent forms: worker co-operatives and broad-based employee share ownership. We conceptualize BBEO based on two inclusion criteria: the percentage of shares held by employees and the breadth of access to ownership opportunities. We also draw attention to two other relevant factors: the extent of employee control rights and degree of equality of share allocation. We then discuss the evolution and prevalence of the two forms of BBEO in Canada, utilizing limited available data and supplementing with illustrative examples. Finally, we call for an integrated and comparative research and policy agenda that bridges worker co-operatives and broad-based employee share ownership models.
Keywords: Canadian Employee Ownership Trust; J54; J58; P13; Worker co-operative; broad-based employee ownership

Ships of State: Literature and the Seaman’s Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain - Cadigan, Sean T. (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Ships of State: Literature and the Seaman’s Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain," by Laurie Ellinghausen.

The Transnational Institutionalization of the Ideal-Filipino-Hero of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Vancouver, Canada - Calamba, Rincy Dominic C. (Simon Fraser University, 2026)
Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Vancouver, Canada experience ongoing systematic conditioning processes that are rooted in Philippine colonial history. Utilizing a multi-ethnographic approach and a framework drawn from Berger and Luckmann's concept of institutionalization and Foucault's biopower, I rethink the Filipino labour diaspora and interrogate how empire, labour, and migration, shape Filipino trajectories. Existing scholarship has documented the structural and working conditions of Filipino labour migration; this research contributes by foregrounding how these arrangements between the Philippines and Canada are lived, internalized, and reproduced through the institutionalized subjectivities of the Filipino citizen, the ideal migrant, and the Bagong Bayani (new hero). These subjectivities sustain systemic inequalities, coerce joining the labour diaspora, and render OFWs more vulnerable to exploitation while glorifying their sacrifices as noble contributions to family and nation. I further discuss the agency and resistance of OFWs, who actively reimagine their subjectivities and challenge these neocolonial paradigms.

Small Town Deal The Life and Death of Renfrew Woollen Mills, 1917–1953 - Campbell, J. Peter (Athabasca University Press, 2026)
To be published: October 2026. Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy was meant to foster the domestic production of consumer goods and, in the process, ensure steady jobs at good wages. In reality, in small towns like Renfrew, Ontario women workers laboured for unconscionably low wages, and men worked staggeringly long hours. They suffered largely in silence, their exploitation hidden by a myth of small town community that denied their class standing. In this book, Peter Campbell brings to life the untold story of how small-town workers in the Renfrew Woollen Mills both benefitted from and were exploited by a National Policy that survived on their unseen labour and silent sacrifices. The “small town deal” rested on the expectation that workers would be seen but not heard while employers maintained labour harmony through paternalistic ideals and practices. Focusing on Catholic owners and Catholic workers, this book introduces a different Ontario, one in which the Catholic Church plays a key role in fostering worker acceptance of their class standing. Campbell details both the heyday of this moral economy and the challenge to it in the form of the 1937 strike, then a “company union,” and later the arrival of the Textile Workers Union of America. Renfrew’s small town deal survived the coming of the international union movement, but could not survive Cold War anti-Communism and the Liberal Party’s dismantling of the woollen textile industry as part of the creation of a new post-war economic order. The era of the National Policy and the small town deal is gone, but the contributions and the struggles of the workers who made small towns like Renfrew places where things were made live on. –Publisher's description

Decent or Precarious? Understanding the Quality of Work in Nova Scotia - Cerdas Sandí, Daniel; Casey, Rebecca; Brickner, Rachel K. (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Nova Scotia Office, 2026)
This report on Nova Scotia’s labour market finds that precarious employment is widespread and leaves many workers just one setback away from deeper insecurity. The report shows that 30.4 per cent of paid employees — approximately 131,000 workers — are in precarious jobs, with low wages, limited protection and job instability. About 43 per cent of employees show at least two signs of precariousness, leaving many workers on the edge of precarity, and at risk of deeper insecurity if their job conditions worsen. Too many workers in Nova Scotia are working hard without the stability they need to make ends meet,” said Dr. Daniel Cerdas-Sandí, co-author and CCPA-NS research staff. “This is not a marginal issue. Precarity is a defining feature of our labour market,” says Cerdas-Sandí. The study uses two complementary tools: an Employment Precarity Index based on Statistics Canada’s 2024 Labour Force Survey, and for the first time a 2025 survey of workers across Nova Scotia conducted by Angus Reid, which captures the day-to-day experiences such as unpredictable schedules, on-call demands, and fear of losing work.–Publisher's description (press release)

Uneven Development in the Platform Economy: Stratified Immigration Policies and Uneven Access to Transnational Social Protections in North America - Cervantes-Macías, María E. (Digital Geography and Society, 2026)
How do digital platforms, such as Uber, Amazon, or DoorDash, reterritorialize social protections for immigrant workers at urban, national, and transnational scales? In this paper I show how they function as tools of economic integration, situating interplays between states, markets to generate new territorial configurations and exclusions in the digital economy. By analyzing the role of immigrant workers in the platform economy, I aim to show how platform economies both enable and constrain transnational mobility, deepening global inequalities through the uneven impact of flexible labour mediated by digital infrastructures. I focus specifically on software engineers and gig workers, who perform what Vallas and Schor (2020) identify as “geographically tethered work”. These two migrant groups allow me to observe how platformization has reterritorialized labour relations. Providing an analysis of different immigrant workers in the North American platform economy, I aim to show the ways in which immigration status makes these labour relations more precarious, increasing the reliance on transnational infrastructures of care.
Keywords: Credentialized mobility; Gig workers; Immigrant labour; Platform economy; Reterritorialization; Social protections; Uneven development

The Persistent Roots of Racial Capitalism in the Era of Digital Platforms - Chatterjee, Anuneeta (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This essay examines the expansion of digital platforms through the lens of racial capitalism, focusing on their implications for people of colour in the Global South and migrant populations. It begins by outlining racial capitalism as a theoretical framework that extends beyond classical Marxism by centring the historical and ongoing racialization of labour, dispossession, and accumulation. Drawing on foundational insights from W. E. B. Du Bois and Cedric Robinson, the essay situates capitalism as inherently structured by racial hierarchies rather than merely class relations. It then engages in a critical review of recent scholarship addressing racial capitalism across domains such as social reproduction, migration, and border regimes, highlighting how digital platforms intensify and reorganize these dynamics. The analysis emphasizes how digital infrastructures reproduce longstanding patterns of exploitation, surveillance, and differential mobility while rendering racialized bodies central to global circuits of labour and value extraction. Finally, the essay applies this framework to the study of digital migration and embodiment, illustrating how platform-mediated environments both constrain and reshape the lived experiences of racialized populations. By foregrounding the interplay between race, technology, and political economy, the essay argues for the continued relevance of racial capitalism in understanding contemporary forms of inequality and in envisioning alternatives.

"I Have a Lot Working Against Me": Trans Precarious Labourers in Canada - Chudyk, Elliot; Devor, Aaron; Lepp, Annalee (Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, 2026)
While we know that transgender people are not a monolith, the spectrum of labour precarity that exists for trans workers as well as the additional factors that lead some trans people into deeper levels of life precariousness remain understudied. In this article, we consider how employment precarity impacts trans peoples' quality of life, and how trans peoples' social and material conditions mediate their overall life precarity alongside their experiences of labour precarity. This article is based on 55 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, including 41 interviews with trans precarious workers and 14 with service providers who have worked with trans people experiencing precarious labour. Our analysis highlights participants embodied experiences of labour precarity and explores how varied positions of marginality and material barriers among trans people mediate the kinds of precarity they face. Examining participants' recollections and personal narrations, we explored relationships among poverty, disability, migration, gender, and labour precarity as well as trans workers' deployments of hope, agency, and resistance.

Racial Discrimination at Work and Health of Canadian Workers: A Mixed Methods Study - Dalexis, Rose Darly (University of Ottawa, 2026)
Workplace racial discrimination remains a pervasive and harmful reality with profound implications for health and well-being. Drawing on evidence from three interrelated independent studies using both primary and secondary Canadian data, this research provides a comprehensive understanding of how workplace racial discrimination functions as both a social determinant of health and a chronic stressor contributing to adverse health outcomes and persistent health inequities. The findings demonstrate that workplace racial discrimination, manifesting through inequities in hiring, promotion, retention, and interpersonal interactions, increases the risks of significant psychological, physiological, and physical health outcomes for racialized workers. Experiencing workplace racial discrimination was strongly associated with heightened risks of anxiety, depression, stress and post-traumatic stress disorders, reinforcing mental health disparities across racialized groups. In addition, workplace racial discrimination increased perceptions of work-related stress, which in turn elevated the risk of diagnosed chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke effects and musculoskeletal disorders. Physiological assessments further revealed that recalling racial discrimination experiences contributes to dysregulated cardiovascular reactivity, including elevated systolic and diastolic blood pressure, as well as mean arterial pressure values above the normal range. Particularly severe forms of racial discrimination, implicating job loss, early retirement, undesirable resignation or leaves were linked to greater blood pressure increases. When incidents of racial discrimination were reported, especially when participants received acknowledgment of their experiences, physiological responses were attenuated. These results underscore the importance of personal action, recognition, accountability and institutional action in mitigating health risks. These findings underscore how workplace psychosocial stressors trigger harmful biological and physiological responses that may result in lasting health consequences. Taken together, this research highlights workplace racial discrimination as a critical public health concern that transcends individual experiences and reflects broader organizational inequities. Conceptualizing discrimination as a chronic stressor provides an essential understanding in addressing racial health disparities. The evidence points to the urgent need for organizational reforms, robust anti-discrimination policies, and workplace practices that not only prevent discrimination but also support the mental and physical health of racialized workers. Addressing workplace racism is not solely a matter of social justice; it is a public health imperative with the potential to reduce disparities, promote workplace equity, and improve the overall well-being of diverse populations.

Spatial Control, Precarity, and Union Resistance in Digital Remote Work: An Analysis of ‘Work From Home’ in US and Canadian Call Centres - Doellgast, Virginia; O’Brady, Sean; Kim, Jeonghun (Work, Employment and Society, 2026)
This article analyses the experiences of US and Canadian call centre workers and their unions with the shift from physical call centres to ‘work from home’ (WFH) arrangements. Drawing on interviews, focus groups and a worker survey, the authors find that the shift enabled new forms of spatial control grounded in worker preferences for remote work and associated with different forms of precarity. Management control over the physical location of work could increase job insecurity; control over the costs and risk associated with WFH arrangements could increase income insecurity; and control over communication between workers and with their unions could increase collective representation and voice insecurity. Local unions engaged in modes of resistance to spatial control, but with uneven success. Findings suggest that labour power requires union strategies that both defend WFH rights and develop protections targeted at forms of precarity associated with being able to work from home.

Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race and History in the Life of Lou Hooper - Dumais, Samia (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race and History in the Life of Lou Hooper," by Sean Mills, Eric Fillion et Désirée Rochat (dir).

The Incognito Reporter and the On-to-Ottawa Trek - Dupuis, Michael (Friesen Press, 2026)
At the height of the Great Depression, 2,000 young, single, unemployed and homeless men decided to ride boxcars from Vancouver to Ottawa to seek work and wages from Prime Minister "Iron Heel" R.B. Bennett. Their undertaking became the On-To-Ottawa Trek. Vancouver Advocate cub reporter Mark Hunter is given the perilous assignment of infiltrating the Trek. Once accepted into the journey, can he remain incognito? Can he endure the odyssey's hardships and dangers? Also, can he survive the Trek's violent ending? Most important, can he provide objective and accurate reporting of the historic event? –Publisher's description

Confronting the Resurgent Right - Edelson, Miriam (University of Manitoba Press, 2026)
Exposing the deep roots and new threats of Canada's regressive right. Over the past decade, we have witnessed the global mainstreaming of hate as false narratives and conspiracy theories about equity and inclusion, immigration, COVID-19 and vaccinations, and the “gay agenda” have become permissible talking points among right-wing politicians, pundits, and influencers. In Confronting the Resurgent Right, scholars and activists take Canada’s 2022 “Freedom Convoy” as a recent manifestation of deep-rooted extremism. Providing intersectional commentary on the resurgence of the right, they demonstrate how its ideology permeates and shapes the structures of our society. Balancing evidence-based research with careful analysis of the genesis and methods of the right, this volume models pathways of resistance and charges us to work together to expose and counter the regressive forces that spew hate. –Publisher's description

Union Organizing in the Northern Canadian Mining Industry - Fitzpatrick, Mason; Mills, Suzanne (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
For much of the 20th century, mining was a highly unionized sector, including in the Canadian North. From the 1960s to the 1990s, there was near-complete union coverage in mines in the northern territories, significantly increasing the share of wealth and political power claimed by many northern mining workers. Today, only two of ten producing mines are unionized: the Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories (Public Service Alliance of Canada [ psac]) and the Mary River mine in Nunavut (International Union of Operating Engineers [ iuoe]). This article explores the reasons for this decline and contemporary barriers to organizing, drawing on archival research, document analysis, and interviews with Indigenous organizations, union organizers, servicing staff, and officials. Changes in labour practices – such as the use of long-distance commuting, subcontracting, impact and benefit agreements ( ibas), and the shift to smaller, more highly skilled workforces – have created a more challenging organizing environment. These external challenges are compounded by internal union issues, including a failure to prioritize northern organizing and to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities and governments. We draw on these results to suggest strategies for overcoming these barriers. These included targeting workers in the remediation phase mines and catering and housekeeping workers to gain a foothold in the sector, locating choke points in the fly-in/fly-out production process, investing in offices and permanent organizing staff in northern cities, and working to decolonize unions through education and meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities.

Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces - Foster, Jason; Cake, Susan; Barnetson, Bob (Athabasca University Press, 2026)
Workplace injuries happen every day and can profoundly affect workers, their families, and the communities in which they live. This textbook is for workers and students looking for an introduction to injury prevention on the job. It offers an extensive overview of central occupational health and safety (OHS) concepts and practices and provides practical suggestions for health and safety advocacy. Foster, Cake, and Barnetson bring the field into the twenty-first century by including discussions of how precarious employment, gender, and ill-health can be better handled in Canadian OHS. Although they address the gendered and racialized dimensions of new work processes and structures in contemporary workplaces, Foster, Cake, and Barnetson contend that occupational health and safety can only be understood if we acknowledge that workers and employers have conflicting interests. Who identifies what workplace hazards should be controlled is therefore a product of the broader political economy of employment and one that should be well understood by those working in the field. The newly revised second edition updates key information and discusses OHS topics related to emerging issues such as COVID-19 and climate change. It offers an expanded discussion of chemical and biological hazards and provides all-new learning activities and exercises. –Publisher's description

Deskilled and Degraded: The Interaction of Precarious Status and Precarious Employment Trajectories for Migrant Workers in Canada - Foster, Jason; Coderre, Mylène; Carranza-Hernandez, Giovanni; Mahmood, Zainab (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This research explores the intersection of precarious legal status and precarious employment of migrants who came to Canada with a temporary status, whether for work, study, or protection purposes. Drawing on data collected from 148 interviews with precarious-status migrants, the article investigates how transitions in status impact employment trajectories. It builds upon a mixed-method analysis, identifying how employment precarity intensifies with increased status insecurity, which results in progressive deskilling and the degradation of working conditions over time. By foregrounding deskilling as a cumulative and temporal process, this study demonstrates how Canada’s temporary migration regime systematically deteriorates migrant workers’ skills and opportunities, extending precarity beyond the immediate moment of employment. This analysis contributes to an understanding of the lived experiences of migrant workers, highlighting the long-term effects of migration policies and regulations on employment and working conditions.
Keywords: Canada; deskilling; migrant workers; precarious employment; precarious status

Nouveaux dialogues et conversations émergentes en relations industrielles = New Dialogues and Emerging Conversations in Industrial Relations - Foster, Jason; Jalette, Patrice; Merkouche, Wassila; Yao, Yao (Presses de l'Université Laval, 2026)
Adoptant un format original axé sur le dialogue et la conversation, cet ouvrage collectif se situe dans la tradition des travaux en relations industrielles – un champ disciplinaire étudiant les problèmes variés associés au travail et à l’emploi. Il jette un regard d’ensemble sur les nouveaux enjeux émergents concernant le futur des milieux de travail et aborde des sujets tels que la crise climatique, le télétravail, la diversité, l’équité et l’inclusion au travail, l’avenir du syndicalisme et les droits des travailleurs. / With an original format centred on dialogue and conversation, this book is rooted in the tradition of industrial relations research, a disciplinary field that studies diverse problems associated with work and employment. As a collaborative work that takes a broad look at new and emerging issues concerning the future of workplaces, it addresses topics such as the climate crisis, telework, diversity, equity, and inclusion at work, the future of unionism, and workers’ rights. –Publisher's description / Résumé de l'éditeur

Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future - Gupta, Priya; Skerrett, Kevin (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future," by Tom Fraser.

From “Offender” to “Employee”: Canadian Prison Labour and Neoliberal Citizenship - Haentjens, Sandrine; Scanlan, Padraic X. (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article analyzes a neoliberal redefinition of citizenship as market participation through the lens of prison labour in Canadian federal penitentiaries. We focus on corcan, a special operating agency of Correctional Service Canada, which employs approximately 4,000 prisoners in various industries. Despite performing tasks like those of free workers, incarcerated individuals are not recognized as employees under Canadian law and are excluded from employment protections. corcan emphasizes employability as a key criterion for evaluating an offender’s rehabilitation. In effect, many prisoners must demonstrate evidence of compliance with a specific model of labour-market participation in order to be paroled, and to be restored to the liberties and rights of citizenship. We highlight the ideological and practical implications of this transformation, suggesting that prison labour serves as both a means of maintaining prison discipline and a window into the logic of a market-driven society. We conclude by exploring the broader significance of these changes for understanding citizenship and labour relations.
Keywords: CORCAN; Correctional Service Canada; citizenship; coerced labour; labour markets; neoliberalism; prison labour; rehabilitation

Law at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class - Hammoudi, Ali (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Law at Work: The Coercion and Co-option of the Working Class," by Harry Glasbeek.

The Open Shop, Closed Shop, Agency Shop, and Union Default in Comparative Perspective: Members, Resources, and Individual Autonomy - Harcourt, Mark; Gall, Gregor (Industrial Relations Journal, 2026)
Strategies designed to revive the declining union movement require new resources and new members for success. For this, many unions often used closed or agency shops. We compare these with the now dominant open shop as well as the union default. These options are assessed by asking how effective would each be at securing both members and resources for unions; and how much would each option protect and/or advance worker's autonomy in terms of various individual freedoms? Though closed and agency shops have many merits, especially in relation to the open shop, we conclude that the union default is superior to both.
Keywords: closed shop; union default; unions; worker representation

The Long Sixties: Stories from the New Left - Harding, Jim (Fernwood Publishing, 2026)
The sixties were not just “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” Social movements aimed at overcoming patriarchy, colonialism, and corporate capitalism were equally part of the sixties revolution. These movements are still very much alive. In The Long Sixties, seven veteran political activists from the sixties, all still engaged in campaigns and organizations across Canada, tell their stories of transformational activism. What could veteran activists from the sixties teach about activism? In addition to telling their stories — how they got involved, why they stay involved, how they persevered into their twilight years — they also critically reflect on their victories and defeats, their personal and political challenges, what they learned, and how their perspectives deepened and changed along the way. This book provides hope, chronicling the significant gains — in advancing peace, international human rights, Indigenous rights, women’s and 2SLGBTQ+ rights, workers’ rights, and environmental protection. Weathered voices open an intergenerational conversation about social solidarity and transformation to address the grave crises we face globally and nationally, including climate catastrophe, escalating warfare, extreme wealth inequality, ethno-nationalism, and a heightened continental threat to Canada’s sovereignty. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1547996790

Roles of Resistance: Game Plans for Teachers and Troublemakers - Harter, John-Henry; Leier, Mark (James Mark) (Between the Lines, 2026)
Designed for educators and facilitators from the union hall to the lecture hall, Roles of Resistance: Game Plans for Teachers and Troublemakers outlines revolutionary lesson plans on how to fight the power with people power. The thirteen lesson plans in this book created by John-Henry Harter and Mark Leier can be used independently or combined to create a semester-long course. Sections include units on teaching political economy, labour history, and social activism based on democratic, experiential teaching, including role-plays, simulations, and games. The tried and tested classroom activities in this teacher's guide–successfully applied in high schools, universities, and union classrooms–are bound to create a vibrant learning experience, enriching debates, and providing the main tool we need to change the world: collective action. –Publisher's description

Fit for the Task? Assessing the Suitability of Canadian Labour Law to Respond to New Forms of Technology in the Workplace - Hastie, Bethany; Galway, Devin (UBC Law Review, 2026)
This article takes up the challenge of examining whether, and to what extent, existing labour laws in Canada are equipped to respond to new technological changes in the workplace. While the notion that technology changes labour is not new, both the types of technology associated with this new wave of change, and their rapid deployment, make this an urgently needed inquiry, given their impacts on material working conditions. Further, given that core statutory provisions regulating labour relations in Canada have remained relatively unchanged over the past 50 years, there is reason to speculate about their continued relevance, or suitability to respond to new technology in the workplace. –From Introduction

Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics - High, Steven (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Shifting Gears: Canadian Autoworkers and the Changing Landscape of Labour Politics," by Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage.

Unpaid Work and Feminist Alliances across Difference: Three Local Studies of Wages for Housework Organizing in Canada - Hillyard Little, Margaret; Marks, Lynne; Hughes, Christine; Watson, Morghan; Aniyan, Cherene (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article analyzes Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians organizing in Canada through three local case studies in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto, showing how struggles over unpaid caring labour generated feminist alliances across race, class, sexuality, and immigration status. Using interviews with movement leaders and rank-and-file activists alongside private and public archival collections, it traces both solidarities and conflicts between these Marxist feminist groups, low-income mothers, immigrant women’s organizations, Indigenous women, and mainstream feminist bodies such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. The authors argue that Canadian Wages for Housework and Wages Due Lesbians activism was locally vibrant, transnationally connected, and has left a durable legacy in contemporary organizing around welfare rights, immigrant domestic workers, queer politics, and the recognition of women’s unpaid and underpaid care work.

Policy Analysis of Canadian Occupational Health and Safety Legislation and Regulations: Workplace Protections for Reproductive Health and Fetal Development - Jahel, Fatima; Phillips, Karen P. (New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 2026)
Canada's occupational health and safety (OHS) legislative frameworks describe the general rights and responsibilities of employers and employees to ensure safe workplaces. However, the extent to which these OHS frameworks recognize and safeguard reproductive health and fetal development remains understudied. Protections for reproductive health and fetal development were evaluated in OHS legislation, employment standards, and associated regulations across Canada's federal and 13 provincial/territorial jurisdictions by a policy analysis, supported by a sex and gender-based thematic and content analysis. OHS and reproductive health keyword frequencies were also determined. Three major themes were identified: (1) inconsistent recognition of workplace risks to reproductive health, (2) job modification, and (3) employer-mandated pregnancy leave. Our review found that workplace protections were generally limited to pregnancy, with little recognition of workplace risks to fertility, suggesting gaps in workplace protections for reproductive health and fetal development. We recommend contemporary reform of Canada's OHS legislation and regulations to support universal, comprehensive, and inclusive protections for reproductive health and fetal development for all workers, regardless of sex and pregnancy status.

After Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice - Komori, Jane (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "After Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice," by Kirsten Emiko McAllister and Mona Oikawa, eds.

A Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist - Latham, Graham (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "A Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist ," by Don Hamerquist. Edited by Luis Brennan.

200 ans de cohabitation sociale - LeBoutillier, Emma (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "200 ans de cohabitation sociale," by Camille Champagne-Tremblay et Martin Petitclerc.

Remapping an Ableist World: Disability and Oppression Under Capitalism - Lieffers, Caroline (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Remapping an Ableist World: Disability and Oppression Under Capitalism," by Vera Chouinard.

Good Enough to Work, Good Enough to Stay: Domestic Work, Feminist Publishing, and the Archive - Lobo, Rachel (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
The International Coalition to End Domestic Exploitation (intercede) was a Toronto-based organization that began to mobilize in 1979 in response to the growing crisis of abuse faced by domestic workers as a result of exclusionary immigration laws and the absence of workplace rights. The organization convened its activism on three main fronts: lobbying the federal government for new immigration policies that would allow domestic workers to settle in Canada permanently; petitioning for basic protections for domestic workers to be enshrined under provincial labour laws; and undertaking public advocacy that politically linked issues of women’s rights, workers’ rights, and migrant justice through transnational analysis and coalition building. Despite the unprecedented achievements made by intercede, it has largely been excluded from histories of workers’ struggle in Canada. This essay looks at the publication archive of Domestics’ Cross-Cultural News (dc-cn), a monthly newsletter published by intercede from 1984 to 2006 and housed within the online collection of the Rise Up! Feminist Digital Archive. As one of only a few periodicals produced by racialized women during this period, dc-cn is not only culturally significant but also an important historiographical tool, offering insight into how work and workers’ struggles have been racialized and gendered within a multicultural and transnational framework. This essay therefore positions dc-cn as a rich artifact that allowed domestic workers to become narrators of their own historical experience.
Keywords: domestic work; feminist print cultures; labour history; social movements; transnational feminisms

Canada’s Women’s Land Army: Wartime Labour and the Power of Visual Evidence - Lonie, Kelsey (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This research note examines Canada’s wartime Women’s Land Army and associated farmerette programs to highlight the value of visual sources for understanding women’s agricultural labour during the First and Second World Wars. Drawing on twenty photographs of women working in orchards, fields, and canneries alongside feminist ethnohistorical methods, it shows how images of uniforms, camp life, and physically demanding farm work both document women’s contributions to the war effort and recover experiences largely absent from conventional archives and policy records. The author argues that combining visual evidence with narrative and reflexive analysis can personalize the historical record, challenge male-centred accounts of wartime labour, and make scholarship on rural women’s work more accessible beyond academia.

Ending Manitoba's Workplace Violence Epidemic - Manitoba Federation of Labour (Manitoba Federation of Labour, 2026)
Examines the sharp escalation in incidents of workplace violence over the past decade in Manitoba, the failure of employers to meet their mitigation and hazard elimination obligations, and the lack of enforcement by the provincial government. The evidence is drawn from a variety of sectors, including healthcare and education, as well as interviews with 38 workers. Concludes with 10 policy recommendations.
See also: https://www.readthemaple.com/manitoba-is-facing-an-epidemic-of-workplace-violence/

The Red Baron of IBEW Local 213 : Les McDonald, Union Politics, and the 1966 Wildcat Strike at Lenkurt Electric - McDonald, Ian (Athabasca University Press/Canadian Committee on Labour History, 2026)
The “Red Baron” from Local 213 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) was Les McDonald, once a firebrand Communist activist and the youthful leader of the left faction within the Vancouver electrical workers’ union. His fate would be intertwined with the Lenkurt Electric strike of 1966, a wildcat strike that led to the imprisonment of four trade union leaders. Following his involvement as a long-time trade unionist, McDonald went on to be better known for his dedication to the establishment of triathlon as an official sport of the Olympic Games. However, McDonald’s important role in Local 213 and the Lenkurt strike—a watershed moment in Canadian labour history—was, until now, the untold story of the first half of his life. Referencing Local 213’s Minute Books, newspaper articles, collected correspondence, as well as dozens of personal interviews conducted by the author, this book examines the history of IBEW Local 213 in the turbulent years leading up to the Lenkurt strike. In addition to describing these events and their important historical ramifications, author Ian McDonald chronicles how his father helped to rebuild a left faction within the local union. With a focus on the period between 1955 to 1985, this ground-breaking study of a single construction trade union local—its brief post-World War II experience with Communist leadership, well-known work-site militancy, and repeated interventions by the IBEW’s International Office—sheds light on the local’s “red” minority activism and ultimately explains why McDonald returned to the world of sport to finish his career. –Publisher's description

Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967-1988 - Miller, Matthew (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Oil Money: Middle East Petrodollars and the Transformation of US Empire, 1967-1988," by David Wight.

Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism - Naylor, James (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism," by Shelton Stromquist.

The Surplus Value and De-Alienation of Working-Class Literatures: On the Work of Chris Pannell - Neilson, Shane (Humanities, 2026)
Though working-class literatures poorly fit within the theoretical purview of contemporary literary studies, the absence of scholarship in the Canadian context is particularly acute. Neoliberal readings thrive at the expense of labour-focused readings, with the possible result of insulating against the desired change such readings wish to bring into being. Because Chris Pannell’s poetry is so focused on work, its representations and spiritual qualities amidst a particular post-industrial location (Hamilton, Ontario), it makes for poetry well suited my goal: to create an ambidextrous reading method. In this article, I summarize the work done to date in Canadian literary studies on both labour and neoliberalism. Due to the relatively thin literature in CanLit available over the past few decades, I bring in Lukács and some American literary scholars (Jameson, Christopher and Whitson, Clarke) to round out what a working-class literature might be theorized as, and read as, in Canada while also keeping in view how critiques of neoliberalism are inadequate to the task of serving the working-class. To recalibrate Canadian literary studies, I bring forward Marx’s ideas concerning surplus value and alienation as they pertain to the production of poetry. While acknowledging the contributions of critiques of neoliberalism in Canadian literature, I critique those readings as rooted in Marx.
Keywords: Canadian literature; alienation; neoliberalism; poetics

Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933-1943 - Niergarth, Kirk (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933-1943," by Andy Friend.

After the Pandemic: Lasting Effects of COVID-19 on Work and Unpaid Domestic Labour - Peterson, Chris L. (Routledge, 2026)
Presenting a sociological perspective on globalisation and COVID-19 impacts, this book examines the lasting effects of COVID-19 on the structure of work and unpaid domestic labour.Labour patterns have influenced political, social, and economic spheres that affect organisational practices. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, this book showcases these effects upon household labour, care work, unpaid domestic work, and organisational practices, with attention to systemic inequalities by gender and age, net zero, privacy, and digitisation transitions. It examines the exponential post-pandemic growth of digitisation and what this has meant in encouraging remote, home-working or hybrid work health, and wellbeing. Taking a sociology of work approach with a critical eye for neoliberalism influences, this book explores the first years of the pandemic’s aftermath, analysing both its short-term and potential long-term effects on paid work and unpaid domestic labour.This book will be of interest to academics, students, and practitioners in the areas of sociology, global studies, occupational health, and international relations. In particular, those engaged with the sociology of work and the sociology of family will find this a valuable resource for understanding work in the post-pandemic world. –Publisher's description

Democracy’s Decline: What’s Class Got to Do with It? - Pilon, Dennis (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This paper critiques the dominant literature on democratic backsliding, arguing that contemporary analyses overemphasize normative decline, populist leadership, and political culture while neglecting the structural role of capitalism. While influential accounts, such as Levitsky and Ziblatt’s focus on eroding norms of mutual toleration and institutional restraint, explain how democratic erosion occurs, they offer limited insight into why the postwar democratic consensus has fractured. Drawing on critiques such as Adam Tooze’s, this study contends that existing scholarship remains analytically thin in its treatment of power. In particular, it highlights the systematic absence of class analysis and the reduction of “the economy” to market fluctuations rather than a set of historically contingent, coercive social relations. Revisiting mid-20th-century critical theorists, including C. Wright Mills, Ralph Miliband, and Göran Therborn, the paper argues for a renewed engagement with the relationship between capitalism and democracy. It suggests that without integrating class dynamics and structural inequalities into analyses of democratic decline, current scholarship risks offering incomplete diagnoses and inadequate remedies for the crisis facing Western democracies.

The Changing Class Basis of Canadian and Social Democratic Futures - Polacko, Matthew; Graefe, Peter; Kiss, Simon (Perspectives, 2026)
Elements of a redistributive and working-class agenda are already in demand, but many voters and especially the working class, feel politically alienated and disaffected that their interests are not being pursued.

Caring Labour and Domestic Violence Shelter Work in the COVID-19 Pandemic - Quinlan, Andrea; Singh, Rashmee; Olenewa, Jenniffer (Social Problems, 2026)
Caring labour has long been a key part of the labour required of domestic violence shelter workers. Under the weight of public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature and consequences of this caring labour changed. This paper examines these shifts within the broader context of the enduring invisibility of caring labour and the depoliticization of anti-violence work, both of which began long before the COVID-19 pandemic and has endured after. Drawing on 38 semi-structured interviews with shelter staff and residents working and living in domestic violence shelters in Ontario, Canada in 2022, we examine the pandemic-related shifts in shelter work and their wide-reaching consequences for workers, survivors, and anti-violence work.

A Timely Exhibit in a Gem of an Archive: Labour, Feminism, Trade, and Free Trade, Then and Now - Sangster, Joan (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article analyzes a contemporary online exhibit from the Canadian Women’s Movement Archives that explores feminist perspectives on labour, trade, and free trade in Canada from the 1970s to the 1990s, situating these struggles within broader debates over capitalism, neoliberalism, and imperialism. Drawing on archival materials documenting organizing by socialist, Marxist, and labour feminists, unions, and community groups, it highlights how critiques of unpaid domestic work, precarious wage labour, and the Canada–US free trade agreement were intertwined with concerns about sovereignty, social programs, immigration, and human rights in the Global South. The article argues that the exhibit’s explicitly political curatorial stance illustrates the importance of “outsider” and community-linked archives for preserving and interpreting the histories of labour, feminism, and the Left, while tracing how earlier feminist economies prefigure later critiques of global trade bodies such as the WTO and IMF.

Labour and the NDP: Revisiting the Past, Looking to the Future - Savage, Larry (Perspectives, 2026)
The NDP’s ability to credibly advance this alternative vision depends largely on whether the labour movement is itself willing and able to engage in such political and economic education.

The Working Class and Politics in Canada - Savage, Larry (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "The Working Class and Politics in Canada," by Jacob Robbins-Kanter, Royce Koop, and Daniel Troup, eds.

The Widening Gap: Gender Segregation and Job Polarization in the Post-Pandemic Labour Market - Scott, Katherine (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2026)
Over the past 50 years, women in Canada have made substantial gains in employment and earnings, supported by greater participation in full-time work, higher education levels, and movement into professional and unionized jobs. Despite this progress, major gender inequalities persist. Women—especially mothers of young children, caregivers, women with fewer years of formal schooling, and those facing overlapping forms of discrimination—remain concentrated in lower-paid occupations rooted in traditional gender roles. Persistent occupational segregation is a key contributor to Canada’s large gender pay gap and to rising inequality among women themselves. The employment recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic opened the door to change for some female workers, but as this study finds, not for Canada’s largely female and racialized low-waged workforce.

“When We Fight, We Win”: Migrant Domestic Worker Organizing and Engaged Intersectional Research in Canada - Shaw, Jennifer E.; Minh, Anita; Massie, Alicia; Bagon, Cenen; Cordero, Kassandra; Mũrage, Alice; Calamba, Rincy Dominic C.; Rosario Martinez, Noemi (International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2026)
Migrant domestic workers have formed the backbone of Canada's care economy, filling gaps in care and performing this undervalued work since the inception of the settler-colonial state. Premilla Nadasen (2023) argues that the care economy is not only subject to the sexist devaluation of women's reproductive work but is rooted in slavery and the racist extraction of work that makes all other work possible. Nadasen also points to the history of resistance, noting that care work has not only been a site of oppression but also a site of resistance. In Canada, stories of exploitation and activist-led change in the care sector have unfolded over two centuries. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British women were brought to Canada as nannies. Fitting the image of the white nation brazenly embodied in immigration policies, these white women were provided permanent status on arrival. When the post-World War II period brought larger gaps in care, the Canadian state initiated the West Indian Domestic Scheme in 1955.... –Introduction
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400232451_When_we_fight_we_win_migrant_domestic_worker_organizing_and_engaged_intersectional_research_in_Canada

Racialized Agrarian Labour Regimes in Canada: Punjabi Farmworkers’ Struggles in the 1980s - Singh, Paramjit (Human Geography, 2026)
This article examines the conditions and struggles of Punjabi farmworkers in Canada during the 1980s, highlighting their resistance to exploitation within a racialized agrarian capitalist system. Focusing on the systemic challenges faced by these workers, the analysis underscores how exploitative practices perpetuated through the capitalist–contractor–corporate food regime shaped the economic and social realities of Punjabi farmworkers. The article also explores the pivotal role of the Canadian Farmworkers Union in mobilizing grassroots action, advocating for workers’ rights, and addressing systemic inequalities. By situating these efforts within broader labor movements, the study sheds light on the intersections of migration, labor, and racial capitalism in Canadian agriculture that still continue in the form of the seasonal agricultural worker program.

Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada - Smith, Charles (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada," by Gregory P. Marchildon.

Poisoned Fields, Fated Lives: Destiny Politics in A Time to Rise - Soomal, Sajdeep (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article examines destiny politics in Anand Patwardhan and Jim Munro’s 1981 documentary A Time to Rise (Uthan da Vela), a film that captures the political struggles of Punjabi farm workers as they organized to establish the Canadian Farmworkers Union (cfu). It argues that the film highlights how Punjabi farm workers in British Columbia could not build a life beyond the exploitative and toxic labour conditions of BC farms without first confronting powerful cultural and religious ideas about predestined life. This article demonstrates that the three main figures involved in making the film – Anand Patwardhan (the filmmaker), Pritam Kaur Hayre (the protagonist), and Sant Ram Udasi (the singer) – each sought to dismantle the hold of destiny politics over the future. First, I explain that A Time to Rise marked a first experiment with what was to become Patwardhan’s signature style of documentary filmmaking: talking groups. Through this reconfiguration of the documentary as a tool for collective dialogue and movement building, Patwardhan sought to break the enduring power of destiny within South Asian communities. Second, I discuss the film’s protagonist Pritam Kaur Hayre, who contested the politics of destiny by seeking a better life through the union rather than the Punjabi family. Lastly, I show how upending destiny politics was a central preoccupation in the anti-caste thought of Sant Ram Udasi, the Mazhabi Punjabi farm-worker-turned-activist who visited British Columbia in 1979 and wrote and performed the film’s titular song, “Uthan da Vela.”
Keywords: Anand Patwardhan; British Columbia; Punjabi feminism; South Asian diaspora; anti-caste philosophy; chemical exposures; destiny; documentary film; farm worker unions

Weather and Work: How Climate Change Relates to Workers' Rights - Sukdeo, Vanisha (Irwin Law, 2026)
This book investigates the growing impact of climate change on Canadian workers, particularly those in outdoor occupations, who face increasing exposure to extreme conditions such as heat domes and wildfires. The book highlights the urgent need for collaboration between labour and corporate law, governments, businesses, and trade unions to address the unique risks encountered by these workers.Focusing on the Canadian context while drawing on global perspectives, the book examines the role of corporations as employers responsible for protecting their workers. It explores how existing legal frameworks can be adapted to address climate-related risks, as well as the potential for creating new tailored legal solutions. The book also highlights the importance of extralegal mechanisms, particularly corporate social responsibility, in enhancing worker safety in the face of climate change. As the nature of all work is made more hazardous at the hands of climate catastrophe, lawyer and pioneering scholar Vanisha H. Sukdeo uncovers the urgency for legal labour reform. By critiquing current legal approaches and proposing innovative solutions, Weather and Work illustrates how labour and corporate law can work together to protect some of the most vulnerable workers from the growing threats posed by global warming. –Publisher's description

From Streets to Suites: The Sex Trade in the Prairie Cities of Canada at the Turn into the 21st Century Book 1: Around the World in $exy Ways–and Then Back Home - Thatcher, Richard (iUniverse, 2026)
The book describes the contemporary sex trade and its causes and consequences as it has manifested in the cities of Canada's prairie provinces. It concludes with recommendations for a realistic public policy and programming framework to guide the future development of a sexual services sector and to regulate its ongoing operations
OCLC: 1599552771

Exceptional Exceptionalism: Does Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code Authorize the Federal Government to Terminate or Suspend the Freedom to Strike by Executive Order? - Tucker, Eric M. (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
Recently the federal government has invoked section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order the end of otherwise lawful strikes. The government’s claim that the section provides it with this power is in dispute. This research report, adapted from an expert witness report prepared for the law firm representing one of the unions subjected to these orders, investigates the historical understanding of the section and its precursors dating back to its earliest version, enacted in 1918. It finds that the historical understanding of the section was that its purpose was to strengthen statutory conciliation processes, not to empower the government to end otherwise lawful strikes by executive action. This government action not only continues a longer history of exceptionalism in collective bargaining but also marks a rupture by its attempt to enhance the power of the executive.
Keywords: Canada; Canada Labour Code; government interference; history; labour law; right to strike

The Labour of Care: Canada's Health Care Workers, 1945-2020 - Twohig, Peter L. (University of Toronto Press, 2026)
To be published: July 2026. The Labour of Care is the first national, comparative history of health care work. In this book, historian Peter L. Twohig analyses the responses of governments, employers, professional groups, training programs , and unions to the challenge of staffing Canada’s health care system and the reorganization of care.Through careful archival analysis, Twohig demonstrates the conditions under which employees’ boundaries become more flexible, the paths to health care work expand, and tensions emerge among workers in response to labour shortages, decreased funding, and health care reform. This book is attentive to the various identities of health care workers, as women, professionals, union members, and more. It also situates these developments within broader social, economic, and policy changes that reshaped Canada’s health care landscape in the second half of the twentieth century. Examining health care workers in this way reveals a new history of health care that highlights the experiences and contributions of a wide range of workers whose voices have not yet been heard. –Publisher's description

We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953 - Webb, Brandon (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953," by Shaun Richman.

A Political Economy of Canadian Broadcasting: Public Good Versus Private Profit - Webb, Jeff (Labour / Le Travail, 2026)
This article reviews the book, "A Political Economy of Canadian Broadcasting: Public Good Versus Private Profit," by David Skinner.

Migrant Stories, Industry Narratives: A Critical Discourse Analysis on Migrant Labour in Canadian Agriculture - Helps, William Louis (University of Guelph, 2025)
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, many Canadians have become newly aware of problematic power imbalances and potential for abuse under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which forms a key component of the Canadian agri-food workforce. The increased attention brought to some of the negative outcomes of Canada’s agricultural migrant labour system appear to have prompted an industry response, including through the More than a Migrant Worker initiative launched by a collection of agri-food industry groups. This dissertation presents the results of research on texts gathered from the More than a Migrant Worker initiative. Critical discourse analysis was used to identify themes, arguments, and rhetorical techniques the initiative employs to convey a narrative about migrant farm workers to the public. Findings indicate that these agri-food industry groups have adopted a defensive stance in response to critiques of migrant labour policies, as demonstrated by the discourse’s treatment of themes such as migrant workers’ and their families’ financial motivations, the purported necessity of migrant labour to sustain Canadian food production, and the formal rights and protections built into the TFWP, combined with a de-emphasis of the evidence of persistent systemic issues in the protection of migrant workers from mistreatment. The findings support a theoretical framework of managed migration based on a combination of Labour Market Segmentation Theory and the New Economics of Labour Migration, in which the devaluation of agricultural work in the domestic labour market and the disruption of traditional economies by neoliberal global market forces generate a demand for and supply of migrant labour, respectively. The paper’s conclusion provides directions for further research to expand academic knowledge of migrant labour discourse and migration theory, as well as recommendations for policy makers, the agri-food industry, and advocacy groups for productive policy discussions that find consensus on ways to protect and improve the conditions of migrant farm workers.

Neoliberal Policies and Rhetoric in the Struggle for Ontario Gig Workers' Rights - Abernethy, Zoe Ming Hui Gibbons (Carleton University, 2025)
How have neoliberal discourses of the gig economy shaped the terrain of gig worker organizing in Ontario? This thesis interrogates and contextualizes Uber’s efforts to legitimize and further expand its operations in Ontario during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the centrality of its appeals to (and reproduction of) workers’ entrepreneurial common sense in these endeavors. Drawing on ten-semi structured interviews with current and former Uber drivers and delivery workers, it explores the contradictory form of independence experienced by platform-mediated gig workers, reflecting on the significance of gig work being perceived as the “least worst option” within the contemporary labour landscape.

The Intersection of Work and Care: Exploring the Facilitators and Barriers of Maternal Employment in Canada - Abraham, Haneen Alia (University of Alberta, 2025)
Since the 1970s, many OECD countries have seen a significant increase in maternal employment rates. In cross-national comparison, Canada has high maternal employment rates, but lags behind some Nordic and East European countries. Within this context, this study explores how larger social, cultural and policy environments shape mothers' employment experiences, challenging the notion that women prefer to opt out of the labour force when they have children To conduct this analysis, I drew on focus groups (n=19) and individual interviews (n=39) with 58 mothers in Canada with preschool children in the province of Alberta. The key finding from this study was that the majority of mothers, despite wanting to continue their careers alongside parenthood, experienced challenges integrating unpaid and paid work. To navigate these challenges, mothers employed various strategies, including seeking flexibility at work, reducing work hours, or opting out of employment. Yet, many remained ambivalent regarding their employment arrangements. I detail the ways in which paid parental leave and childcare policies acted as facilitators or barriers to mothers’ labour force participation. Overall, the findings indicate that current policies are not sufficient to support mothers in the labour force. This study adds to a body of Canadian literature that examines how barriers such as pervasive gender norms in the workplace and households, and workplace inflexibility, create barriers to mothers’ labour force participation and impact mothers’ experiences in the labour market.

Technological Change and an Aging Workforce: Investigating the Career Experiences of Older Workers - Adeniyi, Judah I. (Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2025)
This dissertation examines the intersection between two significant economic and societal challenges: an aging workforce and rapid technological change. The aging workforce is a growing concern, particularly in Canada, where the population of older workers (55 years and older) surpasses that of younger entrants (15 to 24 years). This demographic shift, already contributing to labour shortages in key sectors like manufacturing and healthcare, poses risks to labour participation rates and the stability of healthcare and pension systems (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2017; Maestas et al., 2016). Given the projected exodus of older workers and limited incoming replacements, scholars and practitioners advocate for delayed or phased retirements to mitigate talent shortages. Simultaneously, technological change reshapes work, presenting opportunities and challenges, especially for older workers who may find adapting to new technologies daunting. This environment makes it critical to understand how technology affects older workers' experiences, including their retirement intentions. I conducted two studies to better understand the impact of technology and technological changes on older workers' work experiences. In Study One, I conducted a systematic literature review to synthesize existing research on technology's impact on older workers, with a comprehensive analysis of 121 articles, including both peer-reviewed (n=82) and grey literature sources (n=39). Thematic analysis revealed key areas in the current literature, such as socio-demographic factors, training and development, and retirement planning. The results of this study also included descriptive insights on journals, methodologies, regions, and publication dates, highlighting 14 important research gaps. These gaps guided recommendations for future studies, which aim to address the implications of technological innovations on an aging workforce. In the second study, I empirically examined the relationship between technological change and older workers' retirement intentions using a sample of 361 participants. Testing a moderated mediation model grounded in the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) theory, I analyzed burnout and perceived work ability as serial mediators alongside moderating factors of computer self-efficacy, technological training, and organizational justice. Findings accentuate the complex interplay of burnout, work ability, and retirement intentions, emphasizing that burnout negatively impacts work ability, which in turn influences retirement intentions. Notably, technological training significantly moderated the relationship between burnout and work ability, reinforcing its role as an important factor shaping older workers' capacity to adapt within technologically evolving work environments. Ultimately, this dissertation provides valuable implications for both theory and practice. The findings from both studies provide important directions for the successful integration and retention of older employees in the rapidly changing technological work environment, as well as for creating a supportive work environment for them.

Does Employee Organising Power Matter on Wage Levels in the Canadian Gig Economy: The Role of Unionisation, Inflation, Immigration and Information and Communication Technology - Ali, Md Idris (International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 2025)
The progressive advancement of technology and the rise of fissured workplaces have led to significant shifts in global employment structures, particularly towards the gig economy. In Canada, however, gig economy workers remain largely excluded from opportunities for unionisation. Historically, unions have demonstrated substantial organisational power, serving as critical institutions for improving workplace conditions through collective bargaining. This study, therefore, aims to examine the impact of unionisation, immigration, human capital, inflation and information and communication technology on wage determination in Canada, situating the analysis within the broader context of a rapidly evolving employment landscape. Using Canadian time series data from 1980 to 2022, the research uses the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag approach to identify both cointegrating relationships and counterfactual effects among the variables. Additionally, the counterfactual analysis examines the effects of ±1% and ±5% shocks on the dependent variables. The robustness of these findings is confirmed through the kernel-based regularised least squares machine learning approach.,The findings reveal that unionisation, inflation, immigration and information and communication technology development significantly influence wages at a 1% level, while human capital at a 5% level in the long term. The robustness of these findings is further confirmed by the kernel regularised least squares machine learning algorithm.,Based on the findings, the study recommends that policymakers should implement targeted strategies to enhance union representation among gig economy workers and strengthen collective bargaining mechanisms. Additionally, addressing broader factors influencing wage dynamics, such as human capital development, immigration policies, information and communication technology advancements and inflation-indexed wage adjustments, can foster equitable and sustainable wage growth across diverse sectors. Exploring the dynamic and cointegrating relationships between unions’ organising power and wage levels within the purview of inflation, immigration, human capital and information and communication technology development is unprecedented. Additionally, applying the kernel regularised least squares machine learning algorithm to check robustness is completely new in a study within the realm of employment relationships.

Inclusive Management in Public Administration: The Development of a Work-Centred Training Program - Almeida, Beatriz; Cadilhe, Maria; Pereira, Cláudia; Santos, Marta (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
In this article, we aim to understand how a training program can help managers promote inclusive management. We present the development and implementation of a work activity-centred training program for inclusive management in an institution of the Portuguese Public Administration. Using a mixed design-based research methodology, we brought 24 municipal managers into the development and implementation phases of the training program. We organized a focus group of managers to understand their experiences, constraints and training needs for the promotion of inclusive management in their work activity. Questions were put to them before, during and after program implementation. To promote inclusion actions in their work activity, we developed a 60-hour b-learning program. Our findings show the effectiveness of integrating work activity analysis and group reflection when co-creating the training program with participating managers to help them act in their work activity and meet the challenges of inclusive management. The managers reported they had improved their knowledge and resources for inclusive management in their work activity, particularly by thinking and creating together as a group. They valued the participatory and context-specific approach. We conclude that work activity-centred training programs can be key to enhancing the ability of managers to promote inclusive management. The participatory design fostered group learning, grounded in real work contexts, and helped the managers develop inclusion strategies. We provide insights into how inclusive management can be developed collectively, thereby showing the importance of collaboration between Academia and Public Institutions in the development of training programs.
Keywords: Activité de travail; Administration publique; Cadres dirigeants; Diversity; Diversité; Formation; Inclusion; Leadership; Manager; Milieu de travail; Public Administration; Training; Work Activity; Workplace

Symposium - Promising Practices in Scholar-Union Collaboration: Lessons for Building Effective Research Partnerships - Armstrong, Pat; Bittman, Kevin; Hurley, Michael; Stanford, Jim; Tucker, Sean; Vela, Jakin; Weststar, Johanna; Wilson, Fred (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
This symposium considers the prospects for research collaboration between industrial relations scholars and trade unions, as well as its challenges. First, in remarks presented in the 2025 H.D. Woods Lecture at the Canadian Industrial Relations Association / Association canadienne des relations industrielles conference, Jim Stanford reviews the mutual benefits for both scholars and trade unionists from successful research partnerships and proposes strategies for building more respectful and trusting relationships between them. The symposium then presents three case studies of lasting, productive research partnerships, each described by a matched pairing of a scholar with a union representative. Lessons are drawn for future research collaborations.

The Value of Worker Rights in Collective Bargaining - Arold, Benjamin W.; Ash, Elliott; MacLeod, W. Bentley; Naidu, Seresh (University of Cambridge, 2025)
This paper proposes novel natural language methods to measure worker rights from collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) for use in empirical economic analysis. Applying unsupervised text-as-data algorithms to a new collection of 30,000 CBAs from Canada in the period 1986-2015, we parse legal obligations (e.g., “the employer shall provide...”) and legal rights (e.g., “workers shall receive...”) from the contract text. We validate that contract clauses provide worker rights, which include both amenities and control over the work environment. Companies that provide more worker rights score highly on a survey indicating pro-worker management practices. Using time-varying province-level variation in labor income tax rates, we find that higher taxes increase the share of worker-rights clauses while reducing pre-tax wages in unionized firms, consistent with a substitution effect away from taxed compensation (wages) toward untaxed amenities (worker rights). Further, an exogenous increase in the value of outside options (from a leave-one-out instrument for labor demand) increases the share of worker rights clauses in CBAs. Combining the regression estimates, we infer that a one-standard-deviation increase in worker rights is valued at about 5.7% of wages.

‘Flying Grannies’ and Human-Capital Citizenship: Care in Humanitarian and Compassionate Cases - Atique, Asma; Tungohan, Ethel; Gaucher, Megan; Yalamarty, Harshita (Social & Legal Studies, 2025)
Given Canada's child care deficit, economic migration remains contingent on the unpaid care work of grandparent migrants, particularly grandmothers or ‘flying grannies’, who arrive through temporary pathways such as the super visa and often juggle multiple transnational caring obligations. However, routine pauses to the parent and grandparent sponsorship program render humanitarian and compassionate applications one of the few options available for grandparents seeking permanent residence. Yet this discretionary tool and grandparents’ multiple caregiving roles continue to be understudied. This socio-legal study, therefore, unpacks narratives of care in 171 humanitarian and compassionate grounds cases involving grandparents who applied to, considered applying, or were referred by judges and immigration officers to apply for the Super Visa. Drawing on Ellermann, we argue that the types of care that are valued and, subsequently, which ‘exceptional’ cases are granted permanent residence, reflect a human-capital citizenship logic and membership status. The subjective criteria used by judges and other ‘gatekeepers’, especially when determining the best interest of any child and hardship, reveal multiple tensions, inconsistencies and a limited notion of care that entrench stereotypes based on race, gender, culture, class and other vectors of social location. Ultimately, family reunification is deemed conditional, and grandparents are rendered temporary.

Remembering Joy Parr (1949–2024) - Backhouse, Constance; Janovicek, Nancy (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Homage to the life and work of historian Joy Parr, who wrote widely on labour and gender history, and the history of technology.

"Everything I Know Is Canada": Migrant Farmworkers and the Making of Homes Across Borders - Baeza Martinez, Regina (Simon Fraser University, 2025)
Canada is wholly reliant on migrant farmworkers who provide cheap labour while being barred from a wide range of rights and services, including pathways to permanent residency (Sharma, 2012; Satzewhich, 1990; Basok, 2002). Whereas most of the research on migrant farmworkers follows a deficit model, my thesis focuses on collective agency by asking: how do migrant farmworkers create a sense of home in Canada while unable to settle permanently in the country? Drawing from interviews and participant observation conducted in Guatemala and Canada, I show how migrant farmworkers exceed the boundaries of the farms where they live and work, forging their own modes of social organization using Indigenous Mayan cultural logic. Framing migrant farmworkers as strategic boundary-crossers, I highlight how they breach farm borders and, through the exchange of ideas across nation-states, inspire new migration journeys.

Navigating Streets, Restaurants, and Algorithms: A Study of Young Immigrant Food Delivery Couriers in Montréal and Toronto - Baril, Émile; Vultur, Mircea (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Major Canadian cities have seen an overrepresentation of young and immigrant workers delivering meals in their food delivery industries. This type of labour is increasingly done via online digital platforms. The objective of this article is to use interviews to analyze the working conditions and experiences of food delivery workers in Toronto and Montréal, highlighting the elements of precariousness that characterize this type of work. The degree to which customers perform managerial functions through digital platforms is only one of the various forms and aspects of algorithmic control experienced by delivery workers. Through 30 semi-structured interviews with delivery riders, and notes collected through participatory observation, this article presents commonly experienced negative aspects of platform work among young and immigrant delivery drivers.
Keywords: algorithmic control; digital economy; food delivery; platform labour; precarity; urban spaces

Triumph and Solidarity: BC Communists in the Early Years of the Great Depression - Bartlett, Jon (AU Press, 2025)
British Columbia was the site of some of the most significant events in the history of the labour movement and had some of the best-organized and most politically conscious communist workers. In this illuminating volume, Jon Bartlett follows the activities of BC Communists from the onset of the Great Depression to the coming of the Popular Front and investigates the collisions between these Communists and the organs of the federal, provincial, and municipal governments. Reflecting on the vectors of cultural resistance, from the creation of vernacular newspapers to the circulation of popular song and verse, Bartlett charts workers’ efforts to resist wage cutbacks in mines, mills, and the logging and fishing industries and describes the organization of opposition to the relief camps and its outcomes. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1373833201
Keywords: British Columbia Economic conditions 20th century; Communists British Columbia History 20th century; Grèves et lock-out Colombie-Britannique Histoire 20e siècle; HISTORY / Canada / Provincial; Territorial & Local / British Columbia (BC); Labor movement British Columbia History 20th century; Mouvement ouvrier Colombie-Britannique Histoire 20e siècle; Strikes and lockouts British Columbia History 20th century; Travailleurs Colombie-Britannique Histoire 20e siècle; Working class British Columbia History 20th century

The ‘Contract’ and Its Discontents: Can It Address Protection Gaps for Migrant Agricultural Workers in Canada? - Basok, Tanya; Tucker, Eric M.; Vosko, Leah F.; Caxaj, C. Susana; Hennebry, Jenna L.; Mayell, Stephanie; McLaughlin, Janet; Weiler, Anelyse M. (International Migration, 2025)
Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has often been portrayed as a model for temporary migration programmes. It is largely governed by the Contracts negotiated between Canada and Mexico and Commonwealth Caribbean countries respectively. This article provides a critical analysis of the Contract by examining its structural context and considers the possibilities and limitations for ameliorating it. It outlines formal recommendations that the article co-authors presented during the annual Contract negotiations between Canada and sending states in 2020. The article then explains why these recommendations were not accepted, situating the negotiation process within the structural context that produces migrant workers' vulnerability, on the one hand, and limits the capacity of representatives of sending and receiving states to expand rights and offer stronger protections to migrant farmworkers, on the other hand. We argue that fundamental changes are required to address the vulnerability of migrant agricultural workers. In the absence of structural changes, it is nevertheless important to seek improvements in the regulation of the programme through any means possible, including strengthening the Contract.

The Crisis of Wage Theft in Ontario - Bedard, Ella; Gellatly, Mary; Workers' Action Centre (Toronto) (Workers' Action Centre, 2025)
Wage theft is the number one issue workers bring to the Workers’ Action Centre. For people in low-wage and precarious work, being offered subminimum wages, not getting all their wages, or paid late, are common occurences. While the problems giving rise to wage theft are not new, the crisis has become dire due to a combination of factors, including chronic under-enforcement of our labour laws, our current cost of living crisis, and the weakening of Canada’s social safety net. In the last 10 years, almost $200 million dollars has been assessed as owing to workers in Ontario through the Employment Standards Act (ESA) complaint process. ...In 2024 we surveyed 513 workers in Toronto about the problems they experience at work. The survey was done in English, Spanish, Tamil, Bengali, Somali, and Chinese (Mandarin). We targeted our surveymethodology to reach recent immigrants, racialized workers, non-status and low-wage workers who are often missed in standard labour force surveys. Our goal was to document the extent of employment standards’ violations that people in precarious work face and the impact of violations on these workers. The result of that survey paints a stark picture of what workers are up against in Ontario. –From Executive summary

Dans la rue. Une histoire du frapru et des luttes pour le logement au Québec - Bergeron-Gaudin, Jean-Vincent (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the book, "Dans la rue. Une histoire du frapru et des luttes pour le logement au Québec," by François Saillant.

Beyond a Boundary of Systemic Anti-Black Racism in the Workplace in Canada - Blackett, Adelle (Dalhousie Law Journal, 2025)
In this lecture, I will, however, focus on one of the legacies of slavery, that is, the largely untold story of racial segregation in the world of work in Canada. We have come so effectively, and rightly, to focus on the effects of discrimination, that we may have inadvertently walked past the history. Reclaiming this history will comprise the first part of my talk. The second part of my talk will reference the emergence of the duty of fair representation. I will seek to illustrate the weight of the erasure of anti-Black racism through this duty. In other words, far from representing a peculiarity of US law that failed to travel well,8 Steele v Louisville & Nashville Railway Co’s9 foundation in racial discrimination needs to be acknowledged and engaged for an inherent tension to be addressed. So third and finally, I will posit the paradox of unresolved “choice” at the heart of the majoritarian frame of the Wagner Act, not to try somehow to resolve it, but by refusing to allow us to all too quickly individualize it, and instead to steer us closer to a related, necessary justification for a proactive commitment that we have already, if incompletely, made— the commitment to embracing the societal transformation entailed by achieving and sustaining substantive equality through employment equity

Canadian Modern Slavery Legislation in Global Context – Part I: Global Anti-Slavery Laws - Blackwell, Andrew; Quintero Lossada, Lucia; Dupras, Benoit; Zarychta, Helena; Bailey, Nicholas (2025)
In this first part of our two-part report on Canadian modern slavery law, we introduce Canada’s Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act and situate it in its international legal and doctrinal context.

Canadian Modern Slavery Legislation in Global Context – Part II: A Critical Analysis of Canada’s Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act - Blackwell, Andrew; Quintero Lossada, Lucia; Dupras, Benoit; Zarychta, Helena; Bailey, Nicholas (2025)
We draw upon the commentaries introduced in the first part of this two-part report to analyze current Canadian modern slavery law and then continue by evaluating the potential legislative and jurisprudential avenues through which Canadian law on this subject could further develop.ention.

La négociation collective au tournant du millénaire : le cas des travailleurs chez Columbia Forest Products à Hearst - Blais, Sophie (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
À l’aube du 21e siècle, l’arrivée des multinationales change à tout jamais la dynamique entre les travailleurs et le patronat dans l’industrie forestière à Hearst en Ontario. Cet article examine le déroulement des événements et les principales transformations apportées aux conventions collectives signées entre les travailleurs hearstois et l’entreprise américaine Columbia Forest Products, un producteur de contreplaqué, pendant environ une décennie. Lorsque des scieries familiales sont vendues à des géants de l’industrie, le processus de négociation des ententes se métamorphose. La conjoncture économique joue également un rôle déterminant dans l’articulation des conventions collectives à un moment où l’industrie forestière nord-ontarienne traverse une série de crises, notamment le conflit canado-américain du bois d’œuvre. À maintes reprises, les travailleurs syndiqués doivent consentir une partie de leurs gains historiques pour tenter de sauver leurs emplois.
Keywords: Franco-Ontarian workforce; Hearst; Northern Ontario; collective agreements; forestry industry; sawmills; softwood lumber dispute

Bargaining for Equity at MSVU: From Performativity to Transformation - Boulet, Geneviève; Findlay, Tammy; Piccitto, Diane; Resmer, Kelly; Gillis, Michael (CAUT Journal, 2025)
In this paper, we reflect on our experiences in the Mount Saint Vincent University Faculty Association and our efforts to prioritize decolonizing, indigenizing, and Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EDIA) in the collective bargaining process. We examine the performative nature of EDIA efforts in negotiations by university administrators and the Board of Governors, outlining our employer’s active resistance to proposals pertaining to EDIA, their lack of explicit Indigenous and EDIA expertise on their bargaining team, their sidelining and exclusion of university Indigenous and EDIA experts, as well as the absence of transparency and accountability in decision-making. We suggest that three actions — strengthening internal and external solidarity, democratizing governance, and pursuing legislative reform — offer a pathway to rethinking equity-based bargaining, challenging the instrumentalization of EDIA, and achieving genuine structural change.
Keywords: bargaining; decolonizing; equity; indigenizing; university governance

From Post-Hoc Accommodation to Inclusive Design: Bargaining for Policies that Truly Include Workers With Disabilities - Breward, Katherine (CAUT Journal, 2025)
Efforts to improve inclusion of workers with disabilities have often focused on providing accommodations. While this is useful and necessary, the need for an accommodation signals that a barrier exists. What if fewer barriers existed in the first place? The inclusive design movement seeks to create tools, policies, and practices that are inherently barrier-free. This paper reviews how to apply inclusive design principles to HR policies and procedures, enabling the creation of more inherently equitable practices. Bargaining teams have an important role to play in ensuring that collective agreement clauses related to HR comply with inclusive design principles. Specific recommendations are made, with particular attention to recruitment, selection, tenure and promotion, attendance management, scheduling, and enforcement of respectful communication policies.
Keywords: HR policy; Inclusive design; collective agreements; disability; diversity; equity

Structured Exclusions, Partial Inclusions: Transnational Care Chains and Temporary Foreign Workers in Atlantic Canada - Bryan, Catherine; Fitting, Elizabeth (Dialectical Anthropology, 2025)
This paper explores the transnational practices of migrant workers who access short-term employment in Atlantic Canada’s food production sector via two streams of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) and the low-waged stream. Based on interviews with migrant workers—SAWP farmworkers from Jamaica and Mexico and low-waged fish plant workers from the Philippines—we explore their differential rights in Canada corresponding to the different parameters of each immigration stream. Reflecting the livelihood strategies and reproductive efforts of our interviewees and the extent to which these have been transformed in response to the conditions and limited opportunities afforded by Canadian immigration policy, we advance the concepts of “agricultural care chains” and “citizenship care chains”. In doing so, we suggest that the consideration of work and outcomes not conventionally understood as “care” reflects an important analytical and political contribution to the care chain scholarship as well as draws attention to how care scholarship and social reproduction theory can be more closely aligned. Central to our efforts is Tungohan’s argument (2019) that in considering transnational circuits of care, we must recognize the asymmetry that characterizes peoples’ relationships and the social locations they occupy—asymmetry that, in the context of our participants’ lives, is reinforced through the differential rights and opportunities afforded to migrant workers by Canadian immigration policy.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389817261_Structured_exclusions_partial_inclusions_transnational_care_chains_and_temporary_foreign_workers_in_Atlantic_Canada#fullTextFileContent
Keywords: Canadian Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP); Citizenship care chains; Migrant food workers; Social reproduction; Transnational agricultural care chains; Transnationalism

The Spectre of the Manifesto: Classical Marxism and Its Discontents - Burgmann, Verity (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Using the more inclusive terminology of "alter-globalization" [i.e., the various names for radical protest against globalization], this article investigates the political predilections of this movement during its heyday around the turn of the millennium and seeks to understand why a force leading the charge against neoliberal global capitalism ostensibly owed little to Marxism compared with its other avowed sources for inspiration. It finds that although Marxian analysis was being substantied by the remorseless spread of capitalism around the world, there was a practical political problem related to the very salience of this Classical Marxian approach: that is, the Marxism of the Second International - in short, the Marxism expressed in the [Communist] Manifesto. –From introduction
Keywords: Autonomism; Marxism; Meghnad Desai; Perry Anderson; Stuart Hall; anarchism; globalization; neoliberalism; utopianism

Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing - Burrill, Fred (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the book, "Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing," by Andrew Crosby.

The Making of a Radical Immigrant - Caccia, Ivana (Friesen Press, 2025)
The radical immigrant in the title of this book, Edo Jardas, was a young Croatian who arrived in Canada in May 1926 and worked for several years as a lumberjack in the hinterland of British Columbia. He was a loyal member of the Communist Party of Canada, a newspaper editor, and a militant trade union activist in the Canadian Croatian community. He fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and returned to Canada as a war veteran. Jardas left Canada for Yugoslavia in 1948 where he assumed several prominent political functions, including the post of mayor of the largest harbour in the country-his hometown of Rijeka-from 1952 to 1955. Rather than being a simple biography, this book describes the circumstances that shaped the Croatian immigrant community in the hostile social and natural environment of Canada. The community was deeply engaged in the political debates concerning the Croatian status in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later renamed as Yugoslavia) since its foundation in 1919. The question of national identity and its affirmation at home and in the diaspora therefore figured pre-eminently in the Croatian immigrant press.The book is also very much a study in Canadian history. It is an account of the political radicalization of the Canadian working class, inspired by the international communist movement at a time of major economic and political upheaval in the post-WWI decades. –Publisher's description

35 Accords: Re-Imagining British Columbia's Public Sector Labour Relations - Calvert, John; Penikett, Tony (Ethics Press, 2025)
What does a cash-strapped government do when the collective agreements for almost a quarter million of its unionized employees expire simultaneously while wishing to maintain a respectful relationship with its labour supporters? In 1997, the Premier of British Columbia (BC), Canada, Glen Clark, thought of an imaginative solution. It was to offer unions an opportunity to participate with the government in developing policies on issues affecting their members and the services they provide. This was BC’s public sector policy Accord process. The goal was to establish a different, more collaborative relationship with unions, one in which they had a voice in shaping policy solutions. This parallel process – entirely separate from collective bargaining - would also avoid the adversarial relationship that so often characterizes a government’s relations with its unions, by recognizing the positive role unions and their members could play in contributing to improving BC’s public programs and services. The authors, who worked on the Accord process with Premier Clark, provide an insider’s story of the intensive three-year period, during which the parties negotiated 35 policy accords across the entire provincial public sector. The Accords covered a wide range of issues, including pension trusteeship and portability, early retirement, provincial school class size, benefits trusts, government procurement policy, hospital laboratory services, workforce training, pay equity, creation of a health and safety agency and numerous smaller policy fixes. The accord process demonstrated that it was possible for a government to initiate a new and more collaborative relationship with its unions by inviting them into the policy process. The accords definitely improved relations with the government and contributed to collective bargaining settlements within the government’s money mandate. –Publisher's description

Long-Haul Issue No. 1 (Winter 2025) - Camfield, David (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the journal issue. "Long-Haul Issue No. 1 (Winter 2025)" edited by Dylan Davis and Stefan Yong.

“Why Have There Been So Many Strikes at York University?”: An Explanation by Way of Ideological Stratification - Campbell, Colin (Canadian Journal of Practical Philosophy, 2025)
This paper employs a four-fold ideological schema – business liberalism, welfare liberalism, social democracy, and hard-left socialism or communism – to examine the dynamics of the history of labour disruptions at York University. It sets the strikes in the context of a long-term decline of funding for postsecondary education in the social sciences and humanities, with the current rounds of restructuring at York representing a new local point of crisis. The problem of blame as a mode of explaining and resolving conflicts is discussed, along with a view of how contrasting and overlapping pragmatic or principled, individualistic or group-oriented ideas account for the prevalence of labour action.
Keywords: Blame; Business Liberalism; Communism; Pragmatism; Principle; Social Democracy; Socialism; Welfare Liberalism

Cold War Workers: Labour, Family, and Community in a Nuclear State - Campbell, Isabel (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025)
As Canada sought to protect its borders and aid its allies during the Cold War, many people were recruited to build the emerging security state: as construction and maintenance workers, engineers, members of the armed forces, medical researchers, and research subjects. Security work transformed the lives of individuals, families, and communities in ways that were both predictable and surprising, and both beneficial and harmful; the militarization and colonization of Indigenous lives and lands was especially disruptive. The opening essays of Cold War Workers intimately portray the complicated effects of Cold War labour upon Indigenous lives. Elmer Sinclair, a residential school survivor and member of the Canadian armed forces, achieved equality with white men through his militarized masculinity. His more positive professional experience contrasts with those of Indigenous workers on northern radar lines, many of whom lost languages, connections to the land, and other elements of traditional cultures as they sought new skills and better employment. Diverse Indigenous experiences of Cold War security work set the scene for the second set of essays, which explore the impact of security preoccupations on marginalized groups – the study of extreme isolation through scientific experimentation on human subjects; the targeting of gay men with psychiatric labelling to enforce an idealized masculinity; and the restriction of gender mobility in the Canadian military, and the pushback from servicewomen. Cold War Workers raises questions about the influence of settler-colonial masculine institutional values on those who laboured for the Cold War state and society. By comparing the experiences of different types of workers, families, and communities, this volume reveals how race, gender, and privilege affected people in varied and sometimes unexpected ways. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1460941575
Keywords: Cold War Social aspects Canada; Cold War War work Canada; Guerre froide Aspect social Canada; Guerre froide Participation des civils Canada

On Marxism, Rosa Luxemburg, and Anti-globalization: A Response to Burgmann - Campbell, J. Peter (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article challenges Verity Burgmann’s claim that “Classical Marxism” is fatally enamoured with the dynamism of capital and therefore unable to sustain resistance to globalization. It argues that this charge rests on an overly neat identification of Classical Marxism with Second International orthodoxy and a distorted reading of Rosa Luxemburg’s work, particularly The Accumulation of Capital, which is shown to emphasize the violent incorporation and intensified exploitation of colonized and racialized workers rather than celebrating capitalist advance. The article also contends that Burgmann’s dismissal of Leninism and Third International Marxism erases their formative role in anti‑colonial struggles across Africa, Asia, and Latin America that helped make later anti‑ and alter‑globalization movements possible. In addition, it questions Burgmann’s elevation of anarchism and autonomist Marxism, noting her neglect of feminist organizing and women’s movements, and arguing that many of the qualities she attributes to these currents, above all, an insistence on agency, consciousness, and mass self‑activity, are already present in Luxemburg’s and Lenin’s Marxism. The article concludes that Marxism, understood through Luxemburg and Lenin rather than through Burgmann’s caricature of Classical Marxism, offers a still‑vital framework for confronting contemporary globalization, grounded in working‑class self‑emancipation and internationalist opposition to imperialism.
Keywords: Leninism; Marxism; anarchism; anti-globalization; capitalism; colonialism; globalization; imperialism; masses; proletariat

Thwarted and Delayed: Three Eras of Legislating Labour Rights in the Ontario Public Service, 1867-2017 - Carson, Thomas Jonathan (York University, 2025)
Seeking to understand why public servants took so long to achieve labour rights—particularly the right to strike—compared to those in the broader economy, this dissertation explores the historical evolution of labour relations within the Ontario Public Service (OPS) from 1867 to 2017. Through an examination of the interplay between institutions and broader socio-economic and political forces, viewed through a critical institutionalist framework, this study argues that the development of OPS labour relations is defined by three distinct eras. The first era, from Confederation until the 1960s, was dominated by the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which limited the labour rights available to public servants. The second era, from the 1960s to the 1990s, saw the ideology of the governing party as the primary dynamic, with party ideology playing a significant role in the emergence of public servants’ right to strike. Starting in the 1990s, the third era saw the rise of neoliberalism shift the focus of governments of all partisan stripes toward cost containment. As a result, this era was marked by hard bargaining and practical constraints on the feasibility of the strike option. This study demonstrates how these primary factors, along with other influences such as worker militancy and class relations, have shaped the long development of the OPS labour relations regime. The dissertation concludes that, despite significant legislative changes, the government has nevertheless retained considerable control over the material outcomes of the public service labour relations system.

Workers of the Earth: Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change - Castellini, Valentina (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
The article reviews the book, "Workers of the Earth: Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change," by Stefania Barca.

Foodwork as Relationality: Labour and the Creation of Culinary Placemaking - Chartrand, Stephanie (University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 2025)
This thesis explores the concept of culinary placemaking through the lens of Global Political Economy (GPE), focusing on how foodwork functions as a relational practice that shapes social, cultural, and economic spaces. It examines the relationships among food, labour, and place, emphasizing the ways in which workers transform culinary environments into meaningful places through their physical, emotional, and creative contributions. Drawing on existing literature, the research highlights how neoliberal policies have commodified food and labour, leading to increased precarity and alienation for food workers. Despite these challenges, culinary workers actively resist the pressures of globalization by fostering localized food systems, emphasizing cultural and social engagement, and envisioning alternative economic models such as cooperatives and farm-to-table initiatives. This thesis finds that culinary placemaking not only resists commodification but also offers opportunities for social cohesion, cultural expression, and economic resilience. Furthermore, the research touches upon the gendered dimensions of culinary labour, demonstrating how workers navigate power dynamics within professional kitchens and community food spaces. Future research directions include exploring the evolving role of consumers in culinary placemaking, addressing labour precarity through policy interventions, and investigating how Indigenous economies contribute to decolonial approaches to food sovereignty. By situating foodwork within the broader political and economic context, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of the transformative potential of culinary labour in fostering inclusive, sustainable, and culturally resonant food spaces.

The Paradox of Visibility and the ILO's Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention - Chau, Annie (Human Rights and the United Nations, 2025)
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?
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003404453-8/paradox-visibility-ilo-decent-work-domestic-workers-convention-annie-chau?context=ubx&refId=c82bdb26-75c7-4f9f-ba94-ed0a4719e7f2

Soldiers in Capitalist Society: Critique of the Labour of Political Violence - Chorley Foster, Jasmine (University of Toronto, 2025)
This dissertation critiques the soldier in capitalist society as a category of social labour that produces the state capacity for political violence. Identifying soldiering labour is essential to historicizing how this social capacity of labouring people is fetishized as the military power of the state. From the perspective of this project, the substance of the labour of the soldier is affected but not resolved by a resolution of form (such as the standing army, or transition from a draft to an all-volunteer army). What is discovered through historical and theoretical analysis and soldiers’ struggles themselves, is that historical class struggles in the military can be read as contests for political sovereignty over the labour of political violence: literal power over cooperative labour, not merely over institutions, or freedom in the ‘spheres’ of politics and economics. It captures the necessity of emancipation in one as a condition of the emancipation of the other; and that of the soldier as a condition for everyone else’s so long as we are to be concerned with the entirety of human life and not the exception of a single nation-state’s population.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Employment of Immigrants: A Case Study of Bangladeshi Women in Canada - Chowdhury, Farah Deeba (Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, 2025)
The Canadian economy has been suffering from the damaging impact of COVID-19. The adverse impact of COVID-19 on employment and income has been unevenly affecting different socio-economic and demographic groups in Canada. Labour market impact of COVID-19 disproportionately affected immigrants, particularly women as they are overrepresented in low paid and precarious work in Canada. Although federal emergency benefits were provided such as Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), marginalized workers were excluded from these benefits as they were not able to meet the eligibility criteria. Based on the interviews of 20 women from the Bangladeshi community in the Greater Toronto Area my research finds that neoliberalism contributes to the rise of  precarious employment and labour market insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the stark contrast in divisions in the labour market between workers with relatively secure jobs and the ability to work from home, those without the ability to work from home (especially in precarious jobs) and those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.  My findings show that a majority of immigrant Bangladeshi women in the Greater Toronto Area who were employed were working in precarious jobs that were low-paying, temporary or contractual in nature. I find a high level of job loss, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, disproportionately experienced by immigrant Bangladeshi women as they are more vulnerable and marginalized in Canada.
Keywords: Bangladesh; COVID-19; Canada; Neoliberalism; Precarious Employment

Organiser, mobiliser, gagner. Guide de renouveau syndical - Collombat, Thomas (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the book, "Organiser, mobiliser, gagner. Guide de renouveau syndical," by Alain Savard.

The Gig Economy and Precarious Work: Much Ado about Very Little? - Cross, Philip (Fraser Institute, 2025)
Despite widespread concerns that gig work is becoming a dominant part of our economy, most studies find it is not an important part of Canada’s labour market and its growth is embraced by most workers. While there is no consensus on its precise definition, most research shows gig work involves less than 10 percent of the labour force. Moreover, most definitions of the gig economy—as with related concepts such as nonstandard and precarious work—include well-off people, such as self-employed professionals as well as people who prefer flexible work, such as truckers, dockworkers, and students and older people looking to supplement their incomes. Many participants in the gig economy are attracted by its flexibility and freedom, rather than being forced into such jobs by a weak labour market. This contradicts the narrative that these jobs are inherently inferior. Most data point to a much different assessment of the state of Canada’s labour market. Job tenure has risen steadily, quit rates remain near historic lows, and surveys show most Canadians are content with their working conditions. This implies little need for governments to legislate and regulate the labour market to help vulnerable workers, and such initiatives may limit the opportunities for people to earn extra income and stay active in the labour force. The disconnect between the relatively benign reality of Canada’s labour market and advocates who insist work is becoming more precarious reflects fundamental problems in the agenda for labour economics, with much of this narrative reflecting Europe’s experience with regulations that end up marginalizing youths and immigrants trying to find their footing in a sclerotic economy. –Executive Summary

Les simulacres du socialisme: les relations entre les mouvements marxistes-léninistes canadiens et l’Albanie - Dani, Doan (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article highlights the relationships between the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and the Party of Labour of Albania in an ambivalent context, where the process of establishing bilateral relations between Ottawa and Tirana is sluggish, while the façades of socialist Albania and the regime’s rhetoric circulate widely thanks to a highly dynamic network of Marxist proselytizers and propaganda instruments. Focusing on the period from the founding of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) in 1970 to the collapse of the regime in Albania in 1991, the analysis is primarily based on unpublished archives from the Party of Labour and the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as articles from the Canadian press. It seeks to answer the following questions: How do relations between Ottawa and Tirana unfold? How and why does Albania become a beacon of socialism in Canada? Why is the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) recognized by Tirana? How do these relations manifest themselves?
Keywords: Albania; Canada; Communist Party; Marxism-Leninism; Quebec; political pilgrimage; propaganda

Leading from the Heart: The Battles of a Feminist, Union Leader and Politician - Darcy, Judy (Douglas & McIntyre, 2025)
In this inspiring memoir, Judy Darcy recounts the remarkable turns that brought her from library worker to president of Canada’s largest labour union, and from there to groundbreaking legislator focused on many of our most pressing issues, including health care, the rights of immigrant workers and the toxic-drug crisis. As this rich memoir shows, the life of activist, union leader and legislator Judy Darcy mirrors many of the great social and political currents of the modern era. Opening in the charged atmosphere of the feminist movement in the late 1960s, when the twenty-year-old Darcy—swept up by the promise of historic, liberating change—infiltrates a beauty pageant and later disrupts Parliament over reproductive rights, the story then reaches back to her earliest years as the daughter of immigrants deeply scarred by World War II. In this tale of personal trauma and desire for justice, Darcy recounts the remarkable turns that brought her from library clerical worker to leading public figure. Her rise through the ranks of the country’s largest union—the Canadian Union of Public Employees, with several hundred thousand members—culminates in her 1991 election as national president, a traditionally male-dominated role. Years later, after moving from Ontario to British Columbia, she is elected to public office, becoming an NDP MLA. Here, as the only North American minister of mental health and addictions, she confronted the ravages of the toxic-drug crisis, working to help some of society’s most vulnerable. Throughout the tumultuous events of her career and personal life, Darcy is forever working for those on the margins, fighting to protect workers’ rights, water rights, health care, childcare and reproductive choice, and helping secure a landmark Supreme Court decision in favour of same-sex partner pensions. Powered by intense conviction and intimately personal experience, her candid story offers a vision of a new kind of leadership, steeped in compassion and able to negotiate the most urgent and complex challenges of our fractured era. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1520331456
Keywords: Activistes Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Autobiographies; Darcy; Judy; Dirigeantes syndicales Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Dirigeants syndicaux Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Feminists British Columbia Biography; Femmes activistes Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Femmes politiques Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Féministes Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Labor leaders British Columbia Biography; Political activists British Columbia Biography; Politicians British Columbia Biography; Politiciens Colombie-Britannique Biographies; Women labor leaders British Columbia Biography; Women political activists British Columbia Biography; Women politicians British Columbia Biography

Unionization Rates and Health in Canadian Provinces, 2000 - 2020 - Das, Anupam; Hudson, Ian; Hudson, Mark (Journal of Critical Public Health, 2025)
This paper examines one possible, but understudied, institution that might have an impact on health: unionization. We outline four distinct, although complementary, pathways through which unions might influence population health outcomes based on two axes: the levers that unions can potentially pull to influence any policy environment (collective bargaining and political action) and the manner in which health can be influenced in a society (the Social Determinants of Health and health care). We test whether unionization rates have an impact on total, preventable, and treatable mortality using panel data on Canadian provinces between 2000 and 2020. We find that unionization rates are negatively associated with all three measures of mortality.
Keywords: Canada; Health; Mortality; Political Economy of Health; Social Determinants of Health; Unions

Seasonal Sociology - Davidson, Tonya K.; Park, Ondine (University of Toronto Press, 2025)
Life in Canada is shaped by the seasons – marked, celebrated, enjoyed, and sometimes dreaded in ways that respond directly to the changing cycles in nature. Sociological thinking encourages us to question the aspects of everyday life that we may otherwise take for granted. Seasonal Sociology takes a sociological approach to thinking about the seasons, providing a unique perspective for understanding social life. Each chapter in this collection explores key issues of sociological interest through the passage of time and seasonal change. The authors wield seasonality as a powerful tool that can bridge small-scale interpersonal interactions with large-scale institutional structures. This collection of contemporary Canadian case studies is wide-ranging and analyses topics such as pumpkin spice lattes, policing in schools, law and colonialism, summer cottages, seasonal affective disorder, Vaisakhi celebrations, and more. The second edition introduces new chapters on Labour Day and organized labour, disability and online dating, maple sugar shacks, seasonal agricultural work, wildfires, and social movements like Pride and Black Lives Matter. Seasonal Sociology ultimately offers fresh, provocative ways of thinking about the nature of our collective lives. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1484905875
Keywords: Canada Mœurs et coutumes; Canada Social life and customs; Case studies; Saisons Aspect social Canada; Saisons Canada; Seasons Canada; Seasons Social aspects Canada; Sociologie Canada Études de cas; Sociology Canada Case studies; Études de cas

Legal Silence, Worker Suffering: Law, Electronic Workplace Surveillance, and Amazon Warehouse Worker Injuries in Ontario - Del Riccio, Jennifer (University of Toronto, 2025)
In the American and Canadian warehouses of the e-commerce giant Amazon, electronic workplace surveillance (“EWS”) technologies permit the unprecedented quantification and datafication of worker activity, enabling the setting and enforcing of unsafe productivity ‘quotas’ that lead to serious occupational injuries for warehouse workers. In this paper, I consider the role of Canadian law – namely, the employment, privacy, and occupational health and safety legal regimes in the province of Ontario – in enabling, and in potentially constraining, this phenomenon in Ontario’s Amazon warehouses. In doing so, I identify the ‘legal silence’ that shapes the lived experiences of Amazon warehouse workers in Ontario; contribute to the emerging theorization, particularly from a legal perspective, of EWS as a factor impacting workers’ physical health; and propose legal reforms that would improve the safety and well-being of Amazon warehouse workers – and other similarly-situated workers – across the province.

"When you are accepting money you have to do as you are told:" The CAHA/NHL Relationship and the Rise of the Professional Sponsorship System, 1936-1952. - Di Gravio, Michael (Western University, 2025)
This thesis undertook an interpretivist historical analysis of the publicly available Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) meeting minutes from 1936 to 1952. A Foucauldian lens of disciplinary power was used to answer the research question: how was the National Hockey League (NHL) able to develop a professional sponsorship system within the CAHA following World War II, and what effects did this have on Canadian minor hockey. The results found that following the signing of the CAHA/NHL agreement, the NHL exercised its disciplinary power over the CAHA members to instill in them what Foucault termed ‘docility.’ The birth of the professional sponsorship system following WWII was a result of this disciplining and docility. Through this system, the NHL brought its disciplinary technologies directly to bear on Canadian minor hockey and gained the ability to control players' rights from ages as young as twelve years old.

Le Moulin-à-Fleur de Sudbury: quartier ouvrier, territoire canadien-français - Dupuis, Serge; Carrey, Normand (Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa : Centre de recherche sur les francophonies canadiennes, 2025)
À son apogée entre 1945 et 1975, le Moulin-à-Fleur ou la paroisse Saint-Jean-de-Brébeuf se vantait d'être le quartier francophone de Sudbury et de l'Ontario. Il représentait en effet la pierre angulaire pour les autres communautés francophones ainsi que le fondement de la vie culturelle, économique et politique des Franco-Ontariens. Mais l'histoire n'a jamais été racontée de façon détaillée. Des années de recherches approfondies ont incité les auteurs à se plonger dans de nombreux écrits, articles scientifiques, archives personnelles, articles de journaux et témoignages afin de livrer cette première étude globale. Divisé en deux volets qui se complètent, ce récit retrace à la fois l'héritage des familles qui se sont battues pour offrir un quotidien et un avenir brillants à leur descendance et la lutte féroce menée par des pionniers, notamment Omer Thériault, Gaétan Gervais et Hélène Gravel, pour la défense culturelle et patrimoniale. Mais tous ces souvenirs dorment dans les rues de l'ancien quartier ou comme Mme Tregonning-Whissell le disait, "à l'ombre des silos". Ce livre témoigne des origines d'une communauté marquée par le dur labeur des mineurs de l'International Nickel, tout en évoquant le rôle des enseignants qui éveillaient les jeunes générations à un monde de possibilités. Le Moulin-à-Fleur de Sudbury rend hommage aux valeurs de charité et d'entraide qu'incarnait ce quartier qui célèbre au-delà de 120 ans de vie communautaire et culturelle. – Résumé de l'éditeur
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/136092/pdf/download OCLC: 1504742532
Keywords: Canadiens français Ontario Grand Sudbury Histoire; Grand Sudbury (Ont.) Histoire; Moulin-à-Fleur (Grand Sudbury; Ont.) Histoire; Neighborhoods Ontario Greater Sudbury History; Quartiers (Urbanisme) Ontario Grand Sudbury Histoire

« Arrêter, une fois pour toutes, de manger de la vache enragée. » Le Groupe Action-Alimentation de Pointe-Saint-Charles et le droit à l’alimentation, 1970–2000 - Durand, Caroline (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article tells the story of the Groupe Action-Alimentation, a workshop created by the Carrefour d’éducation populaire of Pointe-Saint-Charles in the 1970s. It describes how, in a neoliberal context, the participants and their main facilitator advocate for the right to food. They expose the experience of hunger, they affirm the skills of low-income women in matters of dietetics, cooking, and consumption, they use the language of law, they denounce the use of charity, and they criticize the state and private companies. This research illustrates how the participants in this workshop perceive, qualify, and interpret their reality, how they manifest their class consciousness and their convictions about their right to health, dignity, and well-being. We observe that this local resistance to social and economic marginalization had an impact on the positions taken by nutrition professionals and, ultimately, on certain Quebec policies aimed at achieving food security, adopted in the early 2000s. This contribution to the history of economic, social, and cultural rights analyzes the words of women who refused to individualize the problem of food among the most deprived and who instead denounced the commodification of essential goods.
Keywords: Groupe Action-Alimentation; Pointe-Saint-Charles Montreal; fight against poverty; food; nutrition; right to food

Framing Modern Slavery: Do Stakeholders Talk Past Each Other? - Durocher, Sylvain; Himick, Darlene; Walsh, Leigh Ellen (Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences / Revue Canadienne des Sciences de l'Administration, 2025)
Modern slavery literature has thus far mostly adopted a downstream perspective, in the sense that researchers investigated corporate actors' responses after the enactment of transparency legislation. The common finding is that corporate disclosure is poor and ineffective, contributing to a failure to eradicate modern slavery. Our contribution is to adopt an upstream perspective in which we examine debates before regulation is crafted. We conceive of modern slavery as a public policy issue where multiple actors—NGOs, institutional investors, corporations and policymakers—hold various views about modern slavery and how to act upon it. Drawing on framing theory as used in public policy research, our aim is to uncover how stakeholders comparatively frame the issue of modern slavery, enabling a better understanding of why transparency legislation fails. Focussing on the Canadian context, where regulatory requirements on modern slavery were recently enacted, we examine an extensive set of communications, including testimony before parliamentary committees by four stakeholder groups. We explore stakeholders' rhetorical frames, uncovering how they conceive of modern slavery and their action frames, highlighting how they believe it should be acted upon. We show that stakeholders' rhetorical and action frames are embedded within overarching opposing metacultural frames, namely a community frame held by NGOs and a market frame held by institutional investors, corporations and policymakers. NGOs' community metacultural frame paves the way for approaches focused on eradication because harm to a community implies removing the harm. In opposition, other stakeholders' market metacultural frames pave the way for approaches focused on risk assessment, management and reporting, since the appearance of information on modern slavery and associated risks implies being able to manage it. Although stakeholders talk past each other about the issue of modern slavery, we identify possibilities for reframing, where holders of a market frame could move closer to a community frame.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/cjas.70028
Keywords: Canadian legislation; framing theory; modern slavery; multi-stakeholder approach

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Political Mobilization and Policy Reform in Québec - Eidlin, Barry; Guay, Emanuel (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Québec enacted major solidaristic family and housing policy reforms toward the end of the 1990s, precisely when other countries were moving toward more individualized policies. Against what existing theories would predict, these reforms took place at a moment when labour's power had weakened, the ruling left party had scaled back its progressive commitments, and employers opposed the proposed reforms. Why did Québec expand its social policies in a broader context of retrenchment? We argue that this resulted from a shift in the context of contention that sparked a process of institutional conversion. First, labour-allied progressive movements in the province were able, through their own cycle of mobilization, to fill the gap left by unions' retreat from direct action and mass mobilization from the 1980s onwards. Second, employers remained relatively weak and state-dependent, leading them to accept the government's agenda as long as it did not differ significantly from their priorities of deficit and tax reduction. Third, the idea of the "social economy" served as a floating signifier in the province's public policy debates of the 1990s, providing a framework within which unions, community groups, employers, and the government could operate while assigning it different definitions and aims. The ambiguity of the idea of the social economy helped to forge a disparate coalition of Québec social actors, resulting in solidaristic policy reforms. Our analysis aligns with recent literature calling for a renewed attention to the role played by contention in the development of social policies in Québec.
Keywords: Québec; childcare; housing; policy reform; poverty; social movements; social reproduction; state-society relations; welfare state

Reading the Socio-Ecological Fix Through the Lens of Labour: The Subsumption of Nature and Labour in British Columbia's Forests - Ekers, Michael (Handbook of Labour Geography, 2025)
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.

Timely Reminders: Pulignano and Domecka’s The Politics of Unpaid Labour: How the Study of Unpaid Labour Can Help Address Inequality in Precarious Work - Emilien, Blandine (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

The Transformative Potential of Casework: Analyzing the Political Subjectivation of Migrant Workers at the Immigrant Workers Center - Etienne, Aurélie (Social Movement Studies, 2025)
Canada’s immigration policy has undergone a major shift in recent decades, from an approach centered on permanent immigration to a system increasingly focused on temporary migration. Temporary migrants face highly unequal power relations in the workplace, making them particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Drawing on fieldwork at the Immigrant Workers Center (IWC), a Quebec-based activist organization, this paper examines how migrant workers come to engage in political action despite this adverse context, and how they experience such action. The analysis is informed by the concept of political subjectivation, defined as the process by which individuals contest their subordinate position within a political order and seek to redefine it on more egalitarian terms. I argue that migrant workers’ political subjectivation is supported by the IWC’s participatory and collective approach to casework. In workers centers, casework refers to the practice of providing individual assistance to workers. While it is often described as an individualized and depoliticized approach to social change, my research shows how the practice of casework at the IWC fosters individual and collective transformations conducive to political subjectivation. Thus, it contributes to recent literature on radical approaches to casework and literature at the intersection of social movement and popular education scholarship.
Keywords: Migrant workers; casework; labour struggles; political subjectivation; workers centers

Navigating Engagement in the New Normal of Telework: Cultural Differences between France and Canada - Falcon, Gaëlle; Klarsfeld, Alain; Saba, Tania (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
The shift to telework has significantly transformed traditional work environments, introducing new dynamics in employee relationships and organizational structures. Telework is now mainstream, but it also presents new challenges for employee engagement. To address these challenges, effective management requires processes aimed at improving employees’ sense of engagement. This study compares the effects of three variables, organizational fairness, trust in/by managers, and trust in/by colleagues, on teleworkers’ psychological engagement in Canada and France. Based on a PLS-SEM analysis on two samples of 196 participants in France and 454 in Canada, findings show that organizational fairness is a key common antecedent of teleworkers' engagement in both countries. They also revealed strong cultural differences: trust in and by managers is crucial in Canada, while trust in and by colleagues is significant in France.

"The Gilt-Edged Class": American and Canadian Telegraphers' Bodies and Work - Feagan, Michael (Western University, 2025)
This dissertation examines the lives and work of American and Canadian telegraph operators from 1870 to 1929. While historians have studied the telegraph as a technology and a business, few have integrated telegraphy with histories of class, gender, or the human body. Integrating the bodily turn means recognizing the physicality of telegraph work. This dissertation centres the bodies of telegraph operators and seeks to contextualize those bodies within the larger technological and corporate systems in which they were embedded. Operators’ class identities have often been ambiguous or misunderstood. I argue that telegraph work was real, physical work, in a way that has too often been elided, and that it is important to see operators as part of the working class. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which human bodies and human labour can be erased within large technological networks. I explore the historical significance of that erasure and its relevance for understanding the precarity of labour in high-tech industries today.

The Transnational Agricultural Care Chains of Migrant Farmworkers: Land, Livelihoods, and Social Reproduction - Fitting, Elizabeth (Agriculture and Human Values, 2025)
Drawing on interviews with seasonal agricultural workers employed in Canada from Jamaica and Mexico, this paper focuses in on the experiences of a Jamaican farmworker who remits funds to pay a neighbour to farm his land (or the land he leases) while in Canada, and who participates in regular long-distance discussions with family members and neighbours back home about the upkeep of the farm. The concept of a “transnational agricultural care chain” is proposed here to capture a series of personal links between people, located, at least temporarily, in different countries, who tend to the crops and farmland as a practice that entails asymmetrical relations of obligation to care for others. Agricultural care chains form part of a strategy to get by and possibly even advance the economic and social standing of one’s family under difficult economic conditions. Land access, as a co-constitutive sphere of production and reproduction, is another important factor in the livelihood strategies of rurally-rooted migrants, but the significance placed on land must be understood in connection to the uneven processes of global capitalism, histories of colonialism and, in the case of Jamaica, plantation slavery. The paper concludes with a reflection on how transnational agricultural care chains as paradigmatic of the contemporary food system are relevant to political and conceptual discussions around food sovereignty.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388528891_The_transnational_agricultural_care_chains_of_migrant_farmworkers_land_livelihoods_and_social_reproduction
Keywords: Canada; Food system; Jamaica; Livelihoods; Mexico; Migrant farmworkers; Rural surplus labour; Social reproduction; The temporary foreign worker program; Transnational agricultural care chains

Reading the Zoom Room: Union Negotiators’ Experience of Virtual Bargaining during COVID-19 - Foster, Jason (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
One adaptation required by the Covid-19 pandemic was a shift to virtual meetings. Collective bargaining has traditionally been conducted in person, but covid forced union and employer negotiators to adopt virtual forms of bargaining. This article examines union negotiators’ experiences with virtual bargaining in this period – first, to document the nature of the adaptations made during a historical public health event, and second, to determine whether either the shift to virtual bargaining or other covid restrictions undermined union bargaining power. It finds that the technical aspects of virtual bargaining did not significantly impact bargaining power, but broader challenges caused by covid did negatively impact union bargaining power at and away from the table.
Keywords: bargaining power; collective bargaining; covid-19; virtual negotiation

Industrial Relations in Canada - Foster, Jason; McQuarrie, Fiona A. E. (Wiley, 2025)
Industrial Relations in Canada, Fifth Edition, offers students a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the Canadian industrial relations system. Designed for learners with minimal knowledge of the subject, this market-leading textbook blends theory, practice, and process in a clear and engaging way. Student-friendly chapters walk through key topics such as unionization, collective bargaining, dispute resolution, and evolving legal frameworks, while minimizing jargon and legalistic language. Throughout the book, timely coverage of controversial and complex issues fosters critical thinking and real-world problem-solving skills. Integrating a process-oriented approach developed through years of classroom experience, Industrial Relations in Canada, Fifth Edition, is ideal for university and college students in introductory labour relations courses, as well as adult learners in business, human resource management, and labour studies programs. With its strong foundation in both academic theory and practical application, it is also an excellent springboard for more advanced studies in industrial relations. New to this edition: new chapter-opening vignettes featuring Canadian labour relations practitioners; new discussions of social media’s role in union organizing and labour activism, and the effects of technological change on labour-management dynamics; new coverage of current research on union and workplace issues; updated news stories in every chapter reflecting current events in Canadian workplaces; discussions of the impacts of COVID-19 and climate change on labour relations; enhanced analysis of recent court decisions affecting collective bargaining; and updated statistics and demographic data on unionization, strikes, and lockouts across Canada. –Publisher's description

Introductory Article – Thematic Issue "Perspectives on Inclusive Management from Both Sides of the Atlantic” - Fourot, Loïc; Meier, Olivier; Brière, Sophie; Makaya, Christian; Bruna, Maria-Giuseppina (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

Article introductif – numéro thématique « Regards croisés des deux côtés de l’Atlantique sur le management de l’inclusion » - Fourot, M. Loïc; Meier, Olivier; Brière, Sophie; Makaya, Christian; Bruna, Maria-Giuseppina (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

Constructing Modern Slavery: Law, Capitalism, and Unfree Labour - Fudge, Judy (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
Modern slavery laws are a response to global capitalism, which undermines the distinction between free and unfree labour and poses intense challenges to state sovereignty. Instead of being a solution, Constructing Modern Slavery argues that modern slavery laws divert attention from the underlying structures and processes that generate exploitation. Focusing on unfree labour associated with international immigration and global supply chains, it provides a novel socio-legal genealogy of the concept 'modern slavery' through a series of linked case studies of influential actors associated with key legal instruments: the United Nations, the United States, the International Labour Organization, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Walk Free Foundation. Constructing Modern Slavery demonstrates that despite the best efforts of academics, advocates, and policymakers to develop a truly multifaceted approach to modern slavery, it is difficult to uncouple antislavery initiatives from the conservative moral and economic agendas with which they are aligned. –Publisher's description

Strike Law and Workers’ Power Resources in Global Supply Chains and Platform Giants - Fudge, Judy; Shamir, Hila (Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 2025)
The right to strike is a key feature of freedom of association and effective collective bargaining. We consider how the legal regulation of strikes and boycotts affects the power resources available to workers and unions to improve working conditions and workers’ voice in firms, such as global supply chains and platform giants, that utilize network-of-contracts business models. We begin by bringing the literatures on power resources theory and supply chain and platform capitalism into conversation. Treating law as a form of institutional power influencing workers’ ability to exercise other power resources in network-of-contracts business models, we then examine how the laws regulating strikes influence workers’ ability to mobilize their other power resources to affect the terms and conditions of work. We investigate the Make Amazon Pay campaign and related strikes to gauge how the legal regulation of strikes affects workers’ power to disrupt supply and production under network-of-contracts business models. We conclude by highlighting the need to revise the law of strikes to fit the power relations under supply and platform capitalism.

Reimagining Illness: Women Writers and Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Britain - Glass, Melissa (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
The article reviews the book, "Reimagining Illness: Women Writers and Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Britain," by Heather Meek.

Conflict And Solidarity Between Anti-Colonial Environmentalism, Indigenous Anti-Pipeline Resistance, and Labour - Golkar, Niloofar (York University, 2025)
Climate change has reached crisis mode, and confronting it requires confronting corporations, economic planning, policies that exacerbate this process, and social relations that enable such policies and economic paths. This dissertation shows how settler colonialism in Canada revolves today around extractivism. This fact makes the struggle for land critical and highlights how Canadian nationalism is an obstacle to Indigenous solidarity and environmentalism. In 2020, the Shut Down Canada movement that started from Wet'suwet'en territories against building the CGL pipeline on their land, which was a scale-up from the Idle No More movement, underscored the importance of the Land Back movement for environmental justice. Its tactic of shutting down critical infrastructures was the largest scale in Canada's recent history of Indigenous resistance at the time. The well-documented militarized attacks on Wet'suwet'en unceded territories creates a dilemma that should concern every activist. At the same time, the impressive organizing efforts that started from Unist'ot'en as a space of resistance provide lessons for every movement. The case of the CGL pipeline and Wet'suwet'en resistance puts us at the conjuncture of three movements: the issue of solidarity between labour, anti-capitalist Environmentalists and the Indigenous movement. In this dissertation, I strategically explore possibilities for building strong Indigenous-environmentalist-labour solidarity. Through extensive policy analysis of the critical infrastructure risk management approach and media analysis of the CIRG task force, I explore a hidden link between the security arm of one of the largest global investment corporations, KKR, RCMP, and TC Energy executives. The government's risk management approach has enabled such a link, which facilitates and encourages conversations between the involved actors. The state's claim to the so-called public/Canadian interest in pipelines is of utmost importance to this dissertation. The concept of Canadian interest works as a settler colonial and national ideology of governing; historically and presently, the concept creates an umbrella that includes the Canadian working class as it excludes Indigenous communities, along with the processes of reproducing nature and non-capitalist forms of economy that many radical environmentalists try to create through commons. A lack of land-based analysis of the situation of working-class people in Canadian labour has turned the labour movement into a more economistic version of trade unionism, one that does not actively oppose Canadian nationalism.

Depicting Mexican Labour for/within Contemporary Canadian Imperialism: Photography, Participation, and Power - Gonzalez Teran, Anahi (Western University, 2025)
This studio-based dissertation project emerges from my engagement with the politics of representation of labour and visual culture. Rooted in my experience as a Mexican artist living in Canada, the project examines how Mexican labour is framed through photography, performance, and installation. These themes form the central focus of my research, which moves across Lands and disciplinary forms to investigate how systems of power shape the representation of Mexican workers and how irony can be used as a tool to question dominant narratives. The written component of this dissertation forms part of an interdisciplinary thesis that includes a series of exhibitions and performances carried out between 2021 and 2025 in today’s Mexico and Canada. The artworks, presented across artist-run centres in Ontario and as outdoor installations, use staged photographs, installations, participatory works, to examine labour, value, and exchange. These pieces were shown in the province of Ontario, Canada and the state of Coahuila, Mexico. My thesis engages with a range of theoretical frameworks to support and extend my artistic practice. Drawing from visual culture theory, performance studies, and participatory art discourse, I incorporate the work of theorists such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Derrida, and Claire Bishop, among others. As a whole, this dissertation considers how visual and performance-based practices can challenge representations of Mexican labour across Lands and reflect on the systems that shape the movement of people, goods, and images. The written component includes five chapters, followed by photographic documentation of the works and exhibitions produced during my doctoral studies. Together, the writing and the artworks propose a critical reflection on contemporary labour and visual politics.

From Demanding Exclusion to Joining the Human Rights Community: Labour, Human Rights, and Immigration Policy in 1940s Canada - Goutor, David (Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History, 2025)
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
OCLC: 1504264322
Keywords: Droits de l'homme (Droit international) Canada Historiographie; Human rights Canada Historiography

Résister et fleurir - Grandbois-Bernard, Estelle (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
The article reviews the book, "Résister et fleurir," by Jean-Félix Chénier and Yoakim Bélanger.

Bargaining for Salary Equity: General Wage Increases and Equity in the Academic Labour Market - Green, Brian; Sahota, Derek; Scott, Jennifer (CAUT Journal, 2025)
In collective bargaining, General Wage Increases (GWI) are most normally framed and implemented as percentages, with each eligible member seeing a salary rise of X% on top of pre-existing salary. While this approach is not remarkable where salary grids are in place and union members start at the same rate, it can have significant effects where starting salaries vary, as is common in the university sector. Under these conditions, percentage increases over time contribute to the widening of intra-member salary inequity, exacerbating structurally gendered and racialized inequities of the academic labour market. This paper explores the impact of a flat rate increase approach to salary bargaining. Beginning with the context of collective bargaining in British Columbia, it examines how percentage-based and flat-rate increases would impact real salaries of faculty members at Simon Fraser University in order to better understand how faculty associations and unions could use flat rate approaches to begin to counteract the impact of differential starting salaries on the career earnings of faculty members. The paper finds that flat rate increases could be an effective tool against pay inequity even where that inequity is driven by forces outside the university.
Keywords: bargaining; equity; salaries

Drinking on the Job: Liquor and Labour in the Staples Trades - Greer, Allan (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article examines the role of alcohol, specifically rum, in labour relations in the early staples trades. In the 18th-century colonies that would later form Canada, labour was generally scarce and therefore expensive. Employers had to offer high wages as they struggled to recruit and retain workers, but because their enterprises were typically undercapitalized and vulnerable to market fluctuations, they could not afford to pay the salaries in full at the end of the contracted period. Focusing on the fishing servants of Newfoundland and the voyageurs of the North West Company, the article shows how wages were systematically clawed back through the workings of a version of "truck." Payment was deferred to the end of the season, and in the interim, employers would supply their men with goods at inflated prices, ensuring that many ended up indebted beyond the value of their nominal wages and had to sign on for a further term to pay off their debts. Rum was a crucial element in this system, its addictive qualities making it the ideal instrument for absorbing earnings. Many fishing masters and fur traders actively encouraged consumption; drinking on the job, then, was not only allowed but, in some cases, practically mandatory.
Keywords: North West Company; fishery; fur trade; history of Canada; history of alcohol; labour; rum; staples thesis; voyageurs

Flying High on Stipends: A Historical Analysis of Flight Attendant Union Struggles in (Neoliberal) Canada - Haggett, Kenneth; Kwon, Eugena; Cormier, Lauren (Labor History, 2025)
Since the establishment of the Canadian Air Line Flight Attendants’ Association (CALFAA) in 1948 and the Airline Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in 1984, flight attendant unions have advocated for duty time limits, sufficient rest periods, and fair wages. Recently, CUPE’s Airline Division has focused their efforts on unpaid ground time – a vital but overlooked element of flight attendant labor. Despite the union’s efforts, the persistence of unpaid ground time illustrates a trend of systemic prioritization of corporate profit over workplace equity. Through an overview of academic and grey literature (e.g. news articles, government documents), this review details the history of Canadian flight attendant unions before and after neoliberal reforms in the 1980s to trace trends in labor relations. We argue that increased governmental intervention and corporate exemptions in employee-employer labor relations prioritize the industry’s financial stability, forming structural barriers that dilute unions’ change-making capacity. Ultimately, we contextualize unpaid ground time within these trends – where systemic prioritization of corporate interests trump unions’ labor concerns, leaving attendants’ workplace inequity unaddressed.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388053932_Flying_high_on_stipends_a_historical_analysis_of_flight_attendant_union_struggles_in_neoliberal_Canada
Keywords: Canada; Union; flight attendant; labor; neoliberalism; unpaid ground time

Public Service in Tough Times: Working Under Austerity in Manitoba - Hajer, Jesse; Hudson, Ian; Keith, Jennifer (University of Manitoba Press, 2025)
In 2016, Brian Pallister's Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba successfully campaigned on a platform to reduce taxes and restore the balance between revenue and spending. The years that followed their victory saw wages frozen, emergency rooms closed, intensive care unit beds reduced, healthcare jobs eliminated, Manitoba Housing funding slashed, and payments to foster parents decreased, as the civil service was diminished by 27 percent. Public Service in Tough Times gives voice to the people behind the balance sheets, shedding light on the vicious cycle of understaffing, burnout, attrition, and despair created by austerity policy. Using survey data from thousands of public sector workers and carefully compiled statistics on spending and staffing, editors Jesse Hajer, Ian Hudson, and Jennifer Keith, demonstrate how cuts to government expenditures disproportionately benefit the wealthy and exacerbate poverty and inequality. As the virtues of small government, tax cuts, and private sector investment continue to be the rallying cry of right-leaning politicians worldwide, this impeccably researched case study delivers a crushing critique of austerity and its consequences. –Publisher's description

Labour, Migration and Resistance: The Legacy of INTERCEDE in Domestic Workers Advocacy in 1980s Ontario. - Haruna, Jamila (Trent University, 2025)
In 1980s Ontario, racialized migrant domestic workers faced systemic exploitation, precarious immigration status, and exclusion from labour protections, reinforced by provincial and federal policies that devalued domestic labour. This thesis examines how INTERCEDE, a Toronto-based coalition, challenged these structural inequalities. Employing an intersectional approach, this study reveals how race, gender, immigration status, and class collectively marginalized migrant care workers. Drawing on extensive primary sources, it analyzes INTERCEDE's influence on major policy changes, including reforms to the Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM) program and to provincial labour laws. The thesis argues that while INTERCEDE efforts contributed to securing significant, albeit often fragile, victories, these gains highlighted both the power of activism and the persistent challenges under neoliberal regimes. It contributes to feminist labour history, migration studies, and care work scholarship by demonstrating how organized resistance reshaped Canadian policy and contested institutionalized marginalization.
Keywords: Care activism; Care work history; Feminist labour history; History; Labor relations; Migrant domestic workers; Resistance; Womens studies

Serf-ing the Net: Contrasting Uber Workers in the United Kingdom With Uber Neo-Villeins in Ontario - Harvey, Geraint; Prakasam, Naveena; Shakirzhanov, Refat (Industrial Relations Journal, 2025)
We illustrate the exploitation in the relationship between Uber and its drivers by aligning their work with the characteristics of neo-villeiny. Two different legal developments in response to irregulation (or the lack of effective regulation) in similar institutional contexts emerge. While Uber drivers in the United Kingdom now have worker status, dysregulation (by which we mean regulation that exacerbates the problem it seeks to resolve) in Ontario has established neo-villeiny in law.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/irj.12471
Keywords: Ontario; UK; Uber; digital platform; labour law; neo-villeiny

The Left in Power: Bob Rae's NDP and the Working Class - High, Steven C. (Between the Lines, 2025)
At the end of the twentieth century, as social democratic parties around the world struggled to produce a coherent response to the deindustrialization crisis, many pivoted towards progressive neoliberalism and Third Way social democracy. Almost everywhere, they turned their backs on the weakened trade union movement and embraced neoliberal assumptions about labour force flexibility and global competition. Shamefully, Third Way social democrats emphasized the moral dimension of poverty rather than its structural causes as they abandoned the old redistributive class politics of the Left. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with NDP politicians, senior economic policy advisors, and trade unionists, The Left in Power examines the response of the political Left in Ontario to the crisis that gripped the old ‘industrialized world.’ Steven High revisits the heartbreaking years of Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government—from their historic and unexpected 1990 victory, to their policy shifts that left working-class voters feeling betrayed, to their landslide defeat in 1995—to uncover what we can learn from one social democratic party’s mistakes about how to govern from the Left. –Publisher's description
OCLC: 1461919686
Keywords: New Democratic Party of Ontario; Ontario Economic conditions 1991-; Ontario Politics and government 1990-1995; Rae; Bob

The Case for Pro-Union Public Policy - Hudson, Mark; Hudson, Ian; Udoh, Fond; Das, Anupam (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2025)
Higher unionization rates don't just benefit workers, evidence suggests they also offer broad social benefits like a cleaner environment and better health. [Includes tables.] –Website description

Transnational Circuits of Precarity: A Qualitative Examination of Temporary Worker Wellbeing in Manitoba - Huynh, Anthony (University of Manitoba, 2025)
Background: In western Canada, Manitoba is a critical hub for a large population of migrant workers. Usually with limited English or French language ability and possessing limited rights and protections under the current TFWP, Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are often tied to a single employer, leaving them vulnerable to employer abuse and the under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses due to the threat of deportation. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when my dissertation research began, the many cases seen among TFWs in Manitoba raises additional important public health questions on the health and wellbeing of migrant workers in Manitoba that I discuss in this dissertation. Methodology: In close collaboration with Migrante Manitoba (MB), I conducted a qualitative study to explore the precarious lives of migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I virtually interviewed 20 migrant workers who entered Canada through the TFWP, employed either as seasonal agricultural workers (n=7) or TFWs (n=13). Thirteen TFWs came from Philippines and seven farmworkers from Mexico (n=6) and Jamaica (n=1). Theoretical contribution: I developed the notion of transnational circuits of precarity to understand the multiple temporal-spatial layers of precarity that migrant workers encounter along their journeys to Manitoba. This multivalent concept is comprised of the following interconnected pieces: 1) a broader political economic “force-field” that compels the movement of human labour resources from the global South to the global North; 2) the rigid and regulated pathway put in place to ensure workers arrival at their work destinations; 3) the process of making “model minorities” through training programs that ensure the “smooth” transition of workers in their host country; and 4) the affective economy that is fueled by workers’ hopes, dreams, and desires. Altogether, these seemingly disparate processes articulate to produce complex temporal and spatial realities that shape the precarious trajectories of migrant workers. Such a paradigm shift away from the narrow temporal and spatial limits of a focus on “occupational health hazards” will be critical if workers are to realize any meaningful and substantive changes to their overall physical and mental well-being.

Collective Workers’ Funds and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Sweden and Québec - Ikebe, Shannon (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Wage-earner funds (löntagarfonder) in Sweden and the Fonds de solidarité ftq in Québec, both founded in 1983, are two of the most significant examples of collective workers' investment funds run by unions. This article situates the political context of their emergence in the neoliberal turn of social democracy in the early 1980s. In Sweden, the wage-earner funds were initially proposed as a radical anti-capitalist project in 1975, but the Social Democratic Party leadership developed the idea into a qualitatively distinct plan aimed at increasing investment capital available for private firms, as part of its new market-accommodating program. In Québec, the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec (ftq) proposed the solidarity fund as it moved toward concertation and away from the democratic economic planning and autogestion (worker self-management) that it had championed in the 1970s. In both cases, pro-market forces within organized labour proposed the funds so that workers' capital could be used to stimulate private, for-profit investment, while recuperating elements of earlier labour radicalism that had sought to enhance workers' power over capital. Built with an institutional orientation toward the incorporation of workers into financial capitalism, these collective workers' funds represent a neoliberal shift within organized labour in Sweden and Québec, two places where labour is comparatively well organized.
Keywords: Québec; Sweden; economic democracy; labour-sponsored investment funds; neoliberalism; social democracy; wage-earner funds

Work and Labour in Canada: Critical Issues - Jackson, Andrew; Thomas, Mark P.; King, Adam D. K. (Canadian Scholars Press, 2025)
Over the last several decades, the workplace in Canada has experienced profound changes. Work has become increasingly insecure for a growing number of workers, and income inequality has deepened. New technologies have reshaped labour processes and have enhanced elements of employer control over work and workers. Entry into the labour market is itself a difficult process, as young workers struggle to match qualifications and credentials with jobs, while for many older workers, retirement with a secure income is a diminishing prospect. The demographic composition of the labour market is transforming, yet this change is conditioned by longstanding patterns of inequality in terms of gender, race, disability, and immigration status. Work and Labour in Canada explores the changing world of work, mapping out major trends and patterns that define working life and identifying the economic, social, and political factors that shape the contemporary workplace. Evaluating working conditions and the quality of jobs from a critical perspective, this text presents an analysis of recent trends in employment and unemployment as well as outlines the role and impact of unions and other workers’ organizations. The fourth edition includes a new chapter on work and technology, updated statistical data, and additional content on the basic income debate, labour and climate change, and COVID-19. This thoroughly revised and updated edition is essential for teachers, researchers, labour activists, and students of labour studies, sociology, political science, political economy, and economic geography programs. –Publisher's description

Beyond Wage Increases: How Have Unionized Workplaces in Quebec’s Private Sector Adapted to Labour Shortages? - Jalette, Patrice (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
How have workplaces in Quebec's unionized private sector adapted to recent labour shortages? Based on original qualitative and quantitative data, we show that these shortages have affected collective bargaining, collective agreements, work organization, working conditions and union life. As a result, workplace actors have had to be pragmatic in adjusting their practices in response to disruptions caused by labour shortages. The originality of our research lies in its broad perspective on the consequences of labour market tension for labour relations, thus highlighting unexplored and unprecedented effects, both positive and negative on employers, workers and unions.
Keywords: Shortage; collective agreement; collective bargaining; discipline; employer; human resource management; labour; labour market; training; turnover; union

Par-delà les augmentations de salaire : comment les milieux de travail syndiqués du secteur privé se sont-ils adaptés au manque de main-d’œuvre au Québec ? - Jalette, Patrice (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
How have workplaces in Quebec's unionized private sector adapted to recent labour shortages? Based on original qualitative and quantitative data, we show that these shortages have affected collective bargaining, collective agreements, work organization, working conditions and union life. As a result, workplace actors have had to be pragmatic in adjusting their practices in response to disruptions caused by labour shortages. The originality of our research lies in its broad perspective on the consequences of labour market tension for labour relations, thus highlighting unexplored and unprecedented effects, both positive and negative, on employers, workers and unions.
Keywords: Pénurie; convention collective; discipline; employeur; formation; gestion des ressources humaines; main-d’oeuvre; marché du travail; négociation collective; roulement; syndicat

Introduction du numéro spécial traitant des répercussions des pénuries et des manques de main-d’œuvre et de compétences sur les relations industrielles et la gestion des ressources humaines - Jalette, Patrice; Charest, Jean; Kirov, Vassil (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

Introduction to the special issue on the impact of labour and skills shortages on industrial relations and human resource management - Jalette, Patrice; Charest, Jean; Kirov, Vassil (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
An article from Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, on Érudit.

Pratiques de management inclusives : développer l’autonomie au travail en ESAT à partir de la vulnérabilité - Jaujard, François; Dubruc, Nadine (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
In France, 7.5% of the total number of 15-64 year-olds recognized as disabled are in employment, i.e. 39%, compared with 68% for these age groups as a whole: this means that a vulnerable population remains a long way from employment. In contrast to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which seeks to eliminate segregation in employment and promote an open labor market, work-based support establishments and services (ESAT) aim to play a key role in helping people with disabilities access employment. They offer professional activity as well as medical, social and educational support in a protected environment. Our research does not assume that ESAT are models of inclusive organization but gives a voice to the workers and staff of these structures specialized in supporting work activity. If the aim of autonomy support is to create an enabling environment, according to the capabilities approach, our problem is to demonstrate the extent to which support in a situation of vulnerability encourages the development of autonomy with the aim of inclusion in the workplace. The analysis of testimonials from 70 people from 12 volunteer ESATs (54 hours of face-to-face interviews) identifies the demands and needs related to this support. The characteristics of the population surveyed are representative of those of the entire population of the ESATs studied and the interviews cover all the ESATs in the study in a balanced manner. The results inspire inclusive management practices in the workplace, based on mutual understanding that empowers people. They renew the concept of developing autonomy, defined not as a goal of self-sufficiency, but as a process of overcoming vulnerability through a supportive relationship. Care, a relationship of kindness and high standards, central to this approach, becomes the way to deal with vulnerability.
Keywords: ESAT; Inclusion; accompagnement; autonomie; autonomy; care; disability; handicap; support; travail; vulnerability; vulnérabilité; work

In What Ways Does a Lack of Status Influence the Psychosocial Well-Being of Non-Status Migrants in Alberta? - Karnjanavijaya, Jakkapan R. (University of Alberta, 2025)
Canada is a country whose economy benefits considerably from migrant workers in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). With little protection from workplace exploitation, as well as unclear and constantly changing immigration policies, migrant workers often lose their legal immigration status due to conditions out of their control, becoming non-status. Living in the shadows and without access to most publicly funded services, non-status migrants experience a myriad of chronic daily stressors. In partnership with non-status community members, this Community-based Participatory Research project explores the question, “In what ways does a lack of status influence the psychosocial well-being of non-status migrants in Alberta?”. Both non-status migrants and service providers participated in semi-structured interviews, while a group of service providers working in mental health also participated in a focus group interview. The interpretation of this study’s findings was guided by the socio-ecological systems framework. Non-status realities were described from the perspective of both non-status migrants and service providers. Findings included insights into how the TFWP creates systemic vulnerabilities for migrant workers and facilitates the loss of immigration status. This lack of status led to a scarcity of access to most basic services and resources, leading to significant detrimental impacts on psychosocial well-being. This produced internalized experiences of shame and un-belonging, as well as a range of deleterious mental health outcomes. Furthermore, the impacts associated with a lack of access were significantly exacerbated by a discriminatory and hostile sociopolitical environment. Recommendations centered around the inclusion of non-status migrants in collaborative partnerships with service providers and policymakers alike. In light of these findings and recommendations, the implications for counselling psychology practice are also illuminated.

Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918 - Kealey, Gregory S. (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the book, "Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918" by Zhongping Chen.

Theorising New Potentials for Teacher Activism: Union and Grassroots Activist Responses to COVID-19 School Reopening Plans in Canada - Keil, Trudy; Osmond-Johnson, Pamela (Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2025)
Using post-structural theories, this paper explores the public discourses of several Canadian teacher unions and grassroots teacher activist groups around the issue of school reopening plans in Canada amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to highlight the ways in which these two forces of teacher activism can influence and impress upon each other to create a different possible future for collective resistance to neoliberalism in education – an assemblage of union and grassroots activism intra-acting, shaping, and impressing upon one another.
Keywords: Teacher activism; affect theory; assemblage theory; neoliberalism; poststructuralism; teacher unions

Beyond the Usual Suspects: Job Desperation as a Driver of Turnover Intention and Job Search Behaviour - Kertechian, Kevin; El-Farr, Hadi (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
Workers may experience job desperation, characterized by frustration, pressure to quit and readiness to take extreme steps to secure a new job position. We examined the psychometric properties of a French-language version of the Job Desperation Scale by administering a survey to three independent cohorts of French-speaking employees, with a view to assessing the antecedents of job search behaviour and intention to quit. The first (n = 253) and second (n = 184) cohorts, composed of employees from France and Canada respectively, responded to the survey for the exploratory and confirmatory stages of analysis. The third sample (n = 252) of French employees responded both to the survey and to additional measures that typically identify antecedents of job search behaviour and turnover intention. The findings confirm the single-factor structure and robustness of the French-language version. More importantly, they show the substantial and incremental predictive power of job desperation in explaining job search behaviour and turnover intention. These insights help explain job desperation as a critical factor in contemporary labour markets and contribute to the vocational behaviour literature.

How Did Canadian Workers and Unions Fare In 2024? - King, Adam D. K. (The Maple, 2025)
How did labour fare in 2024? In many ways, the Canadian labour market and labour movement are both looking more like they did pre-pandemic. Hopes of using the relatively robust post-pandemic economy as a springboard to build something better seem to largely be fading. Strike activity was down considerably in 2024, after reaching historic heights the previous year, by some measures. Wage growth has cooled, even as unions continue to seek pay increases to account for post-pandemic inflation. While some legislative gains were made this past year, governments also intervened in several important labour actions to end or pre-empt strikes and to come to the aid of employers who locked out their workers. In particular, the federal government has been especially coercive in its use of back-to-work orders.... Introduction

The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor - King, Adam D. K. (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
The article reviews the book, "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor," by Hamilton Nolan.

Collective Labour in a Capitalist Market: The Historical Struggle to Secure a Place for Worker Cooperatives in the Canadian Political Economy. - Kinsey, Simon Wilson (Carleton University, 2025)
This thesis seeks to understand the historical conditions that have relegated worker cooperatives to the periphery of the Canadian political economy. It begins with a theoretical exploration of the relationship between worker cooperatives and capitalism, highlighting two key dynamics: 1) worker cooperatives are a form of collective property that allow workers to secure their subsistence outside of the wage-labour market; 2) worker cooperatives can serve a wide range of interests depending on the subjectivities of the worker-members and the objective conditions of their political-economic environment. This framework is then used to examine subjective and objective considerations in the context of Canadian worker cooperatives, with a focus on the emergence of the contemporary sector in the 1970s and 1980s. Material need has at times produced upswings of grassroots momentum, but this momentum has struggled to sustain itself in the absence of support from major institutions of the Canadian political economy.

Conscripted to Care: Women on the Frontlines of the covid-19 Response - Klostermann, Janna (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the book, "Conscripted to Care: Women on the Frontlines of the covid-19 Response," by Julia Smith.

I Sleep and Breathe on That Train: Stories from Canadian Railroaders - Komori, Jane (Long Haul, 2025)
This summer, the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) brought a strike of running trades workers at Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (CPKC, or just “CP”) to an abrupt conclusion. In a moment of rare opportunity, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) contracts covering nearly 10,000 locomotive engineers, conductors, crew dispatchers, and rail traffic controllers at both companies had expired at the same time, in the fall of 2023. ...The stories collected here were shared by current and former engineers and conductors, as well as workers in other trades and unions at both CN and CP. They describe in detail the day-to-day work of a railway employee, and they reflect on the conditions on the job, within the TCRC, and with management and the federal government – the conditions that brought the heady few days in August, when it looked as though a historic strike was set to shut down the railways, to devastating effect.–Introduction

“It Could Not Be an Ordinary Labour Union”: Race, Class, Exclusion, and the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union, 1920–1941 - Komori, Jane (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article provides a history of the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union (JCMWU), from its founding in 1920 until its dissolution during the World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Canadians. The JCMWU was, according to union organizer Ryuichi Yoshida, a “general union of all Japanese workers” that “could not be an ordinary labour union.” Organized along the lines of race rather than by trade or industry, the union fought struggles against bosses, business owners, state officials, and the Asian exclusion movement through a number of programs and activities. But perhaps more than anything else, the jcmwu was a political education project, centred around its newspapers, Rōdō Shūhō and Nikkan Minshū. Drawing on previously untranslated materials from these newspapers, this article takes up the extraordinary analysis and activities of the JCMWU to contribute to broader discussions about the relationship of race, labour, capitalism, and imperialism.
Keywords: Asian exclusion; Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union; Japanese Canadians; ethnic labour organizations; political education

Legal Responses to Work-Related Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: Troubling Privatization - Koshan, Jennifer (Dalhousie Law Journal, 2025)
Intimate partner violence and coercive control can manifest in abusers’ attempts to sabotage their partners’ participation in employment. Work-related intimate partner violence (WRIPV) also implicates employers, governments, and society more broadly, challenging the individualizing frame often applied to IPV. However, the legal recognition of WRIPV has been slow and sporadic, disproportionately impacting women experiencing intersecting inequalities, who are more vulnerable to IPV and to work-related inequalities. This article examines how governments have responded to WRIPV, situating their responses in the continuing legacy of the public/private distinction. Using a rights-based framework, I evaluate the two newest Canadian reforms concerning WRIPV: occupational health and safety and employment leave legislation. Both reforms specifically attend to WRIPV, at least in some jurisdictions, and provide preventive potential and remedial support for the economic and other consequences of IPV. Yet they also have shortcomings, including lack of coverage of some forms of IPV and some workplaces, loss of pay, and verification requirements that draw on gendered myths and stereotypes. I conclude by identifying further government action needed to better address WRIPV.

The Art of Solidarity: Labour Arts and Heritage in Canada - Kristofferson, Robert B.; Ross, Stephanie (Between the Lines, 2025)
The Art of Solidarity delves into the rich tapestry of labour arts and heritage in Canada—from protest music and union banners, to murals, community theatre, and oral histories, to workers’ history museums and arts festivals—showcasing how these expressions of working people’s culture have been essential to challenging inequality and fostering solidarity. This inspiring collection highlights the resilience and creativity of labour arts and heritage practitioners who, despite financial and organizational challenges, continue to amplify the voices and experiences of working-class communities. In an economy characterized by growing polarization, inequality, precarity, and uncertainty about the future and meaning of work, labour arts and heritage has a central role to play in providing answers that challenge the prevailing narratives about whose work matters and whose efforts are central to our communities’ wellbeing. This work is more important than ever before. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1515688714
Keywords: Arts Aspect politique Canada; Arts Political aspects Canada; Arts and society Canada; Arts et société Canada; Arts; Canadian; Labor in art; Labor movement Canada; Labor movement in art; Mouvement ouvrier Canada; Mouvement ouvrier dans l'art; Political art Canada; Solidarity Canada; Solidarity Political aspects Canada; Travail dans l'art

Documenting for Movement Building: A Conversation on Public History, Labour History, and Social Movements - Laframboise, Lauren; Christoff, Stefan; Gagnon, Simon-Olivier; Nesbitt, Doug (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)

Asian Women Workers in Massage Parlours and the Sex Industry and Their Fight Against Anti-Asian Racism - Lam, Elene (Migration, Mobility, & Displacement, 2025)
This article examines how Asian migrant sex workers have continuously been targeted by the “carceral web” of Canadian laws and policies at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels. A case study of Newmarket, Ontario’s municipal council’s recent “crackdown” on personal wellness establishments illustrates how systematic racism and “whorephobia” are embedded in the regulations targeting low-income Asian migrant women, particularly those who work in massage parlours and the sex industry. The article ends with a discussion of how Asian workers in massage parlours and the sex industry are actively working to resist, fight for their rights, and build solidarity to push back against racist oppressions targeting them.

Freedom from Medicare: Maternal Activists, Organized Business, and Popular Mobilization against the Welfare State During the Saskatchewan Doctors’ Strike, 1962 - Langford, Will (Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 2025)
In July 1962, Saskatchewan doctors went on strike in a refusal to work under the Medicare Care Act, which introduced universal health insurance in the province. The much-studied conflict between organized medicine and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government has been understood as a decisive moment in the history of public healthcare in Canada. Less studied, but equally important, the doctors were supported by a larger protest movement that set out to oppose the expansion of the welfare state. This article reveals that an alliance between maternal activists who started the Keep Our Doctors committee, businessmen who aimed to foster popular anti-statism through the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Operation Freedom and the Free Citizens Association, and doctors was an unplanned coalition, but not something that emerged entirely by chance. The agitation was a form of conservative populism resolved, in exaggerated fashion, against compulsion, increased taxation, and alleged communism. It was also part of a distinctive transnational moment of right-wing radicalization. Principles of democracy and freedom united opponents of Medicare in Saskatchewan and linked them with American radical right peers in ways specific to the early 1960s.

Hunting for Employees, Employers, Independent Contractors, Dependent Contractors and Other Figments of the Legal Imagination - Langille, Brian; Mayer-Goodman, Ben (Dalhousie Law Journal, 2025)
This paper exposes the falsity of a fundamental assumption of labour law—namely that there is such a thing as an “employee” or “employer” or “independent contractor” and that such legal entities can be “found” through an examination of the facts. As we shall demonstrate, once we have discarded the flawed assumption that “employees” or “employers” (or “independent” or “dependent contractors,” or “worker,” or any other legal creature) exist in the real world, we see that labour law’s purpose as it is currently widely understood is also fundamentally flawed. It is from this standpoint that a new conceptual framework for—and normative underpinning of—labour law emerges.

L’entreprise face aux attentes de la génération Z : un risque de désalignement des valeurs - Laroutis, Dimitri; Makaya, Christian; Vermeylen, Guillaume (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
In a professional environment undergoing profound transformation, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, understanding and meeting the expectations of Generation Z is crucial for businesses. This research explores the professional values and expectations of this generation, highlighting the importance of aligning personal values with those of the company, flexibility, and ethical work environments. Through a qualitative methodology using IRaMuTeQ software, semi-structured interviews revealed that Generation Z values management practices that promote regular recognition and personal development. The findings confirm the importance of transparency and daily accountability in task execution, as well as the need to create dynamic and collaborative work environments. Managerial implications suggest the proactive integration of these expectations into human resources policies to effectively attract and retain this generation. Recommendations include the implementation of sustainable environmental policies and diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Context, Resources and Strategic Choice: Responses to Labour and Skill Shortages - Lavelle, Jonathan; Ryan, Lorraine; O’Sullivan, Michelle; Murphy, Caroline; MacMahon, Juliet; Dundon, Tony (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
Labour and skill shortages are widely reported across most countries. With changing demographics, increasing digitalization and the transition to a green economy, to name but a few factors, concern is mounting about the supply of labour and skills for future demands. As a result, actors in the labour market, such as unions, employers and employer associations, government and civil society organizations are concerned about looming shortages of labour and skills. Several strategies to address such shortages have been identified, but a more detailed engagement is required to fully understand the complex interplay between each strategy and the environment in which it is pursued. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Ireland with a range of actors who were specifically identified as having expertise and experience in strategies for labour and skill shortages. They reported a range of strategies that involved upskilling, higher pay, better working conditions, flexible work arrangements, use of migrant labour, development of untapped labour pools and provisioning of social goods. Decisions on these strategies had two key determinants: resource availability and the external environment. All actors mentioned a need for social dialogue to engage, explore and consider the wide range of options for dealing with labour and skill shortages.
Keywords: Labour and skill shortages; employers; social dialogue; unions; upskilling; wages; working conditions

Faculty Unionism: What, Why, and Who - Leary, Tamara (Portraits of Academic Life in Higher Education: From Hiring to Retiring, 2025)
...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

Les facteurs à la source de la pénurie de main-d’œuvre au Québec : les jeunes en sont-ils responsables ? - Longo, María; Vultur, Mircea (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
This article explores the multifaceted causes of the labour shortage in Quebec and questions whether young people are to blame. Using statistical data about activity and vacancy and qualitative interviews with recruitment managers from companies in the Quebec City region, the authors aim to deconstruct oversimplified narratives. The findings reveal that labour shortages stem from a complex combination of factors: demographic changes, unattractive working conditions, training-job mismatch, and public policies. Contrary to popular belief, young people are very active in the labour market. They are already well-represented in sectors experiencing shortages (e.g. healthcare, hospitality, construction) and often possess higher education levels than what is required for most vacant positions, which are predominantly low-skilled. However, many employers perceive youth less available, as less loyal, and as having different expectations regarding work-life balance, job meaning, and flexibility—interpreted as a shift in "mentality." These perceptions heavily shape challenges faced and recruitment strategies, which tend to focus on adapting working conditions rather than rethinking job content or organizational practices. The article concludes that young workers are not to blame for the labour shortage. Instead, the phenomenon should be understood as a structural issue with complex causes. Effective responses require a comprehensive approach that considers the roles of employers, public institutions, and the evolving expectations of young workers. A nuanced, sector-specific analysis would allow for more targeted and meaningful solutions.
Keywords: Pénurie de main-d’oeuvre; conditions d’emploi; jeunes travailleurs; perceptions des employeurs; recrutement

"Canada has destroyed me": Exploitation of Migrant Workers in Canada - Louter, Lysanne (Amnesty International, 2025)
Tens of thousands of migrant workers travel every year to Canada in the hope of providing a better life for their families. They are promised labour opportunities and working conditions that very often they cannot enjoy in their countries of origin. Yet, many find a different reality upon arrival: they are made to work long hours without rest, are underpaid, suffer physical and psychological abuse, and are often subjected to stereotypes and assumptions about their skills, behaviours or identities. Their visas are tied to one employer, making it difficult for them to leave their job and change employers, or report abuses and access effective remedies. This report investigates the human rights impact of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), a temporary migration scheme that allows employers to hire migrant workers, primarily in low-pay occupations. Amnesty International’s research finds that Canada’s migration policy has designed, regulated and implemented the TFWP in such a way as to inherently increase racialized workers’ risk of labour exploitation and other abuses, creating discriminatory outcomes and violating its international human rights obligations.

Douter sur soi au travail. Un moteur du travail identitaire dans le parcours professionnel - Mainhagu, Sébastien; Defiebre-Muller, Renaud (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
The article makes a significant contribution to the study of identity dynamics in the professional context by focusing on self-doubt as a central theme in the analysis. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of the work on identity and demonstrate the importance of developing a more constructive approach to self-doubt. They also emphasize that the links with the ethical dimensions of employees' professional trajectories are not adequately addressed. The research aims to address these gaps by employing Ricoeur's idem et ipse approach to the study of identity. The data collected from employees in the French social sector provides insights into the phenomenon of self-doubt, as expressed by employees in their individual work reports, without the influence of external directives. This scenario is distinct from that of the “struggler”, who decline to address their employer's or colleagues' concerns regarding their capabilities and ethics.

Crip Time, Castoriadis, and Transcending the Duty to Accommodate in the Workplace - Malhotra, Ravi; Moizer, Jacqueline (Dalhousie Law Journal, 2025)
Disabled people often experience time in a manner that is distinct from able-bodied individuals. Disabled people may have shorter careers, have difficulty maintaining full-time employment, and may be forced to work part-time due to the impact of their impairments. Many disabled people face considerable barriers every day in accessing services to participate fully in the workplace, including accessible transportation and attendant services. These underfunded services are often late if delivered at all, wreaking havoc on the ability of workers with disabilities to plan their day and make firm commitments. Yet disability scholars have attempted to reclaim this experience as one that needs to be understood as one with liberating potential. Ellen Samuels and Alison Kafer have identified this phenomenon as “crip time.” In Canadian law, the duty to accommodate workers with disabilities up to the point of undue hardship has not typically engaged with how disabled people experience time differently. We develop a typology of what we call crip time from above to reflect the lived experiences of disabled people, and in particular, their experience of time. In this paper, we report initial findings from a multi-year qualitative research project exploring the relationship between disability accommodations and crip time. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, we undertook focus group interviews with disabled people to explore their experiences of time, followed by individual interviews. Influenced by the work of radical Greek–French philosopher, Cornelius Castoriadis, we argue that his notion of social imaginary time enriches the existing work of crip time and opens new possibilities to create a philosophy of accommodation that recognizes how disabled bodies experience the workplace. Our initial findings suggest that disabled people experience work differently because of a number of barriers relating to their experience of crip time. We conclude with some policy recommendations.

Bargaining for a Transformative Vision of Decolonial Indigenization: The Critical Role of University Faculty Associations - Marks, Lynne; O'Bonsawin, Christine (CAUT Journal, 2025)
The diversification of the academic workforce is primarily the responsibility of management in most Canadian universities. However, the University of Victoria Faculty Association played a critical role in the last two bargaining rounds, successfully negotiating meaningful advancements concerning equity, indigenization and decolonization. In the 2019–2022 collective bargaining round, for example, an Indigenous hiring fund was negotiated. Empowered with a strong mandate from the membership, the faculty association sought in the next bargaining round to move beyond an “Indigenous inclusion” framework, which simply added more Indigenous people to the academy, towards bargaining for a more decolonized space in which, for example, Indigenous members faced fewer barriers in tenure and promotion processes, and were recognized for the additional decolonial work they do in and for the institution, and beyond. We discuss the challenges and successes for Indigenous members in this bargaining round and the crucial role of faculty association Indigenous members in shaping these bargaining successes.
Keywords: Indigenization; collective bargaining; decolonization; equity; transformative change

The Gig Economy of Care: Analyzing “The Airbnb of Eldercare” and Its Policy Implications in British Columbia - Massie, Alicia; Hilstob, Kayla (Canadian Journal of Communication, 2025)
Background: This study critically analyzes the impact of platform capitalism on elder care in British Columbia, focusing on Tuktu, an app-based tech startup that mediates care services through digital platforms. Analysis: Using feminist and intersectional theory, we explore how Tuktu’s business model commodifies care and exploits care workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors and stripping them of labour rights and protections.Conclusions and implications: We advocate for comprehensive policy reforms that ensure equitable labour standards, uphold the dignity of care recipients, and promote community-based care solutions. The study also calls for stronger regulation of digital platforms in the care economy, ensuring that the integration of technology enhances, rather than undermines, the quality of care and labour conditions.

The Point of No Return? Impediments to Return to Work for Injured Migrant Agricultural Workers in Two Canadian Provinces - Mayell, Stephanie; McLaughlin, Janet; Hennebry, Jenna; Sanchez, Guillermo Ventura; Goswami, Pankil; Hanley, Jill (New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 2025)
Migrant agricultural workers employed through Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program face serious occupational health and safety hazards, with compounded difficulties in accessing workers’ compensation (WC) if they are sick or injured by the job. Little is known, however, about their ability to return to work (RTW) upon recovery—a fundamental right included in the conception of WC, but complicated by their restrictive work permits and precarious immigration status. Based on interviews with injured migrant workers in two Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario), our research suggests that workers’ RTW process is anything but straightforward. This article highlights three key issues—pressure to return to work prematurely, communication and bureaucratic challenges with WC agencies, and impacts of injury/illness and failure to return to work on workers’ long-term well-being. Consequences and opportunities for reform are discussed.

The Return of the Housewife: Why Women are Still Cleaning Up - McCoy, Ted (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article reviews the book, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women are Still Cleaning Up," by Emma Casey.

Introduction: Christie Symposium on Law and Labour Market Inequality - McHugh-Russell, Liam (Dalhousie Law Journal, 2025)
Introduces the special issue's themes including frames (sociological and labour law's) on labour market inequality, gaps in labour law, complicity of labour law in inequality, and equality as transformation.

A Social Gospel Experiment: C. S. Eby’s People’s Institute in Early 20th-Century Toronto - McIntyre, Heather (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
In 1909, an atypical church emerged in Toronto’s industrial core, the “People’s Institute,” which closed its doors less than two years later. Helmed by missionary C. S. Eby, the People’s Institute was an experiment designed to encourage political involvement and spread a Christian anti-capitalist ethic. This article situates the People’s Institute in the changing landscape of 1909 Toronto and within the larger trends of the labour church and the social gospel. It also argues that Eby’s experiment serves as an example of broader obstacles that prevented the long-term flourishing of left-wing approaches to Christianity in Canada.
Keywords: Charles Samuel Eby; Christianity; Toronto; labour church; microhistory; religion; social gospel; working class

Management inclusif des personnes tatouées en France : désamorcer les discriminations grâce à la sécurité psychologique - Meyer, Vincent; de Vassoigne, Tony; Alves, Sarah (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
While tattooing is becoming increasingly popular in France, particularly among younger generations, its acceptance in the professional world remains ambivalent. Inclusion of tattooed individuals is emerging issue in many organizations, but academic literature, mainly Anglo-Saxon, remains limited and contradictory on the subject. Our study is therefore rooted in a dual theoretical tradition: on the one hand, the tensions between the so-called “blind” and “conscious” approaches to inclusion (Konrad & Linnehan, 1995), and on the other hand, the structuring role of psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) in inclusive management. Our results, based on two quantitative surveys conducted in 2023 (n=123) and 2024 (n=283) among tattooed people working in France, reveal a significant sense of discrimination, despite a normative shift in society. This stigmatization, although often implicit, translates into increased vigilance and concealment strategies, especially in contexts of high public exposure. Our study shows a significant impact on the engagement of young people, for whom tattoos are a strong marker of identity and a claim to authenticity. Our study also highlights the moderating role of psychological safety: by promoting a climate of openness, mutual support, and the right to make mistakes, it mitigates the effects of discrimination and strengthens the commitment of tattooed employees. This dynamic appears to be essential in the early stages of experiencing discrimination, underscoring the importance of strengthening psychological safety to promote the inclusion of tattooed people in the workplace. Our research thus contributes to the literature on psychological safety and inclusive management by addressing a subject that has yet to be fully explored. It also invites us to rethink managerial practices to allow individuals to express their identity while strengthening their professional commitment.
Keywords: France; discrimination; inclusion; psychological safety; sécurité psychologique; tatouage; tattoos

The Governance of Labour Migration and Housing: Addressing Tensions in Labour Protection - Mieres, Fabiola (Research Handbook on Social Policy and Employment, 2025)
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.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397005045_The_governance_of_labour_migration_and_housing_addressing_tensions_in_labour_protection

A CAAT-A Work-to-Rule Tweet Sequence (2021–2022) - Mills, Rebecca M. (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This article examines the 2021–22 work-to-rule job action undertaken by CAAT-A, the academic division of OPSEU/SEFPO representing Ontario college faculty. Drawing on a deleted Twitter thread by a participating professor, it presents a first-hand account of the bargaining conflict between CAAT-A and the College Employer Council (CEC). The piece situates the campaign within broader tensions over Bill 124’s wage cap, workload disputes, and employer tactics such as forced-offer votes and imposed terms. It highlights CAAT-A’s phased approach to WTR, culminating in near-strike conditions before resolution through binding interest arbitration. Through the lens of digital labour activism and institutional power, the text documents how faculty used social media and collective solidarity to resist efforts to undermine democratic bargaining in Ontario’s public college system.

Navigating the Gendered Landscape: The Impact of Institutional Participation and Professional Culture in Shaping Inequality - Mogoşanu, Andreea (University of Toronto, 2025)
The Gender Revolution significantly improved women’s status, but recent progress towards equity is “uneven and stalled” (England 2010:149). This dissertation uncovers the complex role of institutional processes in shaping the evolution and persistence of gender inequality. The first study offers a macro-level analysis trends in men and women’s perceptions of mastery across the life course of different cohorts. Perceptions of mastery —control over one’s life— reflect differences in status and gendered notions of agency (Connell 1987; 2005). Institutional participation —educational achievement and employment levels— is key in shaping movement towards and away from gender equality. While high levels of education and employment lead to converging perceptions of mastery, the effect of institutional participation is strongly gendered: women benefitted more from education, while men are penalized more when working less than full-time. Workforce participation emerged as a key driver of men’s higher perceptions of agency in younger cohorts. Drawing on the legal profession as a case study, subsequent studies highlight the role of workplace culture in shaping gender inequality. Using longitudinal data on private sector lawyers, the second paper finds norms of hegemonic masculinity —measured as technical competence, authoritative leadership, work devotion, breadwinner status, and individual preferences— (re)create wage inequality across the earnings distribution. The analysis further uncovers a hierarchy of valuation based on gender and parental status, as fathers earn the highest wage premiums, followed by mothers; women without children earn the least after controls. The final paper investigates how perceptions of professional fit —signaled by professional role confidence (PRC)— shapes perceptions of job security among early-career lawyers. The legal profession is marked by a ‘masculine mystique’ that challenge female lawyers’ PRC —measured as expertise confidence and career fit. Findings indicate that men derive higher perceptions of job security for the same levels of PRC, explaining women’s lower perceptions of job security. Professional fit therefore reinforces gender inequality, possibly through women’s awareness (but not internalization) of their lower status in law. This dissertation provides a nuanced understanding of gender inequality, with institutional participation and culture emerging as key mechanisms shaping the dynamic evolution of gender inequality.

JEDDI as Labour Imperative - Mulé, Nick (CAUT Journal, 2025)
The post-secondary education sector is increasingly incorporating equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) frameworks into its institutions. This transition from traditional concepts of affirmative action and employment equity to a decolonization, equity, diversity, and inclusion (DEDI) model was very much in development both at administrative and faculty levels during my stint as Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Administration of the Agreement (JCoAA), representing a large faculty association. In regular meetings with Labour Relations, representing university administration, conceptual perspectives differed, objectives needed to be agreed upon, and goals compromised. This paper explores the broader model of justice, equity, diversity, decolonization, and inclusion (JEDDI) and the absolute importance of such a perspective for the higher education sector and labour market in general. Implementing and actualizing JEDDI is important as universities continue to diversify. Utilizing such frameworks can assist in assuaging tensions regarding academic freedom, governance, and labour practices.
Keywords: Higher Education; JEDDI; Post-Secondary Education Sector; Universities

Performing the Subject-Self: A Critical Exploration of Sex Worker Resistance and Activism in Canada - Murray, Julie Anne Cordeiro (Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2025)
The contemporary movement for sex workers' rights emerges from a lengthy and complex legal history of sex workers challenging dominant discourses that frame prostitution as a public nuisance, moral offence, and violence against women. The existing literature demonstrates that sex workers and sex work activists resist oppressive and reductive discourse via community-based initiatives, lobbying efforts, and strategic litigation such as the successful constitutional challenge against Canada's prostitution laws in 2013 (Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2013). However, there is a significant gap in understanding how sex workers and sex work activists enact resistance through embodied performance. As such, this thesis explores the ways in which sex worker rights activists resist dominant discourse and troubling public perceptions through symbolic communication and attire during protests. To this end, this research builds a conceptual framework that puts resistance literature in conversation with key theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Based on 143 publicly accessible images of sex worker rights protests in Canada between 2013-2023, a qualitative visual content analysis is deployed to examine how sex workers and sex work activists enact resistance through what the author calls the performance of the subject-self. The findings reveal how the subtle, creative, and symbolic aspects of sex work activism are serious and significant forms of political expression.

Women United: Stories of Women's Struggles for Equality in the Canadian Auto Workers Union - Nash, Peggy; White, Julie (Between the Lines, 2025)
Based on the firsthand stories of dozens of women leaders in the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), Women United examines what workplaces were like for women, how they became involved in the union, and the challenges women faced, sometimes at great personal cost. From struggles for representation in their union to their fight for affirmative action and childcare, and work against gender-based violence and harassment, Peggy Nash and Julie White show how these feminist activists were joined in struggle not only by their union sisters, but also by their sisters from the broader women’s movement, who learned from them about the importance of women’s workplace rights. Nash and White document the decades-long struggles of generations of women activists in the CAW, who, despite their few numbers, managed to build a better, more inclusive union. A testament to the union’s motto that "fighting back makes a difference," Women United makes an important contribution to feminist, labour, and social history. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1526712168
Keywords: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY; CAW-Canada History; Electronic books; Femmes dans le mouvement ouvrier Canada Histoire; Labor movement Canada History; Labor union members Canada History; Mouvement ouvrier Canada Histoire; POLITICAL SCIENCE; Syndiqués Canada Histoire; Women; Women in Politics; Women in the labor movement Canada History; Women labor union members Canada History

Unequal Ontario - Nastovski, Katherine; Fanelli, Carlo (Against the People: How Ford Nation Is Dismantling Ontario, 2025)
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.
https://www.readthemaple.com/doug-fords-government-has-been-disastrous-for-workers/ OCLC: 1460455143
Keywords: Ford; Doug; 1964-; Ontario Economic policy; Ontario Politics and government; Ontario Politics and government 2003-; Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario

Repurposing Institutions through Categorization: New Apprenticeship Programs in Peripheral Service Industries - Nicklich, Manuel; Pekarek, Andreas (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
The rise of precarious work is an increasing concern for policymakers and researchers, with outsourcing frequently identified as a key driver. In response, skills development and formal qualifications are widely promoted as potential remedies. We examine this development through a categorization lens, focusing on two vocational credentials created for industrial services in Germany. By analyzing how industry actors categorize the work of apprenticeship-qualified employees, we investigate whether recategorizing peripheral jobs as skilled labour effectively addresses precarious employment.

Editor's note = Note de la rédaction - Niergarth, Kirk (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Discusses the new, high quality reproductions of Henry Orenstein's mural , "Mine Mill Local 598," published in the current issue in conjunction with Elizabeth Quinlan's "Note and Correction" regarding the painting. The painting was originally reproduced on the cover of Labour/Le Travail, no. 93 (2024) as part of Quinlan's article, "Making Space for Creativity: Cultural Intiatives of Sudbury's Mine-Mill Local 598 in the Postwar Era."

Just the Usual Work: The Social Worlds of Ida Martin, Working-Class Diarist - Niergarth, Kirk (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
The article reviews the book, "Just the Usual Work: The Social Worlds of Ida Martin, Working-Class Diarist," by Michael Boudreau and Bonnie Huskins.

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Committee on Labour History, 17 July 2025, Convened virtually from locations across Turtle Island - Niergarth, Kirk; Smith, Charles (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)

Editor's Note - Niergarth, Kirk; Smith, Charles (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
This will be Ted McCoy's last volume as the English-language book review editor for Labour/Le Travail. The editors would like to take this opportunity to thank Ted for his service. Ted was appointed to this role in 2019 and has helped guide the review section of the journal through challenging times. In recent months, he has been generously helping to smooth the transition for Fred Burrill, who is taking on the position. Fred, of the University of New Brunswick, is no stranger to the pages of Labour/Le Travail. The editors, alongside French-language book review editor Camille Robert and managing editor Kathy Killoh, warmly welcome Fred to the editorial team. We invite the broader Labour/Le Travail community to welcome Fred too, particularly by accepting his invitations to write reviews and review essays. The review section provides an important, indeed vital, service to the intellectual life of the field, but it is very much dependent upon our collective willingness to contribute and enhance its breadth and depth. The review section of Labour/Le Travail has been the site of wide-ranging coverage and lively critical engagement for half a century; let it long remain so under the guidance of Fred and Camille.

Financement public des associations sanitaires et sociales françaises et écart salarial femmes-hommes - Nirello, Laura; Prouteau, Lionel (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
The disparity in gender pay gaps among nonprofit organizations (NPOs) has rarely been studied. In this article, we examine this issue by focusing on French associations, which represent the vast majority of NPOs in this country, and more specifically those working in the health and social sectors. We start from the hypothesis that there is a negative correlation between the gender pay gap in these organizations and the share of public funding in their monetary resources. Two arguments are put forward to support this hypothesis: a) public authorities may make their funding, particularly through public procurement, conditional on the reduction of gender pay gaps within the organizations receiving public support; b) NPOs that are heavily dependent on this support are likely, through a process of hybridization, to adopt wage policies that are less unfavorable to women, as is the case in the public sector.

Bridging the Gap: Exploring the Experiences of South Asian Women Immigrant Teachers in Toronto - Omar, Rozalina (University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 2025)
In this dissertation, I share the voices of South Asian women immigrant school teachers living in Toronto. In this era of global mass migration and the increasing number of women immigrants, I argue that it is important to examine how gender and race affect racialized immigrant women’s working experiences. Historically, racialized immigrant women in Canada have faced various forms of discrimination in the labour market: not only are their previous qualifications and experiences devalued in the job market, but after entering the job market, racial and gender identity remain a concern in their professional lives (Crea-Arsenio et al. 2022; Premji et al. 2014). While scholars have highlighted the common labour market barriers, the struggles of South Asian women when facing these challenges in seeking a specific career do not get enough attention in the academic world. A significant number of South Asian women must engage in precarious jobs that are not consistent with their skills and qualifications. Here, I recruited South Asian immigrant women who hold a teaching certificate in Ontario and are coping with the secondary-education labour market and/or other related jobs in Toronto. Guided by a Critical Race Feminist perspective, I used interpretive inquiry as a research methodology to facilitate participants telling their struggles, challenges, and negotiations of their everyday lives while living in a large urban center like Toronto. My analysis of this research shows that these South Asian groups of women must overcome barriers that are similar to many other non-racialized female professional immigrants - but as racialized female immigrants, they also face more challenges in accessing and coping with their current professions. My findings suggest that policymakers should focus on an adaptable labour-market transition process for these professional groups after migration. This could also be helpful for other racialized groups in general. Promulgation to eliminate systematic barriers through various forms is needed to decrease the substantial existence of teacher diversity gap in Ontario. Therefore, this study extends the available literature by considering voices of racialized immigrant women, thereby addressing some existing gaps in policy framework.

Capital Contradictions in the Age of Incorporation: Queer and Trans Materialism at Work - Oswin, Natalie; Mills, Suzanne (Geoforum, 2025)
...In this paper, we aim to contribute to the scholarly literatures and related policy debates on LGBTQ+ work and life that [the Toronto-based advocacy organization] Egale highlights, and to bring these debates into economic geography and queer and trans geographies, fields which have heretofore only minimally examined sexual orientation and gender identity and/in the workplace.

Rethinking Feminist History and Theory: Essays on Gender, Class, and Labour - Pasolli, Lisa; Smith, Julia (University of Toronto Press, 2025)
Rethinking Feminist History and Theory considers the past, present, and future of feminist history and theory, emphasizing how feminism has influenced the histories of gender, class, and labour, and their intersections. This vibrant collection, inspired by the work of historian and women’s studies scholar Joan Sangster, features essays from academics across multiple disciplines, highlighting the dynamism of feminist historical scholarship in Canada. The book explores questions such as: How has women’s resistance and radicalism been expressed, lived, represented, and repressed over the past century? How do we research these phenomena? How do we situate feminism in relation to other movements for egalitarian social change? Contributors explicitly address these recurring themes, aiming to chart new directions for future research and teaching. While primarily Canadian-focused, the collection includes global perspectives, with contributions from scholars in Chile, Finland, Sweden, and the UK. These essays emphasize the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration, incorporating insights from labour studies, political economy, anthropology, legal studies, and feminist theory. Ultimately, Rethinking Feminist History and Theory engages deeply with Sangster’s rich and wide-ranging work to understand and interpret women’s experiences. It seeks to inspire future scholarship and teaching in feminist history and theory, showcasing the ongoing relevance and adaptability of feminist perspectives. – Publisher's description
OCLC: 1445896471
Keywords: Feminism Canada History; Feminist theory Canada History; Femmes Activité politique; Femmes Conditions sociales; Féminisme Canada Histoire; Théorie féministe Canada Histoire; Women Legal status; laws; etc; Women Political activity; Women Social conditions

Labour, Settler Colonialism, and Economies of Extraction: The Wages of Settlement - Pasternak, Shiri (Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context, 2025)
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.
https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945246.003.0084

Achieving a Caregiver-Friendly Workplace Standard for Canadian Carer-Workers: An Ex Ante Evaluation of Potential Uptake - Patterson, Ashleigh; Williams, Allison (Evaluation and Program Planning, 2025)
With the assistance of a Committee of experts, McMaster University partnered with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) to develop the Caregiver Inclusive and Accommodating Organizations Standard (B701-17). The Standard provides workplace guidelines to better accommodate carer-workers through building carer-friendly workplace programs. A qualitative ex ante evaluation was undertaken to determine stakeholders’ (n=17) views regarding the significance and potential uptake of the Standard. This involved seeking feedback from stakeholders in various types of organizations across Canada, after they had read the draft Standard. Following transcription, interviews were thematically analyzed, resulting in four themes: (1) necessity; (2) impact of employer size; (3) motivators for implementation, and (4) use as an educational tool. Although initially in its early stages, the Standard now provides a key tool to improve accommodations for carer-workers.
Keywords: Accommodations; Carer-workers; Employers; Standard; ex-ante evaluation; qualitative evaluation

Realities of Precarity in Canada's Seasonal Fields: Struggles, Advocacy, and Restricted Spaces and Voices - Patterson, Dominica (University of Ottawa, 2025)
The following thesis examines the complex reality of temporary migration within Canada's agricultural sector by investigating the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). The relevance of this inquiry hosts far-reaching implications for not only the wellbeing of migrant workers, but for the Canadian food-system, as well as migrant sending states. Furthermore, this research contributes additional knowledge and insights regarding the evolving interconnections between the climate and migration crisis that host critical impacts for Canada and the world moreover. In analyzing the impact of the SAWP on migrant workers' lives through two case studies, the project explores the interplay between climate change, globalization, neoliberalism, and liberalization in shaping the precarity faced by migrant workers in Canada. Despite the commonly advertised benefits of the SAWP, the study finds that structural barriers and power imbalances limit the realization of these benefits for migrant workers. The study ultimately explores the divided calls for reform across the sector, revealing the influence of widespread industry malpractice, and the presence of entrenched power hierarchies that have served to dominate the scope and direction of change. The research finds that the SAWP's structure and the broader context of inequalities related to globalization and neoliberalism hinder migrant workers' ability to leverage their assets and improve their livelihoods in Canada.

A Great Place To Work. How Best Workplaces Affect How Senior Women Perceive Inclusion and Fairness - Perrin, Thibault; Vuilmet, Angélique (Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations, 2025)
In this research, we investigated how senior women perceive working in workplaces that have received the Great Place to Work® label in France, compared to those in other workplaces. Our data came from the anonymous Trust Index© survey of 346,516 respondents from 418 organizations. We used hierarchical linear regression to examine the impact of work in such workplaces on perceptions of inclusion and fairness, as a function of respondent age and gender. Our findings, compared to those reported by Carberry and Meyers (2017) for the United States, suggest that best workplaces may influence these perceptions more strongly in France. While this award serves as a barrier against the sexist double standard of aging, it has a limited effect on how senior women perceive inclusion. Our research contributes to contemporary social exchange theory on intra-organizational social structuration based on age and gender. We suggest that employment branding labels should consider demographic characteristics prior to promoting a workplace as fair and inclusive for all employees, especially in the case of senior women in France.
Keywords: Contemporary Social Exchange Theory; Double Standard of Aging; Double standard du vieillissement; Employment Branding Label; Equité; Fairness; Gender; Genre; Great Place to Work; Inclusion; Label employeur; Théorie contemporaine de l’échange social

“Who Gave You Permission to Have This Idea?”: Collective Creation and Emancipatory Pedagogy Under Unfree Labour - Perry, J. Adam (International Journal of Lifelong Education, 2025)
This article reflects on the pedagogical tensions that emerged through a collective play creation process with migrant farm workers employed under Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s conception of emancipation, the article considers how participants engaged in a theatre-based project that explored their lived experiences of unfree labour. While the process opened space for collective self-expression and aesthetic rupture, it also exposed the ambivalence and risk entangled with acts of visibility within systems of surveillance and control. Through an analysis of post-performance dialogue, the article contends that critical pedagogy under constraint must reckon with refusal and partial subjectification as politically meaningful. Emancipatory education, in this view, may emerge not through the orchestration of overt resistance, but through the negotiation of fragile and embodied expressions that unsettle dominant scripts.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397624599_Who_gave_you_permission_to_have_this_idea_collective_creation_and_emancipatory_pedagogy_under_unfree_labour
Keywords: Migrant farm workers; emancipatory education; unfree labour

Policing in Canada: Concepts, Actors and Challenges - Prado, Grégory Gómez del; Leman-Langlois, Stéphane (Éditions JFD, 2025)
Drawing on both the academic field and homeland security practices, this book addresses the essential themes in the study of policing: its origin, theorization and structure. It focuses on the public police in Canada, making it a unique and original perspective. It adopts a critical approach to the fundamental aspects of policing, including patrol, investigation, intelligence, private policing, and transnational policing. It also highlights the issues of legitimacy and image management, as well as the contemporary challenges organizations and individuals face. Reflecting the authors’ background, this book brings a criminological perspective to the study of Canadian policing while remaining rooted in its day-to-day practice. As such, it will appeal to those interested in the workings of traditional policing and those wishing to explore the more complex aspects of policing in society.

Henry Orenstein’s Mine Mill Local 598 (1956): A Correction and Reproduction - Quinlan, Elizabeth (Labour / Le Travail, 2025)
Discusses Orenstein's painting, "Mine Mill Local 598," which was reproduced on the cover of Labour/Le Travail, no. 93 (Spring 2024). Included are new, colour reproductions of the panels of the 39-foot-long mural, which Orenstein painted during a 1956 residency in Sudbury. The painting was thought to be no longer extant because of a 2008 fire, but in fact it is still held in the Sudbury union's collection.

Standing Up to Big Nickel: The Story of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Strike, 1958 - Quinlan, Elizabeth (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025)
All miners and smelter workers know the folly of going on strike when their employer holds a stockpile. In 1958 the International Nickel Company had enough nickel on hand to guarantee sales for at least six months. Despite this, fourteen thousand miners and smeltermen in Sudbury, Ontario, downed their tools and struck against the corporate titan of the mining industry. Standing Up to Big Nickel is a comprehensive portrait of a pivotal strike by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a union that has inspired exceptional levels of solidarity among its members. The Cold War and the resulting instabilities in the Canadian labour movement form the backdrop to Elizabeth Quinlan’s engrossing analysis. The union straddled the line, she shows, between its historical commitment to working-class struggle and the newly restrictive legal landscape of the postwar era. Retrospective accounts by surviving union members, leaders, family, and community members bring to life the history of a distinctive group of workers who sweated over smelter furnaces and toiled underground in perilous conditions. Quinlan traces the events before, during, and after one of Canada’s greatest strikes in both magnitude and duration. Featuring biographical sketches and scenes based on archival and documentary data, Standing Up to Big Nickel captures an intensely dramatic juncture in Canadian labour history. –Publisher's description