Just Labour (E-Journal - York University)
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Still the Most Difficult Revolution? A Report on a Conference on Women and Unions Held at Cornell University, (Nov 2003) in Honour of Alice H. Cook’s 100th Birthday
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Achieving Public Policy Objectives Through Collective Agreements: The Project Agreement Model for Public Construction in British Columbia’s Transportation Sector
Get PDFThe Construction of the $1.2 billion Vancouver Island Highway Project provided an opportunity for the building trades unions and the Government of BC to negotiate an innovative collective agreement that included union membership, training for local residents and members of equity groups, new employment opportunities for members of designated equity groups and a comprehensive health and safety program.The Project implemented the most comprehensive system of tracking progress in employment equity in BC’s history. By its completion, women, First Nations, persons with disabilities and visible minorities accounted for just under 20% of total hours worked in an industry where 2% representation is the norm. Over 94% of payroll went to local residents, ensuring their communities the benefits of this major capital project. Finally, the health and safety record was significantly better than on any comparable construction project. Far from being an impediment to the efficient and timely completion of this major construction project, the collective agreement made it possible to deliver training, employment opportunities and regional developmen
Extreme Organising: A Case Study of Hibernia
Get PDFThe article is a first hand account of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) attempt to organise workers on Hibernia's offshore oil drilling platform. Documented are the problems of accessing workers on a worksite in the Atlantic and the challenges of inter-union rivalry to successful union organising campaigns. The paper provides a chronology of the campaign from its beginnings in 1997. Although the CEP won a contested certification in 2001, the struggle at Hibernia continues
Tears at Work: Gender, Interaction, and Emotional Labour
Get PDFFor a long time, it has been believed that it is possible to leave our emotions at the threshold of the workplace. This excessively simplifies the complexity and heterogeneity of work, leading to an underestimation of the effects of work on health. Our objective is to understand one particular form of the expression of workers’ emotions: crying at work, which may be linked to an excess of emotional labour or to the impossibility of its achievement. Thus, differences between male and female crying, at least at work, may be explained not only by a gendered socialisation of individuals, but also by the sexual division of emotional labour. This imposes an emotional overload on women, since a more intensive management of emotions is demanded of them at work. Nous avons cru pendant longtemps qu'il était possible de laisser nos émotions à la porte des organisations. Cela simplifie excessivement la complexité et l'hétérogénéité du travail et, par conséquent, on finit par sous-estimer les effets du travail sur la santé. Notre objectif est de comprendre une forme particulière de l'expression des émotions des travailleuses et travailleurs : les larmes au travail qui peuvent être associées, soit à une surcharge de travail émotionnel, soit à l’impossibilité de son accomplissement. Ainsi, les différences entre les larmes des femmes et des hommes, au moins au travail, peuvent être expliquées, non seulement par les différences sexuées dans la socialisation des individus, mais aussi par la division sexuelle du travail émotionnel et des émotions qui impose une surcharge émotive plus prononcée aux femmes en demandant une gestion plus intensive de leurs émotions au travail
Public Exclusion, Under Funding and the Intensification of Work: Universities and the Erosion of Democracy in Ontario
Get PDFAs public anxiety over access to education increases, public-sector workers are directly able to perceive the extent to which exclusion, rather than public- access, now characterizes post-secondary education in an era of privatization. This paper will address some of the recent experiences of university workers who are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Here we shall identify three issues facing workers in the sector including: i) the privatization of universities through government policy shifts, ii) the employer-led reorganization of work, and iii) university workers’ campaigns to resist and transform these conditions. For public sector workers, decreasing access to social programs, under funding and the intensification of work are very clearly linked. As the restructured state brings public services more fully into the market and increasingly under the direct control of a global capitalist class, democratic rights are eroded. Still, this privatization dynamic is not uni-directional. Public sector workers and their community allies have been part of the history of state restructuring through their conscious acts of resistance, collective bargaining strategies, militancy and coalition-building. À mesure qu’augmente l’inquiétude du public au sujet de l’éducation, le personnel du secteur public est en mesure de constater directement que l’exclusion, plutôt que l’accès du public, caractérise l’éducation postsecondaire en ces temps de privatisation. L’article traite de certaines des expériences récentes de membres du personnel universitaire qui font partie du Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique (SCFP). Il porte plus précisément sur trois problèmes du personnel du secteur public : i) la privatisation des universités à la faveur de la modification des politiques gouvernementales, ii) la réorganisation du travail dirigée par l’employeur, et iii) les campagnes des travailleurs et travailleuses universitaires visant à résister et à transformer ces conditions. Pour le personnel du secteur public, la diminution de l’accès aux programmes sociaux, l’insuffisance du financement et l’intensification du travail sont nettement liées. À mesure que la restructuration de l’État met des services publics sur le marché privé et les place directement sous le contrôle d’une classe capitaliste mondiale, les droits démocratiques s’affaiblissent. La dynamique de la privatisation n’est cependant pas unidirectionnelle. Le personnel du secteur public et ses alliés communautaires ont participé à la restructuration de l’État par leur résistance réfléchie, leurs stratégies de négociation collective, leur militantisme et l’établissement de coalitions
Labour Protection for Self-Employed Workers
Get PDFSelf-employed workers have an legal ambiguous status. Traditionally self-employment is equated with entrepreneurship and legally it is considered to be a form of independent contracting and thus outside the ambit of labour protection and collective bargaining laws. But the evidence suggests that most of the self-employed, especially those who do not employ other workers, are much more like employees than they are like entrepreneurs. Instead of attempting to draw a new line between employment and independent contracting for the purpose of determining the scope of labour protection, collective bargaining, and social insurance laws, all workers, including the self-employed, who depend on the sale of their capacity to work should be covered by these laws, unless there are compelling public policy reasons for a narrower definition
