Just Labour (E-Journal - York University)
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The Proliferation and Consequences of Temporary Help Work: A Cross-Border Comparison
Full text linkIn the summer of 2008, we set out to hear from Ontario’s growing population of temporary help workers, also known as, temporary service workers. Having already conducted studies of temporary help workers in the United States, we sought to compare the working conditions of temporary workers in Ontario to those of workers south of the border. We visited temporary agencies in Toronto and conducted in-depth interviews with over a dozen temporary help workers. Their circumstances are not unlike those of their U.S. counterparts — they are not adequately rewarded for their vital on-call role in contemporary capitalism and they become “stuck” in this relatively new type of work, unable to find and secure full-time employment
Organizing the Curriculum for Labor Consciousness
Full text linkResearch on labor and its treatment in the curriculum of K-12 schools has not been a popular topic. Society’s emphasis on individualism and consumerism has fostered veneration of capitalism throughout public education, with business control of the education policy system. Critical information about the US Labor Movement has been systematically excluded from the public school curriculum, so that labor’s centrality to the flow of history and its contributions to the present status of working people are underappreciated, and neoliberalism threatens public education and teacher unionism around the world. This article describes why and how an alliance of teacher educators, teachers, and unionists are advocating for labor consciousness to be infused in to K-12 schooling. This perspective is presented in Organizing the Curriculum, an edited collection of essays, and is being implemented by the Education & Labor Collaborative, an advocacy group to promote economic, social and political empowerment through education for labor consciousness
Engineering Resistance : Energy Professionals and the 2005 Strike in Neoliberal Ontario
Full text linkIn the summer of 2005, the Society of Energy Professionals Hydro One Local engaged in unprecedented strike action that lasted 105 days. This article documents the strike, and explores how and why it occurred, and with such significant support and participation from the 1000 members of a union that had no militant history. I trace the build-up, progression and resolution of the strike, drawing from Society materials, media reports and ethnographic observation, as well as the insights of elected leaders, staff representatives, and rank and file members of the Society collected through interviews and written questionnaires. I conclude that government policy and management behaviour caused worker anger but that union education, organization and democracy were integral to moving these “professional” workers into job action
Regulation of Child and Adolescent Employment in Alberta
Full text linkAs part of a broader assessment of how well the Government of Alberta’s labour programming contributes to fair and, to a lesser degree, safe workplaces, this study examines how effectively the government enforces the Employment Standards Code provisions regulating child and adolescent employment. Enforcement strategies appear to emphasize softer forms of regulation and thereby create little disincentive for violations. Preliminary research into the employment levels of children (age 9-11) suggests over 11,000 children are employed, some perhaps illegally, and that further inquiry into their employment experiences is warranted
Water Privatization and the Prospects for Trade Union Revitalization in the Public Sector: Case Studies from Bolivia and Peru
Full text linkFurther Tests of the Link Between Unionization, Unemployment, and Employment: Findings from Canadian National and Provincial Data
Full text linkThe Targeted Wage Subsidy: How Program Design Creates Incentives for “Creaming”
Full text linkAcross most developed nations, including Canada, parallel systems of social welfare and employment insurance have increasingly been replaced by programs that emphasize work as a means to achieve welfare goals within the so-called re-employment framework. Various authors have drawn attention to the tension between the goal of long-term sustainable employment, and re-employment-based strategies that emphasize short-term and stand-alone interventions. In this paper, we focus on the implementation of one such program in Canada, the Targeted Wage Subsidy. This program seeks to place the most marginal qualifying participants in employment by offering employers a financial inducement. By paying close attention to the experiences of those tasked with monitoring and implementing the program in Toronto, we identify various ways in which program design elements may systematically disadvantage the intended recipients. These program delivery mechanisms are shaped both in the practices of implementing agents, as well as by the public accountability framework that enforces rigid timelines and reporting requirements, resulting in a practice commonly referred to by employment service providers as “creaming.” Our observations lead us to question whether the target population is, in fact, the one benefiting from these return-to-work supports
Fairness and Opportunity for Choice: The Employee Free Choice Act & the Canadian Model
Full text linkThe authors are engaged in a multi-dimensional project that analyzes Canadian private sector experience under provincial and federal labour statutes. The broad objective of the research is to draw nuanced lessons from the Canadian experience that will inform the debate over labour law reform in the U.S. This commentary reflects the authors’ preliminary research results as they relate to the specific proposals included in the Employee Free Choice Act