32 research outputs found
Book Review: Working towards Equity by Dustin Galer
No full textBook Review of Working towards Equity: Disability Rights Activism and Employment in Late Twentieth-Century Canada. By Dustin Galer. University of Toronto Press, 2018. 309 pages. ISBN 97814875013
Disabled Capitalists: Exploring the Intersections of Disability and Identity Formation in the World of Work
No full textMany people with disabilities share the mainstream ethos that participation in the competitive workforce constitutes a primary feature of their identity. While unpaid work may fulfill the desire to be productive and provide a sense of purpose and contribution, the cultural imperative to achieve personal autonomy partly through material independence situates paid employment at the centre of personal identity formation. While disability activists struggle to carve out an empowered collective identity instilled with rights-based protections, many people with disabilities identify with the liberal individualism upon which participation in the capitalist labour market is largely based. Individuals with disabilities seek not simply to shrug off an identity defined by burden, but to claim an identity marked by self-fulfillment. Within the world of paid work, then, tension and compatibility co-exist regarding the nature and value of identity development for people with disabilities. Keywords: disability, work, employment, identity, identity politics, disability activis
Disabled Capitalists: Exploring the Intersections of Disability and Identity Formation in the World of Work
No full text"Hire the Handicapped!": Disability Rights, Economic Integration and Working Lives in Toronto, Ontario, 1962-2005
No full textThis dissertation, “‘Hire the Handicapped!’: Disability Rights, Economic Integration and Working Lives in Toronto, Ontario, 1962-2005,” argues that work significantly shaped the experience of disability during this period. Barriers to mainstream employment opportunities gave rise to multiple disability movements that challenged the social and economic framework which marginalized generations of people with disabilities. Using a critical analysis of disability in archival records, personal collections, government publications and a series of interviews, I demonstrate how demands for greater access among disabled people to paid employment stimulated the development of a new discourse of disability in Canada. Including disability as a variable in historical research reveals how family advocates helped people living in institutions move out into the community and rehabilitation professionals played an increasingly critical role in the lives of working-age adults with disabilities, civil rights activists crafted a new consumer-led vision of social and economic integration. Separated by different philosophies and bases of support, disability activists and allies found a common purpose in their pursuit of economic integration.
The focus on employment issues among increasingly influential disability activists during this period prompted responses from three key players in the Canadian labour market. Employers embraced the rhetoric and values of disability rights but operated according to a different set of business principles and social attitudes that inhibited the realization of equity and a ‘level playing field.’ Governments facilitated the development of a progressive discourse of disability and work, but ultimately recoiled from disability activism to suit emergent political priorities. Labour organizations similarly engaged disability activists, but did so cautiously, with union support largely contingent upon the satisfaction of traditional union business first and foremost. As disability activists and their allies railed against systematic discrimination, people with disabilities lived and worked in the community, confronting barriers and creating their own circles of awareness in the workplace. Just as multiple sites of disability activism found resolution in the sphere of labour, the redefinition of disability during this period reflected a shared project involving collective and individual action.Ph
Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
No full text‘I Make 40 Cents An Hour. What Do You Make?’ Labour Militancy at CNIB Sheltered Workshops, 1966-1984
No full textNerbas, Don – Dominion of Capital: The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914-1947
No full text"Hire the Handicapped!": Disability Rights, Economic Integration and Working Lives in Toronto, Ontario, 1962-2005
No full textThis dissertation, “‘Hire the Handicapped!’: Disability Rights, Economic Integration and Working Lives in Toronto, Ontario, 1962-2005,” argues that work significantly shaped the experience of disability during this period. Barriers to mainstream employment opportunities gave rise to multiple disability movements that challenged the social and economic framework which marginalized generations of people with disabilities. Using a critical analysis of disability in archival records, personal collections, government publications and a series of interviews, I demonstrate how demands for greater access among disabled people to paid employment stimulated the development of a new discourse of disability in Canada. Including disability as a variable in historical research reveals how family advocates helped people living in institutions move out into the community and rehabilitation professionals played an increasingly critical role in the lives of working-age adults with disabilities, civil rights activists crafted a new consumer-led vision of social and economic integration. Separated by different philosophies and bases of support, disability activists and allies found a common purpose in their pursuit of economic integration.
The focus on employment issues among increasingly influential disability activists during this period prompted responses from three key players in the Canadian labour market. Employers embraced the rhetoric and values of disability rights but operated according to a different set of business principles and social attitudes that inhibited the realization of equity and a ‘level playing field.’ Governments facilitated the development of a progressive discourse of disability and work, but ultimately recoiled from disability activism to suit emergent political priorities. Labour organizations similarly engaged disability activists, but did so cautiously, with union support largely contingent upon the satisfaction of traditional union business first and foremost. As disability activists and their allies railed against systematic discrimination, people with disabilities lived and worked in the community, confronting barriers and creating their own circles of awareness in the workplace. Just as multiple sites of disability activism found resolution in the sphere of labour, the redefinition of disability during this period reflected a shared project involving collective and individual action.Ph
Climate Change and Work
No full textAs part a comprehensive review of climate change literature, this paper examines the relationship between climate change and jobs. For 25 years, scientists have warned us of climate change and our need to create a sustainable society to mitigate and adapt to it. Though this process will be difficult, the Global Climate Network, an alliance of independent think tanks, estimates that the development and wide use of low-carbon technology will create millions of jobs globally. In Canada, the lack of political leadership on climate change has increased carbon emissions, stimulated an industry of climate denial, missed out on green jobs and clean energy investments. A proactive approach to climate change leads to job creation. Pending an effective political response, it is urgent and necessary to create a movement to “repair the planet” by involving trade unionists, environmental activists, academics, educators and journalists. To the extent that such action “from the bottom up” is effective, it will combat climate change and result in new jobs in a new, sustainable economy.Work in a Warming World (W3
On the Sherlocks, Jane Coleman and County Kildare in the Eighteen Forties
No full textIn the late 1980s and early 1990s the author acquired about 30,000 letters written mainly in the 1840s. These pertained to estates throughout Ireland managed by the firm of James Robert Stewart and Joseph Kincaid, hereafter denoted SK. Until the letters – called the SK correspondence in what follows – became the author’s property, they had not seen light of day since the 1840s. Addressed mainly to the firm’s office in Dublin, they were written by landlords, tenants, the partners in SK, local agents, etc. After about 200 years in operation as a land agency, the firm in which members of the Stewart family were the principal partners – Messrs J. R. Stewart & Son(s) from the mid- 1880s onwards – ceased operations in the mid-1980s. Since 1994 the author has been researching the SK correspondence of the 1840s. It gives many new insights into economic and social conditions in Ireland during the decade of the great famine, and into the operation of Ireland’s most important land agency during those years. It is intended ultimately to publish details on several of the estates managed by SK in a study more comprehensive than the present article, in book form. The proposed title is Landlords, tenants, famine: business of an Irish land agency in the 1840s, a draft of which has now been completed. A majority of the letters in that study are on themes some of which one might expect - rents, distraint (seizure of assets in lieu of rent); ‘voluntary’ surrender of land in return for ‘compensation’ upon quitting quietly; formal ejectment (a matter of last resort on estates managed by SK); landlordassisted emigration (on a scale much more extensive than most historians of Ireland in the 1840s appear to believe); petitions from tenants; complaints by tenants, both about other tenants and about local agents; landlord-financed and other relief of distress both before and during the great famine; major works of improvement (on almost all of the estates managed by SK which have been investigated in detail in the draft book); applications by SK, on behalf of landlords, for government loans to finance improvements; recommendations of agricultural advisers hired by SK, etc. Thus, most of the SK correspondence is about aspects of estate management. But the firm of SK was not only a manager of land. The correspondence reveals only two estates in Kildare, each of them relatively small, managed by SK in the 1840s. These were the lands of the Sherlocks near Naas and of Jane Coleman in the Kilcullen district. The correspondence on these properties differs substantively from most of those discussed in detail in the draft of Landlords, tenants, famine: first, it is relatively small in quantity, and secondly, it contains relatively little on the core aspects of estate management indicated above. Much of that on the Sherlocks focuses on misfortunes among family members, while the correspondence on Jane Coleman highlights the benevolence of that proprietor.
