2025
Since the mid-2010s there has been a proliferation of “ally toolkits” that purport to offer guidance or actionable ways for those who view themselves as “allies” or supporters of various movements. The politically resurgent movements of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, for example, have been accompanied by and formed the backdrop of a considerable literature of toolkits produced for would-be settler allies. These toolkits are written for an imagined or desired ally and imagine ends or political horizons toward which allyship is striving. These toolkits can be understood as documents of political theory in order to critically engage the models for political change that are being advanced. Ultimately, allyship and the terms on which it is established within the examined toolkits are situated as an overly thin political theory when confronting social forces of ongoing settler colonialism and racial capitalism.
Available at https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v36i1.187149
This article examines labour agency among food delivery couriers in Croatia and Serbia, two Central and Eastern European markets where public protest and legal actions against platforms remain scarce. Drawing on 53 interviews with food delivery couriers in Croatia and Serbia, the paper identifies a triple constraint in the form of algorithmic control, subcontracting model of work organization, and structurally weak institutions that divert the agency away from collective channels and into two individualized repertoires: strategic non-compliance and strategic misappropriation. Strategic non-compliance refers to individual actions such as task selection, rejections, and timed logoffs that deliberately bend or break platform rules with the aim of maximizing profit. Strategic misappropriations involve couriers’ use of subcontracting and institutional weaknesses to externalize costs, thereby increasing their take-home earnings. These individual actions are not just responses to production regimes but constitutive elements of platform capitalism as it materializes in hybrid institutional regimes.
Available at https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v36i1.187149
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.
Available at https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v36i1.187149
The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) is a circular migration scheme in which workers migrate from Mexico and the Caribbean on a temporary basis to fill the labour gaps in the agricultural sector throughout Canada. The Okanagan Valley in British Columbia (B.C) where this study is situated, is one of the many regions workers migrate to. Here workers fall victim to numerous forms of exploitation and abuse as a result of the specific program structure and employer practices. This study examines the structural state of vulnerability that migrant workers experience, specifically analyzing how this shapes their ability to form solidarity bonds with one another in the program. Through Walia’s theory of border imperialism and Foucault’s theory of biopower, this paper looks at the larger structures that shape the program and how this translates into the localized experiences of workers. Engagement with collective action becomes a central experience for workers in the SAWP as they navigate living and working in Canada.
Available at https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v35i1.187144
This research investigates the contexts and conditions of work in tug services at the Port of Vancouver. The report first provides historical and political economic context for this work, informed by extensive documentary research in the archives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 400 (the marine section) and ILWU Canada, as well as select online archival databases. After establishing this contextual foundation, the report moves on to an account of the themes emerging from 13 long-form, qualitative interviews with current and former tugboat workers, union representatives, and industry experts. Data from these interviews revealed high levels of concern amongst workers on the issues of workplace health and safety, benefits and remuneration, job security, and industry regulation and standards. Based on the results of the archival research and qualitative interviews, the report makes five primary recommendations for how work in Vancouver’s tugboat sector could be improved. These include, in order of complexity and challenge: 1) the creation and maintenance of a publicly controlled tugboat fleet to service the Port of Vancouver; 2) a return to the former practice of centralized bargaining in pursuit of an industry standard agreement; 3) exploration of the feasibility of an “area of service” system of union successorship tied to the service area rather than the workplace for the BC tug sector; 4) the planning and implementation of multi-union campaigns for improved technical standards and more robust regulatory oversight in the industry; and, 5) a dedicated and consistent effort on the part of ILWU Local 400 to organize currently unorganized workers in the tug industry. Taken together, the recommendations compose a suite of strategic commitments that hold the potential to improve and formally standardize conditions for tugboat workers in Vancouver and beyond.
Available at https://shorturl.at/QdQ64
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2024
Drawing on the framework of racial capitalism, this paper highlights two distinct but related dynamics of racial differentiation in relation to Amazon in Greater Toronto Area (GTA): at the level of the region’s broader political economy and within Amazon’s warehouses. I outline the ways in which the e-commerce giant both exploits and (re)makes the racialized geography of the GTA. Amazon’s capitalization on neoliberal austerity and corporate welfare perpetuates class and racialized inequalities. These processes adversely affect these suburban localities and negatively impact employment in both quantitative and qualitative ways. In this context, I argue that Amazon’s success has been, in no small part, due to its exploitation of Canada’s racially stratified labour market. Within the warehouse, the notion that digital Taylorism produces an undifferentiated workforce and a uniform labour processis interrogated. Instead, workers’ own accounts point to the ways digital technologies enable management to generate racial/ethnic differentiation and further squeeze value from workers. By situating Amazon within this specific socio-historical and political economic context, I demonstrate that the GTA offers a case study through which to examine the racial dynamics of digital capitalism and show that racialized and gendered social relations inflect the uneven experiences of algorithmic management.
Available at https://alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/article/view/22563/18354
This paper examines the role of labor and community left populist organizing in the Tax Amazon campaign based in Seattle, WA, USA. As a case study within a larger project that examines manifestations of both right-wing and left-wing populism in urban spaces, the paper presents a lens through which urban populism may be examined in relation to new forms of labor organizing, with a specific focus on the dynamics of left populist resistance. The Tax Amazon campaign is situated within a longer trajectory of contemporary left populist organizing in Seattle. Emerging from a previous campaign that resulted in Seattle City Council instituting a $15 minimum wage, the Tax Amazon campaign brought together labor and community organizations to pressure Seattle City Council to introduce a corporate tax to generate funding for affordable housing initiatives. The campaign was met with resistance from the local business community, as well as some local trade unions. Being a leading corporate figure in this opposition, Amazon emerged as a key target of the left populist campaign. Through this study, we ask, what role did labor-community coalitions play in shaping the emergence of a broader left populist politics at the municipal scale in Seattle? Building from the experience of the Tax Amazon campaign, the paper reflects on the dynamics of resistance to corporate power through labor- and community-based left populist organizing. Reflecting a shift in U.S. politics at the municipal scale, Seattle offers a key case through which to assess whether and how urban populism may give rise to new forms of labor organizing. The paper also considers the ways in which the simultaneity of the Tax Amazon campaign and the Movement for Black Lives to ‘Defund the Police’ expanded the scope of political demands in the context of Seattle’s racialized urban precarity. In its conclusion, the paper draws from the analysis to reflect on both the broader prospects and limitations of left populist organising.
Available at https://doi.org/10.1163/24714607-bja10160
The narrative of structural transformation, based on the experience of global North, posits that the process of development involves gradual ‘modernisation’ of the overall structure of the economy, where the traditional/low-productivity sectors give way to and support the modern/high-productivity sectors. However, much of the global South has not been able to experience this process along the anticipated lines, as a significant proportion of their workforce is still engaged in the low-productivity agriculture and non-agriculture informal sectors for their livelihood. We highlight that the dominant narrative does not take into account the importance of specific historical conditions, particularly the role of colonialism, that facilitated the process of structural transformation in the global North. The altered structural conditions in the post-colonial era, both at global and domestic level, question the possibilities of a similar process unfolding in the global South. In this regard, we analyse India’s development experience, both at macro and micro level, focusing on two villages of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, surveyed in 1994 and later in 2018. We illustrate that the process of labour and employment transition across sectors is highly complex and heterogeneous. Rather than being driven solely by productivity growth, the nature and direction of these changes are characterised by economic distress. We argue that the prevailing narrative, which presents a linear understanding focused on productivity differentials across sectors, is inadequate to understand the nature of this transition in the South. Instead, the process needs to be understood in the particular socio-economic and ecological context specific to a given space and time.
Available at https://doi.org/10.1080/07360932.2024.2413507