(WPO1a) Critical Perspectives on Employment Relations

This session explores critical perspectives on employment relations within occupations and organizations. Tags: Travail Et Professions

Organizers: Vivian Shalla, University of Guelph, Tracey Adams, University of Western Ontario, Karen Hughes, University of Alberta

Presentations

Susan Cake, Athabasca University

Negotiating Change: State Interventions in Public-Sector Collective Bargaining

This study examines state interventions into public-sector collective bargaining, unraveling both the historical trends and the contemporary shifts in government strategies. For decades, governments have intervened in public-sector bargaining to shape the final outcomes. Legislation restricting public-sector workers’ right to strike, ending labour disruptions, limiting the scope of negotiations, and imposing contract provisions have been common across jurisdictions and across political party lines in Canada. In recent years, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a series of decisions, extended Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection to collective bargaining and striking. In theory, these court decisions reduce governments’ ability to interfere with public-sector bargaining. In practice, however, the impact of these decisions has been both complex and limited. An analysis of government legislation finds the rate of government interference has increased markedly since 2000, despite Supreme Court decisions seemingly restricting the scope for such intervention. Surprisingly, the rate of interventions has almost tripled. Further, the analysis shows strategic adaptations by governments in response to the Supreme Court decisions such as altering the type and form of legislative interference they employ. The first stage of this research includes a comprehensive analysis of the frequency of state interventions into public-sector bargaining in Canada since 2000, shedding light on a notable increase in the rate of legislative interventions. This analysis looks at two types of state legislative interventions, dividing them into episodic and persistent interventions. Episodic interventions are generally single legislative events that only impact a select group of workers or a specific issue. Persistent interventions attempt to change the legislative landscape of public-sector bargaining. Examples of episodic interventions include back-to-work legislation or specific contract provisions that are legislated. Persistent interventions include essential services legislation, legislation impacting the right to strike as well as legislation impacting union governance. These different types of legislative interventions are then divided according to different periods marked by key Supreme Court of Canada decisions: pre- Health Services (2000-2007), post- Health Services (2008-2015) and post- Saskatchewan Federation of Labour ( SFL ) (2016-2022). The findings from this analysis demonstrate that the rate of state intervention after Health Services and again after SFL escalated. As well, governments seem to prefer to intervene in public-sector collective bargaining through episodic interventions, particularly back to work legislation, rather than persistent interventions. These observations suggest “permanent exceptionalism” as coined by Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz, continues to be a feature of public-sector bargaining. Overall, the data suggests expanding Charter protections has not reduced the rate of government interference in public-sector collective bargaining. In fact, the rate of interference has increased. However, the true evolution lies in how governments have adapted their intervention tactics to mitigate legal risks in response to Charter jurisprudence. The shift in the kinds of interventions used suggests that governments have shifted their approach to legislating contracts since Health Services , moving away from imposing settlements and focusing on creating the conditions that help them obtained their desired settlements instead. These findings suggest that Canadian governments are committed to using their legislative power to advance their interests as employers, actively responding to and attempting to head off court decisions. Consequently, workers and their unions ought not to overly rely upon Charter challenges to protect their interests.

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Non-presenting authors: Jason Foster, Athabasca University; Bob Barnetson, Athabasca University

Noemi Rosario Martinez, Simon Fraser University

Punishing and Privatizing Public Educators

Public education is fraught, and those who work in public schools experience and reflect many of the ideological and economic changes occurring around them. There emerge tensions not just between the different levels of school governance, from the school’s own administration to the federal government, but also between educators and outside stakeholders such as parents and community members, as well as between educators as workers and their employers. In the US, these tensions have repeatedly surfaced throughout recent history, from the mandates and firings that occurred at schools during the Red Scare, to the media panic around an allegedly left leaning national history curriculum, to today’s “culture war” in which educators are portrayed as indoctrinating children into a liberal lifestyle. This culture war is playing out amidst changes that have solidified in previous decades around accountability and parent choice in schools. Unlike in the past however, it is consequential that there exists today a more robust system of charter schools and state funding for private schools than during past waves of anti-education rhetoric and policy. My research operates within the framework of Labour Process Theory by centering the qualitative experience of work as a valuable source of insight into class struggle, partially demonstrated by control over and knowledge of the labour process (Braverman 1974, Thompson and Smith 2010). This research was conducted through fieldwork, particularly twelve semi-structured interviews with educators (including one principal and one school district employee) in the state of Florida along with observation of School Board and School Advisory Council meetings. This paper draws on notions of subjectivity and interiority to improve understandings around how the qualitative experience of educators as workers is a central locus in the neoliberal and right-wing push to dismantle public education, particularly for those who work in conservative environments. Educators’ statements in interviews often reflected the tensions around policies and measures with emphasis on accountability trends like state level standards accompanied by testing, which have restricted them from expressing their subjectivity through their work–this further exacerbated by lack of time due to problems like large class sizes and difficulty dealing with student behaviour. New legislation such as the ‘Stop WOKE Act’ also creates fear that can prevent educators from speaking with students about different aspects of gender, sexual, and racial identity, further constraining their expression and connection to their interiority through work. I argue that these changes in the labour process are one element that push workers out of this field, and thus serve to contribute, to some degree, to taking the management of education out of public hands and into private ones. Many public school educators discussed their uncertainty and anxiety about education as a long-term career, while educators I spoke to who worked at (by definition, privately managed and outside of the authority of the public institutions like School Board) charter schools discussed their satisfaction with their instructional autonomy and greater ease of removing misbehaving students from their classroom. Educators’ experience of their subjectivity at work is under examined as a vector for privatization and neoliberalism when compared with other aspects of this movement, such as political contributions towards charter school organizations and campaigns, anti-union sentiment, and austerity budgets for schools, though these are all hugely important factors. This shift also owes some of its existence to pressures exerted by parents and political organizations, such as Moms for Liberty, which I assert have increasing influence in the management and control of education. Ultimately this paper will discuss how these changes in education connect to the idea within Labour Process Theory that the labour process functions as a site of class struggle.

Nicole Jokinen-Hurl, Trent University

Contractors, or Employees? A deep-dive into the Identity and Structure of Gig Economy Workers

In December 2023, Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey revealed that “135,000 Canadians between the ages of 16 and 69 provided ride-sharing services in 2023, an increase of 48.1 per cent compared to 2022. Meanwhile, the number of people who provided delivery services through apps climbed 19.2 per cent from the previous year to 272,000 people.” (2024). With increasing evidence that gig economy jobs such as rideshare and food delivery services are rapidly spreading through the Canadian labour market, it is important to explore these workers’ experiences and identities, and examine the legal challenges they face in asserting their workplace rights. This paper will present the results of my Undergraduate Honors Thesis project, which explores the experiences of food delivery and ride-share workers in Peterborough, Ontario. Participants were recruited digitally, via the online platforms Facebook, Reddit, and Quora, as well as in person, through the community of Peterborough. Through nine open-ended interviews conducted with anonymous participants working in food delivery and rideshare jobs through apps such as UberEats and YDrive in Peterborough, I explore the question of gig workers’ identity, that is, how they see themselves within the context of the dispute over whether they are independent contractors or employees. According to the research that has occurred, approximately 66.7% of participants believe that they are contractors, while 22.2% believe they are employees, 11.1% believing they are a combination of the two. The results of this research provides a localised insight into just how heavily affected individuals are by the state of these gig jobs, departing from bigger cities’ perspectives through the eyes of more ‘geographically tethered’ workers. They are argued within this paper to be under the strain and precarity of lack of available benefits, as well as constant surveillance through consumerism. The lack of awareness and identity of these workers is believed to also contribute to this strain. Although all of the interviews have occurred as of January 28th, 2024, this research writing is still in progress, expected to be fully completed before May 2024. This paper is believed to be extremely vital for discussion and review regarding the “(WPO2) Gig economy, labour movements and platform capitalism in the Global South and Global North” session occurring this June, as the gig economy continues to grow and gain more awareness to Canadians.