Program

Organizing Efforts/Effects

October 23, 2022 from 9:30am EDT to 11:00am EDT

Location: Room Y 314

 

Chair: Camille Robert

Benjamin Anderson, “Building Autonomous Power: Worker Centres and Solidarity Networks in Precarious Times”

From COVID-19 to the so-called labour shortage of late 2021, the last two years have revealed a renewed discourse on labour markets and working conditions. Alongside this discourse, workers in a variety of industries have been organizing to fight the rollbacks, redundancies, and concessions imposed in response to the pandemic and its related financial crisis. From Amazon warehouse workers, to hospitality workers, to informally employed platform workers, the global precarious are rising up.

In addition to traditional labour movement tactics, one tool that has proven powerful and flexible in the COVID period is the autonomous solidarity network. Built from the model of the worker centre, a labour solidarity network is conceived of as a decentralized grouping of workers, organizers and allies, usually operated virtually and at arms-length from formal union structures.

Following the methodological foundation of workers’ inquiry, this presentation reports on interviews with workers and organizers involved with worker centres and solidarity networks, distilling their experiences and observations into a set of common practices that characterize worker organizing efforts taking place in a number of Canadian workplaces, including hospitality, migrant work programs, platform services, and artisanal industries.

Manuel Salamanca Cordona, “Possibilités et limites des organisations syndicales et du syndicalisme communautaire pour la défense des Travailleurs immigrants etnoracisés (TIE) en Québec.”

La présentation a deux buts : décrire quelques évènements historiques entre 1995 et 2019 pour comprendre la fluctuation des relations entre la Fédération de travail du Québec et la Confédération des syndicats nationaux avec l’immigration. Ce but inclus d'analyser la matrice des relations établies entre ces organisations avec le syndicalisme communautaire qui défend les droits des im/migrantes. Ensuite, la présentation compare deux évènements qui ont eu différents résultats pour la justice migrante : d’un côté, l’approbation de la loi 8 en 2014, ce qu’illustre la dispersion de l’action collective entre ces deux acteurs. Une autre, la collaboration du CTI et de l’ATTAP (Association des travailleurs temporaires d’agence de placement) avec la CSN entre 2014 à 2018 pour confronter la question des agences de placement. Les conclusions décrivent les éléments clés pour comprendre les distances, différences et complémentarités entre les organisations syndicales et les organisations de défense des im/migrants. 

Anupam Das,“Interprovincial Unionization and Social Welfare”

In this study, we conduct a quantitative analysis of the relationship between unionization and important measures of social well-being such as income inequality and environmental sustainability. In these areas, it is possible for unions to influence these measures through both their bargaining and political roles, although the environmental measure is perhaps the one least obviously tied to what has been traditionally seen as unions’ collective bargaining 28 mandate. We see to advance the cross-national literature by investigating whether subnational structural differences in unionization can have a measurable impact on provincial welfare measures. This is particularly important when provinces have considerable discretion over the legislation that can facilitate or hinder union formation.

Charles Smith, “Workers in Western Canada”

When activists and scholars assembled at the University of Winnipeg to commemorate the centenary of the Winnipeg General Strike in 2019, one of the main themes of the conference was to question how the building and waging of the strike could become an educational tool to engender a new generation of workplace activism and socialist organizing. While no clear answers emerged, two questions remained: To what extent were workers aware of their history and did that history have anything to contribute to workers material lives in the twenty-first century? With these questions in mind, this paper has two modest goals: first to briefly map the history of working-class activism in Western Canada throughout the twentieth century and second, to build on that history to investigate the state of workers and working-class activism in the twenty-first century.

Speakers / Panelists

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    Benjamin Anderson

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    Manuel Salamanca Cardona

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    Anupam Das