This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through... more This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through a study of monetary employment standards violations in Ontario, Canada. The findings suggest that, in contexts where changes to the organisation of work deepen insecurity for employees, models of enforcement that emphasise compliance over deterrence are unlikely to effectively prevent or remedy employment standards violations.
This report presents research findings of “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap,” a m... more This report presents research findings of “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap,” a multiyear project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Although it covers many of the themes addressed in the final report of Ontario’s Changing Workplace Review (CWR), released on May 23, 2017, to which the Ontario government responded with proposed legislative amendments on May 30, 2017, the research informing this report was conducted over several years prior to the initiation of the CWR. “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap” is also slated to continue after any legislation currently under consideration is enacted.
Neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the employment services sector, accompanied by aus... more Neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the employment services sector, accompanied by austerity measures and new public management (NPM). We report findings from the Canadian site of a collaborative ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of long-term unemployment, specifically focusing on local-scale implications of administrative reforms to employment service delivery. Informed by street-level bureaucracy and governmentality, we demonstrate how the articulation of managerialism in activation-focused employment services and the emphasis on 'making the numbers work' results in a series of interrelated effects, including: work intensification; reconfiguration of key relationships; and heightened insecurity. Simultaneously, frontline staff engage in forms of service provision unaccounted for under official metrics, but central to their perceptions of service users' needs. Our analysis confirms the necessity of ethnographic approaches to documenting street level enactment of, and resistance to, neoliberal governmentalities.
This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through... more This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through a study of monetary employment standards violations in Ontario, Canada. The findings suggest that, in contexts where changes to the organisation of work deepen insecurity for employees, models of enforcement that emphasise compliance over deterrence are unlikely to effectively prevent or remedy employment standards violations.
This article examines the impact of recent reforms on the enforcement of the Ontario Employment ... more This article examines the impact of recent reforms on the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (2000). It analyzes changes to complaints processing before and after the implementation of the Open for Business Act (2010), part of which aimed to streamline workplace regulation. Drawing on a previously untapped source of information on employment standards enforcement, the Ministry of Labour's Employment Standards Information System, we argue that reforms to enforcement under the Open for Business Act appear to have eroded both the accessibility of the complaints system and the remedies available to complainants. By way of conclusion, the article outlines measures that hold the potential to strengthen the complaints system in Ontario.
In 2012, the government of Canada introduced reforms to Employment Insurance, Canada’s primary in... more In 2012, the government of Canada introduced reforms to Employment Insurance, Canada’s primary income security program for the unemployed. The reforms codified the efforts claimants must demonstrate in job searches to maintain benefits, introduced new requirements for claimants to accept jobs of increasingly lesser pay depending on the claim duration, and created new surveillance mechanisms. These measures increase governmental capacity to categorize claimants as unavailable for work and disentitled to benefits, and increase the supply of workers who have little choice but to accept precarious employment. The central claim of the paper is that recent reforms to Employment Insurance are not adequately understood simply as an instance of neoliberal activation. Instead, they must be situated in a long history of attempts to categorize the unemployed as deserving or undeserving on the basis of perceptions of their will to work. Through a survey of different periods of unemployment policy in Canada, we demonstrate continuity in the discourses and techniques by which authorities have sought to differentiate the unemployed into categories of worthy and unworthy. By way of conclusion, the paper stresses the need for alternative models of income security that break away from the age-old preoccupation with the will to work of the jobless.
Labour market policy in Canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades. Succ... more Labour market policy in Canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades. Successive federal and provincial governments have sought to ‘activate’ the unemployed through measures such as Employment Insurance retrenchment and the adoption of employment service models that stress individual responsibility for the problem of unemployment. This paper analyzes a little known attempt by federal officials to implement statistical profiling of the unemployed in employment service delivery during the mid-1990s. Known as the Service Outcome Measurement System (SOMS) and intended for use by frontline employment counselors, the technology computed personal data on unemployed service users to predict the employment outcomes of different service options. The central claim of the paper is that the case of SOMS illuminates dilemmas and confusions that confront officials in their attempts to govern unemployment as a problem of individual activation. The paper describes how the implementation of SOMS failed in the face of frontline staff resistance, persistent difficulties with the technology’s statistical equations, and growing concern that its use of data violated privacy regulations. By way of conclusion, the paper calls for further research into techniques of individual activation that could not be made to cohere.
This paper draws on notions of governmentality to analyze a performance measurement system that t... more This paper draws on notions of governmentality to analyze a performance measurement system that the federal government implemented in the 1990s to measure the results of employment services for the unemployed. It argues that an examination of Human Resource Development Canada’s Results-Based Accountability Framework yields insights into forms of contestation and incoherence within performance measurement, which are often overlooked in governmentality research. The paper develops this argument by detailing three obstacles to the implementation of the performance measurement system. These include dilemmas of technical coordination, contestation on the part of actors invested in different terms of measurement, and widespread recognition of the ambiguities of the performance data. By way of conclusion, the paper confirms recent calls for more variegated accounts of governance in governmentality scholarship.
A mounting crisis in employment standards enforcement is prompting experimentation among Common L... more A mounting crisis in employment standards enforcement is prompting experimentation among Common Law governments with new instruments aiming to improve workplace regulation. This experimentation across all stages of the enforcement process indicates the increasing influence of ‘new governance’. Focusing on reforms in five jurisdictions, this article raises serious cautions around ‘new governance’ styled enforcement mechanisms, demonstrating that, put into practice, enforcement models envisioned in the new governance literature fail to account adequately for the power dynamics of the employment relationship. Furthermore, assumptions about the inevitable collapse of state enforcement capacity are premature and can impede strategies for more effective ES regulation.
This article reports on efforts to develop a telephone survey that measures the overall prevalenc... more This article reports on efforts to develop a telephone survey that measures the overall prevalence of employment standards (ES) violations as well as their evasion and erosion in low- wage jobs in Ontario, without requiring that respondents have any pre-existing legal knowledge. The result is a survey instrument that is unique in the Canadian context and reflects the concerns of both academic researchers and workers’ rights activists. Pilot survey results show that Ontario workers do not necessarily distinguish between ES violations and other workplace grievances and complaints. With careful questionnaire design, it is nevertheless possible to measure the prevalence of ES violations, evasion and erosion. In order to track the effects of ES policies and their implementation, it is crucial to establish baseline measures and standardized reporting tools.
Abstract: This article traces debates about federal employment equity policy in Canada in the 198... more Abstract: This article traces debates about federal employment equity policy in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, focusing specifically on the role of data and statistics in policy-making. The authors interpret policy-makers' extensive use of evidence-based policy instruments in the implementation of employment equity as an attempt to offer a technical solution to the deeply politicized problem of workplace discrimination. By exploring policy debates from the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (the Abella Commission) (1984) to the passage of the reformed Employment Equity Act in 1995, the authors show how recourse to evidence-based deliberation failed to contain political conflict, because the meaning and use of statistical data became the object of political struggle among the main policy stakeholders. The article concludes by considering the implications of this case study for the broader comparative debate on the role of evidence-based methods in policy-making.Sommaire : Cet article passe en revue les débats au sujet de la politique fédérale sur l'équité en matière d'emploi au Canada dans les années 1980 et 1990, en s'attardant tout particulièrement sur le rôle que jouent les données et les statistiques dans l'élaboration des politiques. Les auteurs interprètent le vaste recours des décisionnaires aux instruments reposant sur des données scientifiques dans la mise en œuvre de l'équité en matière d'emploi comme une tentative d'offrir une solution technique au problème de discrimination dans le lieu de travail profondément politisé. En étudiant en profondeur les débats politiques depuis la Commission d'enquête sur l'égalité en matière d'emploi (la commission Abella – 1984) jusqu'à l'adoption en 1995 de la Loi sur l'équité en matière d'emploi modifiée, les auteurs montrent comment le recours aux délibérations reposant sur des données scientifiques n'est pas parvenu à maîtriser le conflit politique, car la signification et l'emploi des données statistiques sont devenus l'objet d'un conflit politique entre les principales parties intéressées. L'article conclut en examinant les répercussions de cette étude de cas sur le débat comparatif plus vaste qui porte sur le rôle des méthodes fondées sur les données scientifiques dans l'élaboration des politiques.
In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (... more In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (OBA). A central component of the OBA is its provisions aiming to streamline the enforcement of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA). The OBA’s changes to the ESA are an attempt to manage a crisis of employment
standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category
of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.
This paper examines the impact of recent reforms to the enforcement of the Ontario Employment St... more This paper examines the impact of recent reforms to the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act. It analyzes changes to claims processing before and after the implementation of the Open For Business Act (OBA) in 2010, part of which aimed to streamline the employment standards complaint process. Drawing on a previously untapped source of information on Ontario’s employment standards enforcement system, the Ministry of Labour’s Employment Standards Information System (ESIS), the paper argues that reforms to enforcement under the OBA appear to have eroded both the accessibility of the complaints system as well as the remedies available to complainants. By way of conclusion, the paper outlines measures that hold potential to strengthen the complaints system in Ontario.
Scholarly proposals for limiting precarious employment often call for expanding the scope of empl... more Scholarly proposals for limiting precarious employment often call for expanding the scope of employment standards (ES) legislation to workers excluded from coverage, such as the self-employed, or improving the enforcement of existing legislation. Researchers pay far less attention to the widely divergent levels of protection extended to workers assumed to be formally covered by ES protections. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on data from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics to analyze provisions of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (ESA) that allow for either partial or complete exemptions from coverage for individuals in specified occupations or workplaces. The analysis reveals that the ESA’s patchwork of exemptions and special rules results in levels of protection that vary by intersecting worker characteristics of gender, age, immigration status, visible minority status and income. On the basis of this analysis, effective policy responses to precarious employment must not only include an expansion of the scope of ES legislation, but also limit partial or complete exemptions for workers formally covered, which affect those belonging to certain social groups disproportionately.
While the principles of specific and general deterrence were developed in the context of criminal... more While the principles of specific and general deterrence were developed in the context of criminal law and are central to discussions of criminal law enforcement and sentencing, they have also been extended into certain areas of regulatory enforcement such as occupational health and safety. Indeed, there is now a large literature on the deterrent effects of prosecutions and fines in that area. Scholarly research on employment standards (ES) enforcement tends to focus on critiques of existing complaints-driven enforcement systems and identifies the need for more proactive strategies. Yet there is scant discussion of the role of deterrence in ES enforcement. This paper aims to explore the ‘deterrence gap’ in employment standards enforcement, with a focus on ES regulation in Ontario. It will first briefly outline the role of deterrence theory in OHS enforcement. Based on an examination of policy documents and case files, it will then assess both the enforcement policies and procedures of the Employment Standards Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Labour and decisions in employment standards prosecutions to determine the extent to which deterrence is a consideration in enforcement and sentencing. Finally, it will consider the implications of a deterrence strategy for ES enforcement, addressing the question of whether deterrence principles should have a larger role to play in this area.
This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual a... more This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism. It situates the development of LGBT activist research capacity within a broader shift towards evidence-based policy-making. The paper presents case studies of LGBT organizing from the US and Canada to demonstrate how LGBT activists utilize established social science methodologies such as statistics to claim legitimacy and render queer worlds visible in the policy process. The paper argues that this development in LGBT advocacy is marked by struggles over the kinds of queer realities that may be enacted through social scientific inquiry. The paper also explores the deployment of auditing and benchmarking in LGBT activist knowledge production. It demonstrates the way in which LGBT activists are using these privileged modes of knowledge production to produce truths regarding the nature, extent and effect of homophobia and heterosexism. The relationship between such calculative technologies and the emergence of LGBT active citizenship practices is considered. The paper concludes by emphasizing the decidedly mixed political implications of the increasing reliance on social science and calculative practices in queer activism.
This paper addresses the contemporary creativity ethos through the lens of citizenship. The paper... more This paper addresses the contemporary creativity ethos through the lens of citizenship. The paper builds upon governmentality scholarship to examine how creativity and cultural participation are being recast as moral duties of active citizenship. It notes the development of governmental projects that seek to optimize the creative capacities of individuals toward a variety of ends. The paper develops these observations through an examination of cultural planning practices in Toronto. It notes how the city's cultural policies are viewed in increasingly therapeutic terms as technologies of creative citizenship. Emphasis is placed on the proliferation of participatory arts festivals and arts-based community development projects that enlist urban denizens into creative citizenship practices. The paper then explores a paradox at the centre of this emergent regime of creative citizenship. It describes how the creative citizen is construed in cultural planning practice as a heroic agent of innovation and civic renewal, and, at the same time, as an object of continual monitoring, assessment and risk-management.
Citizenship is increasingly viewed as a multiscalar social practice, constituted and contested at... more Citizenship is increasingly viewed as a multiscalar social practice, constituted and contested at local, urban, national and transnational scales. This paper attempts to bring this insight to bear on the study of queer social movement politics. A multiscalar perspective, we argue, enriches our understanding of contemporary LGBT citizenship struggles. Using qualitative case studies of lesbian and gay organizing at the pan-Canadian and urban levels in Canada, the paper demonstrates the relationships that exist between and among citizenship struggles and practices across scales. Queer political struggles at the urban level diverge widely from those at the pan-Canadian level. By using a multiscalar approach, we are able to demonstrate these critically important political differences. The paper contributes to an understanding of multiscalar citizenship
by showing the different forms of politics that are produced at different scales of social movement organizing.
This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through... more This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through a study of monetary employment standards violations in Ontario, Canada. The findings suggest that, in contexts where changes to the organisation of work deepen insecurity for employees, models of enforcement that emphasise compliance over deterrence are unlikely to effectively prevent or remedy employment standards violations.
This report presents research findings of “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap,” a m... more This report presents research findings of “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap,” a multiyear project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Although it covers many of the themes addressed in the final report of Ontario’s Changing Workplace Review (CWR), released on May 23, 2017, to which the Ontario government responded with proposed legislative amendments on May 30, 2017, the research informing this report was conducted over several years prior to the initiation of the CWR. “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap” is also slated to continue after any legislation currently under consideration is enacted.
Neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the employment services sector, accompanied by aus... more Neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the employment services sector, accompanied by austerity measures and new public management (NPM). We report findings from the Canadian site of a collaborative ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of long-term unemployment, specifically focusing on local-scale implications of administrative reforms to employment service delivery. Informed by street-level bureaucracy and governmentality, we demonstrate how the articulation of managerialism in activation-focused employment services and the emphasis on 'making the numbers work' results in a series of interrelated effects, including: work intensification; reconfiguration of key relationships; and heightened insecurity. Simultaneously, frontline staff engage in forms of service provision unaccounted for under official metrics, but central to their perceptions of service users' needs. Our analysis confirms the necessity of ethnographic approaches to documenting street level enactment of, and resistance to, neoliberal governmentalities.
This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through... more This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through a study of monetary employment standards violations in Ontario, Canada. The findings suggest that, in contexts where changes to the organisation of work deepen insecurity for employees, models of enforcement that emphasise compliance over deterrence are unlikely to effectively prevent or remedy employment standards violations.
This article examines the impact of recent reforms on the enforcement of the Ontario Employment ... more This article examines the impact of recent reforms on the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (2000). It analyzes changes to complaints processing before and after the implementation of the Open for Business Act (2010), part of which aimed to streamline workplace regulation. Drawing on a previously untapped source of information on employment standards enforcement, the Ministry of Labour's Employment Standards Information System, we argue that reforms to enforcement under the Open for Business Act appear to have eroded both the accessibility of the complaints system and the remedies available to complainants. By way of conclusion, the article outlines measures that hold the potential to strengthen the complaints system in Ontario.
In 2012, the government of Canada introduced reforms to Employment Insurance, Canada’s primary in... more In 2012, the government of Canada introduced reforms to Employment Insurance, Canada’s primary income security program for the unemployed. The reforms codified the efforts claimants must demonstrate in job searches to maintain benefits, introduced new requirements for claimants to accept jobs of increasingly lesser pay depending on the claim duration, and created new surveillance mechanisms. These measures increase governmental capacity to categorize claimants as unavailable for work and disentitled to benefits, and increase the supply of workers who have little choice but to accept precarious employment. The central claim of the paper is that recent reforms to Employment Insurance are not adequately understood simply as an instance of neoliberal activation. Instead, they must be situated in a long history of attempts to categorize the unemployed as deserving or undeserving on the basis of perceptions of their will to work. Through a survey of different periods of unemployment policy in Canada, we demonstrate continuity in the discourses and techniques by which authorities have sought to differentiate the unemployed into categories of worthy and unworthy. By way of conclusion, the paper stresses the need for alternative models of income security that break away from the age-old preoccupation with the will to work of the jobless.
Labour market policy in Canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades. Succ... more Labour market policy in Canada has undergone profound reforms over the past several decades. Successive federal and provincial governments have sought to ‘activate’ the unemployed through measures such as Employment Insurance retrenchment and the adoption of employment service models that stress individual responsibility for the problem of unemployment. This paper analyzes a little known attempt by federal officials to implement statistical profiling of the unemployed in employment service delivery during the mid-1990s. Known as the Service Outcome Measurement System (SOMS) and intended for use by frontline employment counselors, the technology computed personal data on unemployed service users to predict the employment outcomes of different service options. The central claim of the paper is that the case of SOMS illuminates dilemmas and confusions that confront officials in their attempts to govern unemployment as a problem of individual activation. The paper describes how the implementation of SOMS failed in the face of frontline staff resistance, persistent difficulties with the technology’s statistical equations, and growing concern that its use of data violated privacy regulations. By way of conclusion, the paper calls for further research into techniques of individual activation that could not be made to cohere.
This paper draws on notions of governmentality to analyze a performance measurement system that t... more This paper draws on notions of governmentality to analyze a performance measurement system that the federal government implemented in the 1990s to measure the results of employment services for the unemployed. It argues that an examination of Human Resource Development Canada’s Results-Based Accountability Framework yields insights into forms of contestation and incoherence within performance measurement, which are often overlooked in governmentality research. The paper develops this argument by detailing three obstacles to the implementation of the performance measurement system. These include dilemmas of technical coordination, contestation on the part of actors invested in different terms of measurement, and widespread recognition of the ambiguities of the performance data. By way of conclusion, the paper confirms recent calls for more variegated accounts of governance in governmentality scholarship.
A mounting crisis in employment standards enforcement is prompting experimentation among Common L... more A mounting crisis in employment standards enforcement is prompting experimentation among Common Law governments with new instruments aiming to improve workplace regulation. This experimentation across all stages of the enforcement process indicates the increasing influence of ‘new governance’. Focusing on reforms in five jurisdictions, this article raises serious cautions around ‘new governance’ styled enforcement mechanisms, demonstrating that, put into practice, enforcement models envisioned in the new governance literature fail to account adequately for the power dynamics of the employment relationship. Furthermore, assumptions about the inevitable collapse of state enforcement capacity are premature and can impede strategies for more effective ES regulation.
This article reports on efforts to develop a telephone survey that measures the overall prevalenc... more This article reports on efforts to develop a telephone survey that measures the overall prevalence of employment standards (ES) violations as well as their evasion and erosion in low- wage jobs in Ontario, without requiring that respondents have any pre-existing legal knowledge. The result is a survey instrument that is unique in the Canadian context and reflects the concerns of both academic researchers and workers’ rights activists. Pilot survey results show that Ontario workers do not necessarily distinguish between ES violations and other workplace grievances and complaints. With careful questionnaire design, it is nevertheless possible to measure the prevalence of ES violations, evasion and erosion. In order to track the effects of ES policies and their implementation, it is crucial to establish baseline measures and standardized reporting tools.
Abstract: This article traces debates about federal employment equity policy in Canada in the 198... more Abstract: This article traces debates about federal employment equity policy in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, focusing specifically on the role of data and statistics in policy-making. The authors interpret policy-makers' extensive use of evidence-based policy instruments in the implementation of employment equity as an attempt to offer a technical solution to the deeply politicized problem of workplace discrimination. By exploring policy debates from the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (the Abella Commission) (1984) to the passage of the reformed Employment Equity Act in 1995, the authors show how recourse to evidence-based deliberation failed to contain political conflict, because the meaning and use of statistical data became the object of political struggle among the main policy stakeholders. The article concludes by considering the implications of this case study for the broader comparative debate on the role of evidence-based methods in policy-making.Sommaire : Cet article passe en revue les débats au sujet de la politique fédérale sur l'équité en matière d'emploi au Canada dans les années 1980 et 1990, en s'attardant tout particulièrement sur le rôle que jouent les données et les statistiques dans l'élaboration des politiques. Les auteurs interprètent le vaste recours des décisionnaires aux instruments reposant sur des données scientifiques dans la mise en œuvre de l'équité en matière d'emploi comme une tentative d'offrir une solution technique au problème de discrimination dans le lieu de travail profondément politisé. En étudiant en profondeur les débats politiques depuis la Commission d'enquête sur l'égalité en matière d'emploi (la commission Abella – 1984) jusqu'à l'adoption en 1995 de la Loi sur l'équité en matière d'emploi modifiée, les auteurs montrent comment le recours aux délibérations reposant sur des données scientifiques n'est pas parvenu à maîtriser le conflit politique, car la signification et l'emploi des données statistiques sont devenus l'objet d'un conflit politique entre les principales parties intéressées. L'article conclut en examinant les répercussions de cette étude de cas sur le débat comparatif plus vaste qui porte sur le rôle des méthodes fondées sur les données scientifiques dans l'élaboration des politiques.
In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (... more In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (OBA). A central component of the OBA is its provisions aiming to streamline the enforcement of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA). The OBA’s changes to the ESA are an attempt to manage a crisis of employment
standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category
of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.
This paper examines the impact of recent reforms to the enforcement of the Ontario Employment St... more This paper examines the impact of recent reforms to the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act. It analyzes changes to claims processing before and after the implementation of the Open For Business Act (OBA) in 2010, part of which aimed to streamline the employment standards complaint process. Drawing on a previously untapped source of information on Ontario’s employment standards enforcement system, the Ministry of Labour’s Employment Standards Information System (ESIS), the paper argues that reforms to enforcement under the OBA appear to have eroded both the accessibility of the complaints system as well as the remedies available to complainants. By way of conclusion, the paper outlines measures that hold potential to strengthen the complaints system in Ontario.
Scholarly proposals for limiting precarious employment often call for expanding the scope of empl... more Scholarly proposals for limiting precarious employment often call for expanding the scope of employment standards (ES) legislation to workers excluded from coverage, such as the self-employed, or improving the enforcement of existing legislation. Researchers pay far less attention to the widely divergent levels of protection extended to workers assumed to be formally covered by ES protections. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on data from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics to analyze provisions of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (ESA) that allow for either partial or complete exemptions from coverage for individuals in specified occupations or workplaces. The analysis reveals that the ESA’s patchwork of exemptions and special rules results in levels of protection that vary by intersecting worker characteristics of gender, age, immigration status, visible minority status and income. On the basis of this analysis, effective policy responses to precarious employment must not only include an expansion of the scope of ES legislation, but also limit partial or complete exemptions for workers formally covered, which affect those belonging to certain social groups disproportionately.
While the principles of specific and general deterrence were developed in the context of criminal... more While the principles of specific and general deterrence were developed in the context of criminal law and are central to discussions of criminal law enforcement and sentencing, they have also been extended into certain areas of regulatory enforcement such as occupational health and safety. Indeed, there is now a large literature on the deterrent effects of prosecutions and fines in that area. Scholarly research on employment standards (ES) enforcement tends to focus on critiques of existing complaints-driven enforcement systems and identifies the need for more proactive strategies. Yet there is scant discussion of the role of deterrence in ES enforcement. This paper aims to explore the ‘deterrence gap’ in employment standards enforcement, with a focus on ES regulation in Ontario. It will first briefly outline the role of deterrence theory in OHS enforcement. Based on an examination of policy documents and case files, it will then assess both the enforcement policies and procedures of the Employment Standards Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Labour and decisions in employment standards prosecutions to determine the extent to which deterrence is a consideration in enforcement and sentencing. Finally, it will consider the implications of a deterrence strategy for ES enforcement, addressing the question of whether deterrence principles should have a larger role to play in this area.
This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual a... more This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism. It situates the development of LGBT activist research capacity within a broader shift towards evidence-based policy-making. The paper presents case studies of LGBT organizing from the US and Canada to demonstrate how LGBT activists utilize established social science methodologies such as statistics to claim legitimacy and render queer worlds visible in the policy process. The paper argues that this development in LGBT advocacy is marked by struggles over the kinds of queer realities that may be enacted through social scientific inquiry. The paper also explores the deployment of auditing and benchmarking in LGBT activist knowledge production. It demonstrates the way in which LGBT activists are using these privileged modes of knowledge production to produce truths regarding the nature, extent and effect of homophobia and heterosexism. The relationship between such calculative technologies and the emergence of LGBT active citizenship practices is considered. The paper concludes by emphasizing the decidedly mixed political implications of the increasing reliance on social science and calculative practices in queer activism.
This paper addresses the contemporary creativity ethos through the lens of citizenship. The paper... more This paper addresses the contemporary creativity ethos through the lens of citizenship. The paper builds upon governmentality scholarship to examine how creativity and cultural participation are being recast as moral duties of active citizenship. It notes the development of governmental projects that seek to optimize the creative capacities of individuals toward a variety of ends. The paper develops these observations through an examination of cultural planning practices in Toronto. It notes how the city's cultural policies are viewed in increasingly therapeutic terms as technologies of creative citizenship. Emphasis is placed on the proliferation of participatory arts festivals and arts-based community development projects that enlist urban denizens into creative citizenship practices. The paper then explores a paradox at the centre of this emergent regime of creative citizenship. It describes how the creative citizen is construed in cultural planning practice as a heroic agent of innovation and civic renewal, and, at the same time, as an object of continual monitoring, assessment and risk-management.
Citizenship is increasingly viewed as a multiscalar social practice, constituted and contested at... more Citizenship is increasingly viewed as a multiscalar social practice, constituted and contested at local, urban, national and transnational scales. This paper attempts to bring this insight to bear on the study of queer social movement politics. A multiscalar perspective, we argue, enriches our understanding of contemporary LGBT citizenship struggles. Using qualitative case studies of lesbian and gay organizing at the pan-Canadian and urban levels in Canada, the paper demonstrates the relationships that exist between and among citizenship struggles and practices across scales. Queer political struggles at the urban level diverge widely from those at the pan-Canadian level. By using a multiscalar approach, we are able to demonstrate these critically important political differences. The paper contributes to an understanding of multiscalar citizenship
by showing the different forms of politics that are produced at different scales of social movement organizing.
The activation paradigm in labour market policy has transformed the way governments approach the ... more The activation paradigm in labour market policy has transformed the way governments approach the problem of unemployment. Whereas policy makers previously recognized unemployment as a social and economic problem to be solved through macroeconomic policies, current approaches place much more emphasis on the purportedly deficient employability of the unemployed themselves. Through an analysis of reforms to employment service delivery in Canada between 1965 and 2000, this book demonstrates how efforts to govern unemployment as a problem of individual employability have posed much more difficulty for employment service administrators and frontline staff than scholars typically acknowledge. Drawing from governmentality, critical political economy and public administration literatures, the book traces the elusiveness of coherent techniques of activation in employment service delivery, and the strange resourcefulness officials have demonstrated in their efforts to surmount this challenge. In doing so, it sheds new light on the costs of activation policy.
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Publications by John Grundy
it covers many of the themes addressed in the final report of Ontario’s Changing Workplace Review (CWR), released on May 23, 2017, to which the Ontario government responded with proposed legislative
amendments on May 30, 2017, the research informing this report was conducted over several years prior to the initiation of the CWR. “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap” is also slated to
continue after any legislation currently under consideration is enacted.
standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category
of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.
by showing the different forms of politics that are produced at different scales of social movement organizing.
it covers many of the themes addressed in the final report of Ontario’s Changing Workplace Review (CWR), released on May 23, 2017, to which the Ontario government responded with proposed legislative
amendments on May 30, 2017, the research informing this report was conducted over several years prior to the initiation of the CWR. “Closing the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap” is also slated to
continue after any legislation currently under consideration is enacted.
standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category
of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.
by showing the different forms of politics that are produced at different scales of social movement organizing.