Six Worries for Workers This Labour Day

This blog was originally posted on the Parkland Institute blog.

What can Alberta workers expect from a United Conservative Party government over the next four years? The UCP’s first term cheapened labour costs for employers. Its 2023 election platform contained few promises related to labour and employment issues beyond the usual nostrums about low taxes creating jobs. We think workers should watch six issues.

1. Low wages, high unemployment, and Inequity

While the number of jobs in Alberta has increased, more job seekers and layoffs mean Alberta’s unemployment rate remains the fifth highest in Canada. For those with jobs, the purchasing power of their average hourly wage has fallen by 4.95% (or about $3,000 per worker) over the past 10 years. Alberta is only one of three provinces to experience this loss.

By October, Alberta’s minimum wage will be the third lowest in the country while Alberta’s cost of living remains among the highest. The UCP is unlikely to raise the minimum wage from 2018’s $15 per hour. This means inflation will further erode the purchasing power of 11.5% of Alberta workers, the majority of whom are women.

Not surprisingly, Alberta also continues to have the highest gender wage gap in Canada. In July of 2023, Alberta women earned 84 cents for every dollar men earned (averaging $31.52 per hour vs. $37.61 per hour). The UCP is unlikely to address this gap.

2. Illusion of low-cost childcare

Under an agreement with the federal government, the UCP has promised to implement $10 per day childcare by 2026 as well as create 70,000 additional spaces. While childcare fees have declined, $10 per day childcare is likely to be a chimera.

In February, the UCP established a cost-control framework for childcare. Government funding will ensure that “core” childcare is provided for $10 per day. But the UCP is encouraging providers to charge fees for “enhanced” childcare, such as food, activities, playground equipment, and better qualified staff. Providers are being told they do not have to spend all of these enhanced fees on the enhanced services (i.e., private providers can pad their profits with these fees).

Since demand for childcare spaces will continue to outstrip supply, parents who decline to pay the enhanced fees (i.e., want $10 per day childcare) may have difficulty securing a space because they reduce the providers’ profits. Further, low wages and limited training and professional development opportunities suggest the goal of 70,000 additional spaces may be wildly optimistic.

3. An Alberta Pension Plan

Alberta has been flirting with the idea of leaving the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and creating an Alberta Pension Plan (APP) since 2019, putatively to lower premiums. The UCP did not campaign on the APP, likely because more than half of Albertans are opposed to the idea.

Withdrawing from the CPP requires three years of notice. The terms of Alberta’s departure are difficult to predict since no jurisdiction has ever left the plan. Departure may constitute a major change in the plan, which would require the approval of 7 of the 10 provinces (representing two-thirds of the population) and the federal government.

There are many unanswered questions about an APP, including its financial stability and likely returns, operating cost, the portability of contributions, and its susceptibility to political meddling. Quebec’s experience with running its own pension plan suggests that doing so does not necessarily result in lower premiums.

4. Public-sector bargaining

In 2019, the UCP gave itself the power to foist secret bargaining mandates on public-sector employers, rendering collective bargaining a fettered and hollow process. All unions eventually settled for wage increases well below inflation, after years of prior wage freezes. Despite the negative impact that uncompetitive wages have on recruitment, retention, and productivity, it is likely the UCP will go back to this well in the hope of further grinding public-sector wages.

It is unclear whether Alberta’s public-sector workers and their unions have the will to meaningfully resist such a tactic. Resistance would require workers to strike and, perhaps, to do so illegally in the face of back-to-work legislation. That is a risky proposition for both workers and their unions’ leadership. That said, only last fall, Ontario’s unions forced the Ford government to walk back legislated contracts through an illegal strike by education workers that looked set to escalate to a general strike.

Public-sector workers are also likely to see further privatization of their jobs, as the UCP did with laundry and laboratory services in health care. The UCP may also provide more public funding to private-sector providers of education and health-care services.

5. Recruitment and Retention

Not surprisingly, declining compensation, childcare shortages, and uncertainty about the CPP have meant some Alberta employers are struggling to recruit and retain workers. The UCP has promised a $1,200 tax credit for workers in fields such as health care, childcare, and the skilled trades who come and work in Alberta for at least a year, and a $3,000 to $10,000 tax credit (spread over multiple years) for new graduates in unspecified fields who stay in Alberta to work.

These promises are essentially an admission that Alberta is not an attractive place to live and work. Neither promise is very significant in monetary terms and, if implemented, they are unlikely to have much impact on worker shortages because of the negative impact of the UCP’s education and health-care agenda. Increasing post-secondary tuition and a defective K-12 curriculum (e.g., “find gravity on a globe”) make Alberta an unattractive place to study or raise children. Ongoing staffing shortages, the unavailability of rural obstetrical care, and the botched privatization of laboratory services suggest the health-care system is also failing.

6. Union Dues and Bill 32

The UCP has promised to fix one of their controversial changes to Alberta’s labour laws (commonly called Bill 32) that accidentally cost community organizations $2.5 million in lost donations from unions. This happened because Bill 32 required unions to get each member to authorize dues deductions for activities beyond collective bargaining and contract administration. This was designed to constrain unions’ abilities to participate in political and advocacy campaigns but also affected donations.

Before the election, many unions quietly decided to simply ignore Bill 32. It will be interesting to watch how (and, indeed, if) the UCP handles enforcement. It may choose to pursue legal action against these unions. Or it may take the position Bill 32 achieved its political goals and ignore widespread non-compliance.

Conclusion

The UCP has a difficult course to navigate over the next four years. Its political goals include low taxes, low wages, a diminished public sector, and increased privatization. None of the outcomes of these goals are attractive to the skilled workers that Alberta requires. Indeed, declining real-dollar wages, failing health-care and education systems, unstable retirement income, and unavailable childcare are likely to impede both worker recruitment and retention.

-- Bob Barnetson, Susan Cake, and Jason Foster

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story

Netflix is currently airing a documentary titled Money Shot: The Pornhub Story. This documentary examines, among other things, the way in which this enormous online clearinghouse of porn makes money and its relationship with content providers. The documentary touches on a number of themes that are examined in LBST 415: Sex Work and Sex Workers, including:

• Safety and Control: The documentary highlights that many content providers (some of whom identify as sex workers) find that the subscription services offered by Pornhub dramatically increases their safety and increases the predictability of their work. These beneficial changes for these sex workers are consistent with the benefits that accrue to sex workers from decriminalization of sex work in other jurisdictions, such as New Zealand.
• Who Profits: Like other businesses, Pornhub exists to make money. And, like other businesses, its profitability has often been driven, in part, by some fairly objectionable business practices. The sex workers who participate in its subscription service (essentially as independent contractors) note that their income, when compared to working as an actor for a production company, is often much greater (one example is a threefold increase). Tactics designed to apply market pressure to Pornhub (see below), have forced some to move to other platforms or return to less safe and remunerative forms of sex work.
• Sex Work and Trafficking: An ongoing issue with Pornhub (and other online porn providers) is the sharing of videos that are various ways unlawful (e.g., filmed without consent, containing minors, depicting crimes). Campaigns seeking to regulate such videos often intentionally blur the distinction between unlawful and lawful porn, much like campaigns against sex work(ers) will frame sex work as sex trafficking. The popularity of this tactic speaks to its effectiveness.
• State Regulation: The documentary looks are two efforts to regulate Pornhub. The first is state regulation (akin to the legalization, but not decriminalization, of sex work) aimed at addressing unlawful pornography. These efforts (primarily in the US) had the effect of deplatforming sex workers, cutting their income and forcing some to return to much less safe street-based sex work. The effectiveness of this regulation at eliminating unlawful pornography appears limited. One unexpected effect appears to be that the creators and distributors of unlawful pornography have become more circumspect and difficult to catch. 
• Market Regulation: The second approach to regulating Pornhub (and other such sites) has been through market pressure. Essentially, the financial sector (e.g., credit card companies) has been pressured to restrict billing services. This has disproportionately impacted sex workers whop are dependent upon these billing arrangements. Many have fled to other platforms (such as OnlyFans) which have been (for reasons not well explained in the documentary) more resistant to this form of pressure.

Overall, the documentary was pretty engaging. An interesting twist at about the halfway mark is the backstory reveal around one of the organizations that has campaigned against Pornhub (spoiler: Jesus!) and its actual agenda and activities.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Documentary on 9-to-5 Movement

Netflix is presently showing a documentary entitled 9to5: The Story of a Movement. This documentary traces the development of the 9 to 5 social movement that began foregrounding unfair working conditions for women office workers in the United States (initially in Boston) in the early 1970s. This movement was the inspiration for the 1980 comedy of the same name (which holds up pretty well and, sadly, is still topical, 40 years later).

One of the narrative arcs of the film explores how the 9 to 5 movement transitions from a social movement into a union (Local 925) as the workers sought to formalize and entrench the gains they had made. This includes following a union organizing campaign (in Cincinnati I think, but it may have been Seattle) through an initial defeat and subsequent victory. It also examines how the attack on labour by US business and government in the 1980s affected Local 925.

-- Bob Barnetson

Sugaring and sex work

A few years back, Briarpatch magazine did an interesting piece on sex workers working around the closure of online sites to connect with clients by American legislation, such as the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. One website that continued to function was “Seeking Arrangements”, which connected sex workers and clients in longer term arrangements (often called sugardaddying/babying).

One interesting aspect of the article is that it explores this form of sex work in the content of precarious work (or the gig economy), noting how the criminalization of sex work intensifies the exploitability of these workers. The framing of sugarbabying as “dating” is also used to reduce the income of these sex workers.

“I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but sugar babies should just hook,” [said] … . “They make less money than escorts. I want them to make more than they do.”

Essentially, argues the article, clients seek to manipulate sex workers into taking a lower wage. And the atomizing nature of sugaring sites means it is difficult for sex workers to share info about wage rates or unsafe clients.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: He thinks he’ll keep her

My wife flagged this 1993 song by Mary Chapin Carpenter as labour related. It traces the journey of a women who, at 36, opts to leave her marriage and role and primary caregiver to re-enter the workforce.

Most of the song chronicles the unpaid, social reproductive labour that the women does. It is interesting to see this work treated so explicitly as both skilled and demanding labour. And yet these skill have little market value when she decides to rejoin the paid workforce. It also nicely tease is out the often hidden power dynamics of one-income marriages.

I’m not a huge fan of the new country era, but the backup singers on this video are are pretty amazing. Trisha Yearwood, Emmylou Harris, and Patty Lovelace, to name a few.

She makes his coffee, she makes his bed
She does the laundry, she keeps him fed
When she was twenty-one she wore her mother's lace
She said, "forever," with a smile upon her face

She does the carpool, she P.T.A.'s
Doctors and dentists, she drives all day
When she was twenty-nine she delivered number three
And ev'ry Christmas card showed a perfect family

Ev'rything runs right on time
Years of practice and design
Spit and polish till it shines, he thinks he'll keep her

Ev'rything is so benign
The safest place you'll ever find
God forbid you change your mind, he thinks he'll keep her

She packs his suitcase, she sits and waits
With no expression upon her face
When she was thirty-six she met him at their door
She said, "I'm sorry, I don't love you any more"

Ev'rything runs right on time
Years of practice and design
Spit and polish till it shines, he thinks he'll keep her

Ev'rything is so benign
The safest place you'll ever find
God forbid you change your mind, he thinks he'll keep her

For fifteen years she had a job and not one raise in pay
Now she's in the typing pool at minimum wage

Ev'rything runs right on time
Years of practice and design
Spit and polish till it shines, he thinks he'll keep her

Ev'rything is so benign
The safest place you'll ever find
At least until you change your mind (he thinks he'll keep her) all right

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Good Girls Revolt

If you are looking for an interesting historical dramatization to fill you winter evenings, Amazon Prime is presently offering Good Girls Revolt, a 10-episode miniseries set in 1969 and 1970 at Newsweek Magazine.

Amazon cancelled the show after one season. But what a season it was! The show is based upon a book the chronicles a sex discrimination lawsuit by female researchers at Newsweek.  The researchers are exploited horrendously, often being more qualified and better writers than the male reporters, but paid a fraction of their wages and denied credit.

 

The most interesting part of the show is how it documents what is essentially an organizing campaign by the women to assert their rights. I can’t think, off hand, of another mainstream series that follows an organizing campaign over time. Usually collective action is framed as spontaneous or the result of a long-standing power base. 

 

In Good Girls Revolt, we get to see a group of workers create a new power base in a workplace. This includes recognizing and articulating their interests and how they differ from the interests of other workers (the men). It also engages how race and class can affect solidarity within a group. The character’s flaws and mis-steps are also realistically portrayed. 

 

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour and Pop Culture: Frankie Drake

I recently had the… opportunity?... to watch a few episodes of CBC’s Frankie Drake Mysteries series. The series centres on an all-female detective agency in 1920s Toronto (so kind of a flapper lady Matlock dealie). The series is available on Amazon Prime but perhaps also the CBC website.

Episode 2 of the first season (“Ladies in Red”) sees Frankie hired to investigate an attack on a factory owner. The owner is convinced the attack was the work of communists in his plant (that manufacturers some kind of confusing glass window product). The show makes reference to the 1919 Winnipeg strike as well as the 1920 Wall Street bombing (which may have been the work of Italian anarchists or communists… or maybe not) to explain the owner’s concerns.

The detectives’ investigations turns up a group of communists (or red sympathizers) in the plant. But their interest is mostly in world peace and perhaps in better working conditions. There is a subplot around sexual harassment and, in the end, the real villain in the plant manager who is skimming, sexually exploiting, and trying to deflect blame onto the workers.

If you can get past the many inconsistencies (e.g., the show is pretty race blind until race is a useful plot point) this episode has a positive portrayal of collective action by workers and highlights the plight of working women in urban Canada after the first war.

I have to admit, by the end I was on my phone googling. But my impression is that the episode ends with Frankie cajoling the plant owner into raising the women’s wages. This seemed very out of character and pretty Pollyanna.

-- Bob Barnetson

Judge strikes down a portion of Canada's sex work laws

In December, AU opened a new course (LBST 415: Sex work and sex workers). One focus of the course is how governments regulate sex work and sex workers, with an eye to which approach yields the best results for sex workers.

In 2014, Canada amended the Criminal Code to decriminalize the sale of sexual services (in most instances). The purchase of sexual services and any acts designed to facilitate the sale of sexual services remain criminalized. 

This approach is often called the Nordic model and is intended to extinguish demand for sex work (although it has not) while making it safer for sex workers to seek police assistance (which it also has not). The law was supposed to have been reviewed by the government in 2019, but it was not.

An interesting development last month was that an Ontario judge struck down portions of Canada’s law on sex work that criminalized procuring, advertising, or materially benefitted from the sale of someone’s sexual services. The case involved a couple who ran an escort agency.

The judge’s rationale was prohibiting advertising violates freedom of expression while the laws against procuring and materially benefitting violate the Charter guarantee of security of person. The crux of the rationale is that the prohibitions make it difficult for sex workers to screen clients, work cooperatively, and to purchase certain services, all of which make sex work safer.

Those opposed to the decision frame this ruling as protecting pimps who traffic in exploited women and girls. While rhetorically powerful, this analysis ignores that there is significant nuance in the “management services” that sex workers may purchase as well as that human trafficking remains illegal.

This line of critique also contributes to the conflation of sex work and human trafficking. While there is overlap (some trafficked women and girls are involved in sex work, and some of this involvement in sex work is against their will), most sex work appears to be consensual activity.

That is not to say there isn’t an element of exploitation involved in sex work. But it is important to identify that sex workers have agency. A part of recognizing this agency is providing sex workers the opportunity to engage in sex work in ways of their choosing. Analysis of New Zealand (where sex work has been legalized) suggests this model yields the best outcomes for sex workers.

-- Bob Barnetson

New course: LBST 415: Sex work and sex workers

After more than a year of work, LBST 415: Sex Work and Sex Workers is now open for registration, with new intakes on the first of every month. This course examines the operation and regulation of sex work in Canada.

The course focuses on the experiences of sex workers—often told through their own writings—to identify how the structure and regulation of the sex industry affects them. This includes examining how sex workers experience exploitation and exert agency over their lives at the same time.

Of particular interest is how different jurisdictions approach regulating sex work. These very different approaches result in better and worse working conditions as well as shape the relationships between sex workers and law enforcement, managers, and clients.

This course is not for the faint of heart. But if offers students in labour studies, women’s and gender studies, or sociology with an opportunity to explore this very interesting intersection of work and sex.

-- Bob Barnetson

Video: Sex work and sex workers

I’m currently working with a subject matter expert to develop and launch a course about sex work and sex workers (LBST 415). I'd guess we are about a year from launch, but who knows. In the interim, this video does a nice job of introducing the topic of sex work (specific to the UK).

 -- Bob Barnetson

Report identifies failing in Caregiver program

A week ago, a coalition of groups released a report addressing shortcomings in Canada’s existing Caregiver Program. This program brings foreign nationals to Canada to work on a temporary basis providing care for children, the elderly and persons with disabilities. After 24 months of work, the caregivers can then apply for permanent residency.

The existing Caregiver program is set to expire in November of 2019. The coalition identifies a number of issues with the current program:

1. It defines caregiving as a temporary labour market need when, in fact, there is an ongoing need for caregivers (as witnessed by the ~5000 new caregivers who come to Canada each year).
2. The program requirements separates caregivers from their own families, often for years.
3. The structure of the program makes it almost impossible for caregivers to leave bad jobs, such as where there is economic exploitation or abuse.
4. The pathway to permanent residency contains a hard cap on the number of caregivers who may become permanent residents (which is the primary attraction of the program for workers) that is set at about half of the number of caregivers who are allowed into the country each year. Consequently, there is a huge backlog of applications.
5. Some of the requirements for permanent residency (language and education) are assessed only after caregivers have already been employed on a temporary work permit for two years. Other requirements (medical exam) are repeated.

The report also contains recommendations for actions and is well worth a read.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Family impact of mobility

The Vanier Institute recently published an article about the impact of work-related mobility on family life. The study looked at workers who commuted more than an hour a day and workers whose jobs required them to move from place-to-place during the day.

Among the findings is that there were significant effects on workers of unpaid idle time (e.g., time spent waiting for work that was not paid). Examples include caregivers who were waiting between client visits or shift workers who must arrive early for a shift due to poor public transportation alignment with their schedules. This time represented a cost transferred from employers to workers (in the form of time stolen from family responsibilities) by the mobile nature of the job.

The time pressures that mobility intensifies were also found to negatively affect the well being of workers. Effects included exhaustion, stress, and social isolation. The lack of alignment between non-standard work hours and child-care formed an additional burden that was felt particularly acutely by female workers.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The Triangle Fire Project

From October 10 to 20, Edmonton’s Walterdale Theatre is presenting “The Triangle Factory Fire Project.” This play recreates the events and aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

The New York textile factory was mostly staffed by recent and young female immigrants. When fire broke out on March 25, 1911, the workers found the fire doors and exits locked (to prevent time and product theft).

Consequently, 146 workers died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling to their deaths to escape the flames. The fire helped propel improvements in building safety across America.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Private Dancer

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Private Dancer” by Tina Turner. The song is sung from the perspective of a worker in the sex industry. We don’t normally think about sex workers as workers—although they are.

A new course under development at Athabasca is hoping to change that. LBST 4XX (Sex work and sex workers) will examine the sex industry and the experiences of those work in it. While sex work represents one of the most extreme forms of employment, it shares many features with other forms of employment. Specifically, it is a relationship of power wherein one party appropriate the surplus value generated by the other, often employing coercion and externalizing costs in gendered and racialized ways.

The course offers an overview of the sex industry in a variety of theoretical and material contexts, as well as an in-depth focus on prostitution in the Canadian context. Taking “the prostitute” as the stereotype that drives public sex work policy, this course examines the myriad images of and circumstances in which sex work occurs. In addition to reading key texts by scholarly experts on the sex industry, we will hear from sex workers themselves about their jobs, working conditions, and the power dynamics of sex work.

Students will learn to analyze sex work as work through a variety of theoretical lenses, and to identify similarities and differences in legal and policy positions that respond to feminism, queer theory, critiques of neoliberalism and globalization, postcolonial praxis, and progressive legalism. This includes examining how labour policies, such as occupational health and safety policies, affect sex workers, the roles of clients and third parties in the sex industry, and sex workers’ labour organizing.

I’m hopeful this course will open in late 2019.

Well, the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names
You don't think of them as human
You don't think of them at all
You keep your mind on the money
Keeping your eyes on the wall

I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
And any old music will do

I want to make a million dollars
I want to live out by the sea
Have a husband and some children
Yeah, I guess I want a family
All the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names

I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
And any old music will do
I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
Just a private dancer
A dancer for money
And any old music will do

Deutschmarks or dollars
American Express will do nicely, thank you
Let me loosen up your collar
Tell me, do you want to see me do the shimmy again?

I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
Do what you want me to do
Just a private dancer
A dancer for money
And any old music will do

All the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names
You don't think of them as human
You don't think of them at all
You keep your mind on the money
Keeping your eyes on the wall

I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
And any old music will do
I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer
A dancer for money
And any old music will do

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
Just a private dancer, a dancer for money

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Anti-union campaign on Superstore

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture examines employer interference in union organizing efforts. Earlier this week, I wrote about how changes in Alberta’s labour laws are making it harder for employers to interfere with workers deciding whether or not they want to be represented by a union.

An episode of the TV show Superstore examined corporate “union avoidance” campaigns. While I can’t find a free version of the entire episode, the three key scenes about union avoidance are set out below.

Employer discovers union organizing may be occurring and freaks out:



Union-avoidance consultant shows up on job site:



Workers realize employer doesn’t care about them:



While obviously embellished for comedic purposes, this is pretty much how it goes with anti-union employers. The only thing missing was the union organizer getting terminated to put a chill on the campaign.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: The Irregular

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is the 2017 novel “The Irregular” by H.B. Lyle. The setting is London in 1909 and the main character is Wiggins (I’m not sure we ever learn his first name). Wiggins is an adult version of one of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars—a group of street urchins periodically employed by Holmes in his cases.

The novel is historical fiction, mixing facts with fiction to create a fairly decent thriller. Wiggins is recruited by the government to form what will eventually become MI5 and MI6 (he becomes Agent 00). His task is to unravel a spy ring in a munitions factory that is leaking secrets to Germany. There is a separate plot line about Wiggins seek to avenge the death of one of his friends at the hands of Russian anarchists.

Unions and workers form part of the backdrop of the story. London in 1909 is a pretty nasty place for the working class. There are rallies and protests (not covered by the press), with Marxist revolutionaries mixing with workers wanting 8 hour work days and decent pay and suffragists wanting the vote. The government’s response is to try to suppress demands demands made by the working class, often with the police.

It is interesting that the workers are painted with a fair bit of sympathy by the author--particularly with regard to the immigrants who came to London from all over the world. Indeed, Wiggins is clearly of the lower class, in his appearance, manners, and values. Yet his main job is to save the empire—which treats his fellow workers so shabbily. It will be interesting to see how this conflict plays out in future novels.

-- Bob Barnetson

Research: Reproductive freedom among migrant workers

Alternative Routes just published a new article entitled ‘Bodies and boarders: Migrant women farmworkers and struggle for sexual and reproductive justice in British Columbia, Canada’. This paper examines the experiences of female migrant farm workers under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP).

The crux of the article is that the structural features of the SAWP mean that female workers have difficulty making choices about their bodies and sexuality. These structural factors include “…include precarious legal status, poverty, lack of access to primary care services, limited knowledge of the health care system, and workplace insecurity” (p. 92). Workers' sexuality is also subject to intense surveillance (by both their employers and the state), although this surveillance does not seem to prevent their sexual harassment.

The authors document numerous acts of resistance (e.g., rule breaking, speaking out, various forms of concerted action) as these workers assert their reproductive rights. That said, it is striking how these women’s ability to control their bodies is constrained in a country that, at least theoretically, upholds women’s right to make free choices about sexuality and health care.

Among the strategies advocated by the authors are educating health care providers about the unique power relationship that exists in the SAWP program, ensuring workers can (and now they can) access the public health-care system without undue financial constraint, and severing links between the health-care and immigration systems.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Bread and Roses

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Bread and Roses”. This song has its origins in a speech by Rose Schneiderman, a US suffragette and labour activist from the early of the 20th century. She said:

What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.

The line “bread and roses” gave rise to a poem and then several songs about workers’ need for not just sustenance, but also dignity. The most famous version is by Judy Collins (or maybe Joan Baez), the arrangement that appeared most recently in the movie Pride.



John Denver also recorded it to a different (more Celtic) melody.



As we go marching, marching in the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men
For they are women's children, and we mother them again
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of bread
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew
Yes, it is bread we fight for - but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days
The rising of the women means the rising of the race
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies;
Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Laying Pipe

In honour of Alberta’s efforts to expand the extraction of carbon-dense bitumen (thereby accelerating climate change) by forcing a pipeline through unceded Indigenous lands (so much for a more respectful relationship with Indigenous peoples), this week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Laying Pipe” by David Wilcox.

I can’t really think of a song that better sums up Alberta’s oil and gas industry and the degree to which Alberta's government is beholden to it. On one level, the song is about men working hard in blue-collar jobs (e.g., drilling for oil, installing sewers, making steel) in an industry where everybody they know also works:

My daddy worked construction
My brother too
He got me in the union
I'm payin' my dues

The job is tough and socially disruptive, but it has its rewards (a boy’s gotta eat, after all):

I don't mind working
If the money's okay
I take the night shift
I sleep all day

On another level, the song is a paean to misogyny—which is deeply embedded in the culture of the upstream oil-and-gas industry. The singer has a gold-digging women that he’s gotta keep in sparkly bobbles:

Oh but the woman I love
Has expensive taste
She's never satisfied
The latest things
A diamond ring
A car with an ultra-glide

Why?

Well, so he can get laid. The whole song is really a clumsy metaphor for screwing women (watch the video):

I'm layin' pipe all night long
Layin' pipe
I'm workin' so hard
I'm layin' pipe
All night long
Layin' pipe
To satisfy that woman

As long as one’s getting some, who cares about anything else? Which pretty much sums up Alberta’s efforts to force a pipeline through BC.



My daddy worked construction
My brother too
He got me in the union
I'm payin' my dues

Oh but the woman I love
Has expensive taste
She's never satisfied
The latest things
A diamond ring
A car with an ultra-glide

I work so hard
Payin' for all that stuff
Eight shifts a week
It's never enough

I'm layin' pipe all night long
Layin' pipe
I'm workin' so hard
I'm layin' pipe
All night long
Layin' pipe
To satisfy that woman

I don't mind working
If the money's okay
I take the night shift
I sleep all day

Dust and mud is in my blood
Underground cable in my way
I punch a clock and start my rig
Don't know how deep I might have to dig

I wish I had a million dollars
To buy her everything she needs
She'd only come back for more and more and more and more and more and more and more

I'm layin' pipe
All night long
Layin' pipe
I'm working so hard
I'm layin' pipe
All night long
Layin' pipe
To satisfy that woman

I put the pipe in
I pull it out again
My back is so sore
I can't work much more
I can't get my traction
The ground's too wet
I take a ten minute break
Ah smoke a cigarette
I don't mind the night shift
The cool breeze when the sun goes down
Winter time the ground is hard
Take twice as long to drill down

I'm layin' pipe
All night long
Layin' pipe
I'm working so hard
I'm layin' pipe
All night long
Layin' pipe
To satisfy that woman

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: North Country

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at the 2005 film North Country. The film is a fictionalized account of Jenson v. Eveleth Mines (1984), one of the first successful sexual harassment lawsuits in the US.

Jenson endured harassment from male mine employees beginning when she commenced employment in 1975. Jensen’s 1984 efforts to gain redress from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights were unsuccessful and she faced further harassment in retaliation.

In 1988, she and 14 other women at the mine filed a class-action suit against their employer. As the suit progressed, Jensen resigned due to post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite an invasive discovery process, the women won. The 1995 judgment, however, was profoundly damaging to the women and they appealed the miniscule damages award. The company eventually settled in 1998 for $3.5 in damages.

It has been awhile since I’ve seen this film. But, given the recent profile of harassment in Hollywood, it might be worth watching again. Interestingly, the only other block-buster style films I could find about sexual harassment were 9 to 5 (1980), the wretched Disclosure (1994), and Horrible Bosses (2011). The latter two reverse the usual power dynamic to portray men as the victims.

-- Bob Barnetson