Getting Organized

2019 ◽  
pp. 42-64
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This chapter details the attempts of the union representing Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employees at Sidhu & Sons to organize, gain certification, and secure a first collective agreement for a bargaining unit encompassing participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity. Through an analysis of the legal proceedings surrounding United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 1518's bid for certification, it explores SAWP employees' two important motivations for organizing: namely, to preempt termination without just cause prompting premature repatriation and to secure mechanisms for recall suitable to workers laboring transnationally. Local 1518, in seeking to represent SAWP employees, came up against tensions arising both from the Labour Relations Board's (LRB) understanding of its role of facilitating access to collective bargaining under the Labour Relations Code (LRC) and from limits posed by the parameters of the TMWP in play. Consequently, the unit obtained certification, but only on a restricted basis. At the same time, it introduced mechanisms aiming to limit termination without just cause prompting premature repatriation and offered novel provisions on recall and seniority.

Deportability among Temporary Migrant Workers

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-41
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This chapter develops the argument that deportability, as it applies to participants in a temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permitting circularity, is an essential condition of possibility for migration management. Under this paradigm, TMWPs—such as the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP)—which are perceived to represent “best practices” by, for example, offering participants the prospect of return, simultaneously sustain this approach to governing migration and represent its limit, including in contexts in which unionization is permissible. The legal struggle of SAWP employees of Sidhu & Sons to unionize, secure a first collective agreement, and maintain bargaining unit strength gives substance to these claims. It reveals how deportability is lived among temporary migrant workers and the central modalities through which it functions. As such, these SAWP employees' experience provides rich empirical evidence for a grounded critique of migration management revealing that, despite its call for “regulated openness,” this global policy paradigm introduces new modes of control.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Management Program ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Significant Phenomenon ◽  
Migration Experiences

This introductory chapter provides an overview of temporary migrant work. In the age of migration management, temporary migrant work is a significant phenomenon in many countries where relative labor shortages fuel demands for temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) that provide comparatively low labor standards and wage levels. In this context, workers laboring transnationally in such programs are turning to unions for assistance in attempt to realize and retain access to rights. Yet even those engaged in highly regulated TMWPs permitting circularity—or repeated migration experiences involving one or more instances of emigration and return—confront significant obstacles tied to their deportability. This book tells the story of Mexican nationals participating in a subnational variant of Canada's model of migration management program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). It explores how these workers organized to circumvent deportability, but despite achieving union certification, securing a collective agreement, and sustaining a bargaining unit, ultimately remained vulnerable to threats and acts of removal.

Maintaining a Bargaining Unit of Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (Sawp) Employees

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Labor Laws ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Conditions Of Work ◽  
Work And Employment

This chapter analyzes how threats and acts of blacklisting impeded the fair application of the collective agreement between UFCW Local 1518 and Sidhu & Sons. The detection and analysis of the blacklisting of bargaining unit members at Sidhu uncover important “truths” about the management of migration among temporary migrant workers with the prospect of return. Broadly, it demonstrates that institutionalized programs' mechanisms, promoted in the global policy discourse embracing migration management as a means of stemming the flow of “irregular migration,” can impede access to and the exercise of labor rights. More narrowly, it shows that SAWP's “best practices” are by no means neutral, but are instead consistent with the dynamics of global capitalism, producing a race to the bottom in conditions of work and employment. This model temporary migrant work program (TMWP) permits state officials to behave in unprincipled ways that can involve, among other things, defying collective agreement provisions by delegating key responsibilities related to readmission—such as recruitment, selection, and aspects of documentation—to those in the interior and posted abroad. It also illustrates vividly how a labor relations tribunal compelled to prioritize national, and thereby sending-state, sovereignty, can be inhibited in—and even prevented from—implementing and enforcing host-state labor laws under its oversight.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-120
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Migration Management ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This concluding chapter reflects on the significance of the legal case of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employeess at Sidhu & Sons for expanding understandings of the meaning of deportability and its applicability to temporary migrant work program (TMWP) participants laboring not only in Canada but also in other relatively high-income host states embracing migration management and the measures it prescribes. Obstacles to limiting deportability writ large will persist so long as migration management dominates paradigmatically. Nevertheless, in combination with the forward-looking organizing efforts already being undertaken by unions and worker centers, in areas where unionization is difficult to achieve partly because of the still-dominant Wagnerian-styled model of unionization, certain modest interventions in policy and practice hold promise in forging change and curbing deportability among temporary migrant workers. Because the foregoing case study focused on the SAWP, the alternatives outlined in this chapter primarily address this TMWP. Given, however, that the SAWP is often touted as a model of migration management, they seek to provide meaningful avenues toward incremental change in other TMWPs in Canada and elsewhere.

Disrupting Deportability

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah F Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Work Program ◽  
Collective Representation ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work

This book highlights obstacles confronting temporary migrant workers in Canada seeking to exercise their labor rights. It explores the effects of deportability on Mexican nationals participating in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). The book follows the decade-long legal and political struggle of a group of Mexican SAWP migrants in British Columbia to establish and maintain meaningful collective representation. The case study reveals how modalities of deportability—such as termination without cause, blacklisting, and attrition—destabilize legally authorized temporary migrant agricultural workers. Through this detailed exposé, the book concludes that despite the formal commitments to human, social, and civil rights to which migration management ostensibly aspires, the design and administration of this “model” temporary migrant work program produces conditions of deportability, making the threat possibility of removal ever-present.

Sustaining Bargaining Unit Strength

2019 ◽  
pp. 84-109
Author(s):  
Leah F. Vosko
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Subsequent Growth ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Labor Practices ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Work Programs

This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attrition, either through formal decertification or by other means producing similar outcomes. It first documents trends in numerical attrition at Sidhu & Sons, in the context of Canada's introduction of other more highly deregulated temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) operating in agriculture and those programs' subsequent growth. The size of the bargaining unit at Sidhu, comprised of SAWP employees exclusively, shrank after certain employees' attempt to decertify it, despite the fact that the Labour Relations Board (LRB) had refused to cancel its certification. Given the absence of an active attempt to decertify the bargaining unit, it is nevertheless difficult to determine how attrition continued at Sidhu. To demonstrate the how of this often subtle modality of deportability, the chapter then chronicles strategies fostering attrition in the bargaining unit encompassing SAWP employees at Floralia Plant Growers Ltd., which the union originally tried to draw into the foregoing complaint of unfair labor practices and coercion and intimidation directed at Sidhu.

scholarly journals The Role of the Secretary of a Parity Committee

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-333
Author(s):  
Raymond Gérin
Keyword(s):  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Social Conscience ◽  
Labour Relations

In this article, the author wishes to show the important role that the secretary of a parity committee, by his functions, must play. These functions vary from one parity committee to another, but generally are those determined by the Collective Agreement Act and suggested by the sample regulations recommended by the Department of Labour. In addition to these duties, the secretary takes part in the conduct and orientation of the parity committee, not only as administrator but also as a specialist in a sector of labour relations possessing an awakened social conscience. In order to act with efficiency and durability, he must be particularly rich in qualities and resources and thus be able to assure the continuation and orientation of this organization with which he is entrusted.

Unionizing Subcontracted Labor

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hila Shamir
Keyword(s):  
Developing Economies ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Bargaining Unit ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Relational Contract ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
The Impact

Subcontracting — the practice of using intermediaries to contract workers, whether through temp agencies, manpower agencies, franchise, or other multilayered contracting — is an increasingly popular pattern of employment worldwide. Whether justified from a business perspective or not, subcontracting has dire implications for workers’ rights: it insulates the beneficiary of their labor from direct legal obligations to the workers’ wages and working conditions and drastically reduces their ability to effectively unionize. This Article explores the impact of subcontracting on unionization of subcontracted labor. It argues that labor law in most postindustrial developing economies is structured around the Fordist model of production and employment and therefore provides insufficient protections to workers whose employment arrangements deviate from that model.The Article maps the various hurdles subcontracting poses to unionization. It identifies three main challenges to the basic assumptions that animate traditional labor law: first, that a union has leverage and significant bargaining power vis-à-vis an employer; second, that the union and the employer are repeat players in negotiations, and that accordingly the labor contract is a relational contract in which both parties consider the short and the long term in their calculations; and third, that the bargaining unit represented by the union is relatively easily discernable and relatively stable. The Article argues that subcontracting disrupts all of these assumptions. Accordingly, in order to remain relevant to subcontracted workers, labor law requires adaptations. The Article sketches a preliminary list of existing and potential legal responses to subcontracting that better guarantee subcontracted workers’ rights to unionize. Its main suggestion is to move away from a bilateral towards a multilateral structure of collective agreement bargaining in subcontracting situations. Finally, the Article questions whether law can provide a once-and-for-all solution to the problems posed by subcontracting, and explores the dynamic role of law and unionizing in this context.

scholarly journals The Legal In/Security of Temporary Migrant Agricultural Work: Case Studies from Canada and Australia

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 361
Author(s):  
Andrew Newman
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Migrant Worker ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Collective Agreement ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
Agricultural Work ◽  
Temporary Migrant ◽  
Unfair Dismissal ◽  
Employment Rights

Despite differing labour law systems and program structures, temporary migrant agricultural workers under the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and Australian Seasonal Worker Program often possess minimal security of employment rights and protections, despite potentially lengthy periods of consecutive seasonal service to the same employer. Such lesser rights and protections are partly due to the central role played by continuity of service in determining the length of reasonable notice periods and the strength of unfair dismissal protections and stand-down/recall rights. Although it is often presumed that the temporary duration of the seasonal work visa necessarily severs the legal continuity of the employment relationship, such is not the case. This article argues that security of employment rights and protections can be re-conceptualised to recognise non-continuous seasonal service within the current parameters of a fixed-term work visa. In both Canada and Australia this could be accomplished through contractual or collective agreement terms or through the amendment of labour law legislation. Such reforms would recognise a form of unpaid ‘migrant worker leave’, whereby the legal continuity of employment would be preserved despite periods of mandatory repatriation, thus allowing accrual of security of employment rights and protections.

Füchsische Poetologie. Zur Spiegelfiktion im Reynke de Vos (1498)

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Hannah Rieger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Ancient Rhetoric ◽  
Wooden Frame ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Middle Low German ◽  
Specific Material

Abstract The Middle Low German Beast Epic Reynke de Vos (1498) is about two legal proceedings against the fox Reynke, who is charged by the other animals with the tricks he played on them. When he is sentenced to death, Reynke defends himself by delivering speeches that are constructed as described in ancient rhetoric. Part of those speeches is Reynke’s lie about his treasure, which he would give to the lion if he pardoned him. Reynke describes three pieces of jewellery as part of this made-up possession, one of which is a mirror. When Reynke describes it, he also tells Aesopic fables that are carved into its wooden frame. His fictional artefact, especially the interplay of its specific material and the content of the fables told, has a poetological level. In his description, Reynke hybridizes the political discourse of the early modern period, in which the virtue of prudentia becomes more and more important, with the rhetorical competence to deliver speeches and tell fables. In his fiction of the mirror he draws up a poetological draft that combines the role of a rhetor in court with his well-known properties of being clever and cunning. By describing the artefact, Reynke shows how to use rhetorical strategies, especially to tell fables, as an instrument to gain acceptance and to acquire political influence.

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