Human Rights Activists and the Question of Sex Discrimination in Postwar Ontario

This article examines the varied understandings of human rights in Ontario in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The article compares the social origins and implementation of Ontario’s Fair Employment Practices Act – which combatted racist and religious discrimination – with Ontario’s Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act – which mandated equal pay for women who did the same work as men. Although a few feminists called for the Fair Employment Practices Act to prohibit sex discrimination as well, their pleas fell mainly on deaf ears in this period. Men and women who fought against racist injustice were frequently unaware of gender injustice, for they, like so many others, subscribed to the deeply embedded ideology of the family wage. Conversely, some of the most outspoken advocates of women’s rights were unconscious of – or chose to ignore – racism. At the same time, some of the most committed advocates of equal pay for equal work actually reinforced certain conventional assumptions about men’s gender privilege at work and at home. Moreover, while the enforcement of both acts was constrained by the conciliatory framework embedded within them, the government officials who were charged with applying both acts interpreted the equal pay act quite narrowly and were significantly more diligent in tackling racist and religious employment discrimination.

Downsizing: Causes, Effect, and Strategies, A Conceptual Approach

Downsizing has recently become an increasingly important issue that needs to be addressed toensure fair employment practices. Companiesworldwide have used downsizing to improve organizational competitiveness, profitability, effectiveness, efficiency as well as to reduce the size of their workforce.Downsizing as a strategic managerial tool has become an increasingly common phenomenon in the business world today. Downsizing is a systematic reduction of the workforce through a set of activities by which an organization aims to improve the efficiency and performance of the organization. Human relation theory by Elton Mayo was adopted. The study is conceptual in nature which seeks to examine the factors affecting downsizing, strategies for successful downsizing, consequences of downsizing, and method of downsizing. It was recommended that organisation should ensure that they provide more information to employees regarding the implementation of downsizing in their organisation so as to provide a sense of transparency to employees

“People Crushed by Law Have No Hopes but from Power”: Free Speech and Protest in the 1940s

In a trio of cases handed down on the same day in 1950, the Supreme Court denied constitutional free speech protection to civil rights picketing and labor picketing. The civil rights case, Hughes v. Superior Court, has often been portrayed as an early test case about affirmative action, but it originated in repression of an alliance of radical labor and civil rights activists exasperated by the legislature's repeated failure to enact fair employment law. Seeking a people's law like the labor general strikers and sit-downers of the 1930s and the civil rights sit-inners of the 1960s, they insisted that the true meaning of free speech was the right to speak truth to power. Courts and Congress forced the labor movement to abandon direct action even as it became the defining feature of the civil rights movement. The free speech rights consciousness they invoked challenged the prevailing conservative conception of rights and law. Direct action was a form of legal argument, a subaltern law of solidarity. It was not, as civil rights protest is often portrayed, a form of civil disobedience. What happened during and after the case reveals how the subaltern law and formal law labor and civil rights began to diverge, along with the legal histories of the movements.

Access-centred virtual conferencing for planetary science and beyond: reflections from Space Science in Context 2020

<p>There is a pressing need for climate-friendly conferences that are accessible to different people and which can still connect scholars meaningfully. The pressure on virtual conferencing technology in a COVID-19 era, as well as the many years of disabled activism around remote access and virtual meetings, make this an even more important issue. Furthermore, the need for dynamic intersection and collaborative work between the spheres of science and technology studies (STS), environmental and other justice-based activism, and the space sciences around issues of space ethics, governance, and human rights grows more urgent.</p> <p>We will discuss Space Science in Context (14th May, 2020), an experimental virtual conference aiming to bring together space scientists, activists, and STS scholars, funded through the UCL Researcher-Led Initiative Award. The conference used a flipped-classroom model for 12 invited talk videos and ~30 multimedia e-posters across three primary sessions and two e-poster sessions, and engaged ~450 attendees worldwide. Invited talks were provided with full transcripts and closed captioning by Academic Audio Transcription, a company committed to the fair employment of disabled people. On the day of the conference, the five sessions were hosted at different times in video-chat hybrid formats. We reflect on the different access-centred aspects of this experimental format and their efficacy in facilitating cross-disciplinary conversations.</p>

Organizational justice and climate for inclusion

PurposeThis article examines a climate for inclusion through the lens of organizational justice. We argue that open interpersonal contacts, the fair treatment of gender-diverse employees, and inclusive decision-making processes in the promotion of equitable employment practices are foundational for shaping the climate for inclusion.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data were collected from multi sources: focus groups with female employees (N = 20) and interviews with male and female managers (N = 8).FindingsIn examining the similarities and differences between employees' and managers' perspectives, the findings revealed that, in all dimensions of a climate for inclusion, employees had more negative justice concerns than did managers, while managers and employees had similar views on some aspects of employment practices.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was conducted within one university setting; therefore, the findings may not be applicable to other industries.Practical implicationsThis study offers managerial implications that can be developed to promote the climate for inclusion in organizations.Social implicationsIn order to create a fair and equitable workplace, all employees should be able to actively participate in decision-making processes and share suggestions for contextualized and fair employment practices.Originality/valueDrawing the group-value model, this study advocates the importance of justice-based organizational practices in building an inclusive organization.

Union Security, Race, and the Political Process: Some Reflections on Unions and Democracy

The article focuses upon developments in (1) so-called union security and fair share laws through which financial support of unions is obliged; (2) the cases and practices involving both union democracy and discrimination that have emerged with considerable frequency, particularly in the wake of comprehensive fair employment practices legislation; (3) involvement of the unions in the political process and the ways in which this has altered over the past century.

To All Store and Office Workers … Negro and White!

The exceptionality of retail unions governing Macy’s Herald Square in New York City and South Center Department Store in Chicago in advancing black labor and civil rights is the subject of chapter three. New York and Chicago locals successfully linked worker and consumer rights and improved African Americans’ social and economic conditions, even propelling some of them into the middle class. Also, in acting as both labor and civil rights organizations, these unions expanded views on fair employment in this industry beyond bread-and-butter issues and promoted equal employment and promotion. These unions point to the nature and direction of the black freedom struggle, albeit without the presence of strong unionism.