Leah F. Vosko

York University

p>This chapter explores the use of survey research and secondary quantitative data in labour law research. We review the major considerations that researchers must take into account when using these methods, highlighting their respective advantages and disadvantages. We conclude by canvassing potential future developments in survey research and sta...

p>This chapter explores the use of survey research and secondary quantitative data in labour law research. We review the major considerations that researchers must take into account when using these methods, highlighting their respective advantages and disadvantages. We conclude by canvassing potential future developments in survey research and sta...

This article examines the history of, and legal precedent set by, Four B Manufacturing v. United Garment Workers of America, a 1980 Supreme Court of Canada case involving an Indigenous-owned manufacturing firm that resisted the efforts of its Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers to form a union on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, a reserve in sout...

In high‐income receiving states, educational visa‐holders are routinely cast as beneficiaries of immigration systems prioritizing well‐trained workers. Promising pathways to permanent residency, Canada's Post‐Graduation Work Permit Program (PGWPP), an expanding stream of its new International Mobility Program, is a case in point. Yet there is a dea...

Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has often been portrayed as a model for temporary migration programmes. It is largely governed by the Contracts negotiated between Canada and Mexico and Commonwealth Caribbean countries respectively. This article provides a critical analysis of the Contract by examining its structural context and consid...

p> In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, employment standards enforcement includes reactively investigating employee complaints and, to a lesser extent, proactively inspecting workplaces. Analyses of administrative data from Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MOL) show that the use of complaint data to inform workplace inspections is quite limit...

p>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 lowwage 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 conte...

p>Using an administrative dataset from the Ontario Ministry of Labour, we investigate three hypotheses about employment standards violations among franchised businesses: (1) franchisees have a higher probability of violating employment standards than other businesses, (2) franchisees have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related ES violations...

p> It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary resolution of complaints and, if that fails, orderin...

p>Using an administrative dataset from the Ontario Ministry of Labour, we investigate three hypotheses about employment standards violations among franchised businesses: (1) franchisees have a higher probability of violating employment standards than other businesses, (2) franchisees have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related ES violations...

p>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 lowwage 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 conte...

p> It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary resolution of complaints and, if that fails, orderin...

p> In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, employment standards enforcement includes reactively investigating employee complaints and, to a lesser extent, proactively inspecting workplaces. Analyses of administrative data from Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MOL) show that the use of complaint data to inform workplace inspections is quite limit...

In this chapter, we utilize the transnational employment strain model, outlined in Chapter 2, to examine working and living conditions of migrant farmworkers in two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec, before the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that well-prior to the pandemic migrant farmworkers faced employment demands such as occupational he...

In this chapter, we draw on the transnational employment strain approach, advanced in Chapter 2, to illustrate that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing, and contributed to new, employment strains among migrant farmworkers in Canada. Employment demands increased for migrant farmworkers during the health crisis as the working and living en...

Attending to the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic deepened structural vulnerabilities previously and routinely experienced by migrant farm workers, this chapter emphasizes how working and living conditions described in Chapter 4 flowed from those established prior to the pandemic. In revealing the excessive levels of employment strain among this...

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework adopted in this book and applied to the case of migrant farmworkers. It begins by elaborating the conception of transnational employment strain among precarious status workers—a holistic framework accounting for relations of social reproduction and production, citizenship status, and transnational r...

In Australia and Canada, working holidaymaking is rationalized on the basis of encouraging cultural exchange among youth. Yet, in both countries, there is mounting evidence that working holiday programs are operating as back-door migrant work programs to help fill demands for labor in occupations and industries characterized by precarious jobs unde...

Background Nine migrant agricultural workers died in Ontario, Canada, between January 2020 and June 2021. Methods To better understand the factors that contributed to the deaths of these migrant agricultural workers, we used a modified qualitative descriptive approach. A research team of clinical and academic experts reviewed coroner files of the...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada imposed certain international travel bans and work-from-home orders, yet migrant farmworkers, declared essential to national food security, were exempt from such measures. In this context, farm worksites proved to be particularly prone to COVID-19 outbreaks. To apprehend this trend, we engaged an expanded and tr...

In Canada, the settler colonial state uses the regulation of the so-called Indian identity as a dispossessive strategy, a racialized and gendered means of controlling access to resources and attempting to contain Indigenous human, nonhuman, and land-based relations. This regulation is informed by Western patriarchal ideals and mechanisms. We examin...

In light of Bill C-92, which establishes a framework for delegating child and family service provision to Indigenous communities, this article addresses the contested regulation of employment and labour relations in Indigenous social service workplaces. It approaches this subject by looking back at NIL/TU,O Child and Family Services Society v. B.C....

This study analyzes the conditions that migrant farmworkers in Canada endured prior to and during theCOVID-19 pandemic (January 2020-March 2022). It draws on policy analysis and open-ended interviews with workers in Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), as well as non-status migrants employed in agriculture. It evaluates policies and me...

In 2020, migrant farmworkers in Canada, cast as essential to sustaining the national food supply, experienced relatively high COVID-19 infection rates. Taking Southern Ontario as its focus, this article reveals how the federal government response to COVID-19 in agriculture perpetuated the effects of longstanding laws and policies requiring migrant...

This article examines labour standards violations and enforcement activities in Canada’s federally regulated private sector (FRPS) between 2006 and 2018. Drawing on an administrative data set (known as the Labour Application 2000 (LA2K)) from the federal Labour Program of Employment and Social Development Canada – we illustrate the dominance of a c...

To appease public anxieties and limit exploitation, in recent years Canada has sought to more strictly regulate and reduce temporary migrant work, while expanding opportunities for international mobility. This article explores the division between mobility and migration in this settler colonial context by charting developments in two overarching Ca...

Using an administrative dataset from the Ontario Ministry of Labour, we investigate three hypotheses about employment standards violations among franchised businesses: (1) franchisees have a higher probability of violating employment standards than other businesses, (2) franchisees have a higher probability of monetary/wage-related ES violations th...

This article analyses contemporary developments in top source countries of Canada's temporary migrant worker programmes, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and International Mobility Program (IMP). An analysis of administrative data and policy suggests that most temporary migrant workers from key source countries in Latin America and the C...

In Ontario, as in many other jurisdictions, employment standards enforcement includes reactively investigating employee complaints and, to a lesser extent, proactively inspecting workplaces. Analyses of administrative data from Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MOL) show that the use of complaint data to inform workplace inspections is quite limited. S...

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-in...

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...

Employment Standards (es) legislation sets minimum terms and conditions of employment in areas such as wages, working time, vacations and leaves, and termination and severance. es legislation is designed to provide minimum workplace protections, particularly for those with little bargaining power in the labour market. In practice, however, es legis...

Over 50,000 migrant agricultural workers are employed in Canada each year, almost half of whom are destined for the Province of Ontario. These workers are among the most vulnerable in the country and therefore most in need of labour and employment law protection. One important source of employment rights in Ontario is the Employment Standards Act (...

This article assesses whether a deterrence gap exists in the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (ESA), which sets minimum conditions of employment in areas such as minimum wage, overtime pay and leaves. Drawing on a unique administrative data set, the article measures the use of deterrence in Ontario’s ESA enforcement regime agains...

This article traces methodological discussions of a multidisciplinary team of researchers located in universities and community settings in Ontario. The group designed and conducted a research project on the enforcement of labor standards in Ontario, Canada. Discussions of methodological possibilities often began with “nots”—that is, consensus on m...

It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary resolution of complaints and, if that fails, ordering r...

This article explores how model temporary migrant worker programs (TMWPs) that permit seasonal return can institutionalize deportability or the possibility of removal among participants with legal status. It draws on the cases of two groups of workers who participated in the British Columbia–Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and w...

This article assesses whether a deterrence gap exists in the enforcement of the Ontario Employment Standards Act (ESA), which sets minimum conditions of employment in areas such as minimum wage, overtime pay and leaves. Drawing on a unique administrative data set, the article measures the use of deterrence in Ontario's ESA enforcement regime agains...

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...

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 ar...

This paper 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...

The purpose of this paper is to advance an approach to analyzing decision-making by front line public officials. The notion of discretion in front line decision-making has been examined widely in the law and society literature. However, it has often failed to capture the different kinds and levels of decisions that enforcement officials make. Takin...

This article illustrates how blacklisting can function as a modality of deportability among temporary migrant workers participating in a programme touted as a model of ordered migration internationally, with attention to sending state action. In 2010, Local 1518 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union applied successfully to British Columbi...

Temporary migrant work is a central feature of labour markets in many host states, and an increasing cause of concern for its potential impacts on workers’ rights and protections. In Canada, as elsewhere, policymakers utilise it as a regulatory device to lower labour standards. In this context, workers labouring transnationally are turning to union...

Employment standards (ES) are legislated standards that set minimum terms and conditions of employment in areas such as wages, working time, vacations and leaves, and termination and severance. In Canada, the majority of workers rely on ES for basic regulatory protection; however, a significant enforcement gap' exists. In the province of Ontario, t...

A mounting crisis in employment standards (ES) enforcement is prompting the adoption of new instruments and mechanisms among governments in common law jurisdictions aiming to improve workplace regulation. This shift, evident across all stages of the enforcement process, indicates the increasing influence of regulatory new governance. Using reforms...

This paper 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...

A mounting crisis in employment standards enforcement is prompting experimentation in common law contexts 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 paper raises...

Liberating Temporariness? explores the complex ways in which temporariness is being institutionalized as a condition of life for a growing number of people worldwide. The collection emphasizes contemporary developments, but also provides historical context on nation-state membership as the fundamental means for accessing rights in an era of expandi...

This article analyses the experience of recently unionised Mexican seasonal agricultural workers in British Columbia, Canada, whose visa reapplications were blocked by Mexico and a concomitant complaint to the province's labour board. Illustrating the significance of this sending state's actions, it reveals the growing disjuncture between nationall...

Abstract The topic of this report is the legal concept of employment because,employment,is the most important concept for determining the legal protection associated with different forms of paid work. Employment,establishes the boundary,between,the economic,zone of commercial relations, entrepreneurship, and competition, on the one hand, and the ec...

This paper explores the production of temporariness in Canada, and its implications for the citizenship rights of migrants. It investigates the production of temporariness within three policy fields that are typically not examined together – security, work and settlement. Within these three fields, it considers public policies concerning: (1) secur...

This report maps current enforcement and compliance measures and practices in Ontario’s regulation of employment, particularly as they relate to precarious employment. It evaluates the effectiveness of Ontario’s enforcement regimes, focusing on Employment Standards (ES) and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) legislation, and sets these regimes in...

The distinction between employees and independent contractors is crucial in determining the scope of application of labour and employment legislation in Canada, since the self-employed are, for the most part, treated as entrepreneurs who do not require the statutory protections accorded to employees. Yet statistics indicate that most self-employed...

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 fro...

This chapter compares and contrasts the U.S. and French systems of labor market regulation. The U.S. system is specialized: Regulating authority is dispersed among a host of different agencies each with a relatively narrow jurisdiction, and as a result with responsibility for a very limited domain. Authority is further divided between the federal a...

This book explores the precarious margins of contemporary labour markets. Over the last few decades, there has been much discussion of a shift from full-time permanent jobs to higher levels of part-time and temporary employment and self-employment. Despite such attention, regulatory approaches have not adapted accordingly. Instead, in the absence o...

There is a growing disjuncture between changing patterns of labour force participation in highly industrialized contexts and systems of labour regulation. Policy actors at various levels are attempting to deal with the insecurities associated with ‘new’ forms of employment such as parttime and temporary paid employment and solo self-employment, whi...

In 2009, Ontario adopted the Employment Standards Amendment Act (Temporary Help Agencies) partly In response to public concern over temporary agency workers' lack of protection. Analyzing consequent changes to the Employment Standards Act in historical and international context, this article argues that while the Act now contains a section extendin...

In 2009, the province of Ontario, Canada adopted the Employment Standards Amendment Act (Temporary Help Agencies) partly in response to public concern over temporary agency workers’ limited access to labour protection. This article examines its “new” approach in historical and international context, illustrating that the resulting section of the Em...

This article analyzes the Directive on Temporary Agency Work (2008) in the face of a new internal market in services in the European Union. I argue that the adoption of this Directive is paradoxical: on the one hand, it breaks the lengthy stalemate characterizing workers' and employers' efforts to craft a framework agreement. On the other hand, the...

Using data from the 2002–2004 waves of Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, this article investigates the consequences of different types of temporary employment—fixed-term or contract, casual, agency and seasonal employment—for differently situated workers in Canada. Attention to intersecting social locations of gender, race and immigrant status...

This article explores the transnational regulation of temporary work. Analyzing the terms of the EU Directive on Fixed-Term Work (1999), the ILO Convention on Private Employment Agencies (1997), the ILO Recommendation on the Employment Relationship (2006), and a draft EU Directive on Temporary Agency Work under negotiation, it demonstrates that the...

This article examines approaches guiding transnational regulations on part-time work in relation to the Australian case, where such work is especially common. Analysing the terms of an ILO convention and an EU directive on part-time work, it explores the ‘SER-centric’ approach guiding these regulations. This approach pivots on the norm of the stand...

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This interdisciplinary volume offers a multifaceted picture of precarious employment and the ways in which its principal features are reinforced or challenged by laws, policies, and labour market institutions, including trade unions and community organizations. Contributors develop more fully the concept of precarious employment and critique outmod...