Peer-reviewed Articles (co-authored) by Leah Vosko
Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 2018
This article traces methodological discussions of a multidisciplinary team of researchers located... more 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 methodological approaches that the team collectively rejected. Out of these discussions emerged suggestions and approaches through which we navigated dilemmas in research design. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the following: (a) epistemological tensions around mixed methods and the politics of mixing, (b) the attempt to capture the relationships between research and its impact, and, (c) the need to develop interviews which both establish respondents as knowers, and simultaneously focus on that which is unsaid/normalized.
Papers by Leah Vosko
Precarious Employment in the Federally Regulated Private Sector
University of British Columbia Press eBooks, Nov 1, 2022
Liberating Temporariness? Imagining Alternatives to Permanence as a Pathway for Social Inclusion
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jun 1, 2014
Sustaining Bargaining Unit Strength
Cornell University Press eBooks, Dec 15, 2019
This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attri... more 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.
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
For many years, the federal labour inspectorate in Australia was under-loved and overlooked. Howe... more For many years, the federal labour inspectorate in Australia was under-loved and overlooked. However, in 2006, this all changed. The inspectorate-now a statutory agency known as the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO)-was unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight in the wake of controversial legislative reforms introduced by the Howard conservative government (Hardy 2009). Notwithstanding several changes of government since this time, the federal labour inspectorate has continued to play a prominent role in workplace relations. And yet, much like the situation in Ontario, there remains a persistent "enforcement gap" (Berg and Farbenblum 2017; Bright, Fitzpatrick, and Fitzgerald 2017). Indeed, the long-held assumption that the vast majority of Australian employers were law abiding and that non-compliance may be explained "as a moral evil rather than as a consequence of structural factors" (Bennett 1994, 151) has now come unstuck. In 2015 a series of underpayment scandals rocked some of the country's best-known brands, including 7-Eleven and Domino's Pizza (Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2015, 31 August; Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2015, 4 May; Senate Education and Employment References Committee 2017). Four years on, the media continues to be awash with stories of worker exploitation, community concern about wage theft is still high, and the FWO remains under intense scrutiny (Berg and Farbenblum 2018; Clibborn and Wright 2018; Fels and Cousins 2019). This chapter considers some of the compliance and enforcement challenges presented by employment standards regulation in Australia and the way in which the FWO has sought to respond to the problem of employer non-compliance with workplace laws. We begin by surveying the broader historical, legal, and political processes through which domestic employment regulation and enforcement has emerged and
Appendix A: Qualitative Methodology
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2000
5. Promising 'Flexibility' and Delivering Precariousness: The Shape of the Contemporary Temporary Employment Relationship
Appendix B: Interwievs
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2000
3. 'Halfway Houses' for 'Housewives': The Birth of the Temporary Help Industry
Feminist Political Economy and Everyday Research on Work and Employment: The Case of the Employment Standards Enforcement Gap
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Aug 28, 2019
Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Aug 28, 2019
10 Enforcing Employment Standards in Quebec: One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward?
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
6 The Deterrence Gap: Towards an Explanation
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
Closing the Enforcement Gap : Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Jun 19, 2020
A 20 Gb/s quaternary TDM-PAM passive optical network with chirped and non-linear optical transmit... more A 20 Gb/s quaternary TDM-PAM passive optical network with chirped and non-linear optical transmitters is experimentally demonstrated. The migration from legacy TDM-PONs and the implications of using available 10 Gb/s components are analyzed. We show that a loss budget of 27.3 dB is compatible together with a packet power ratio of 10 dB between loud and soft optical network units.
Lavoratore subordinato o lavoratore autonomo?: una ricognizione della rilevanza giuridica della distinzione in Canada
Introduction: Gender and the concept of precarious employment
Routledge eBooks, Sep 10, 2009
Blacklisting as a modality of deportability: Mexico's response to circular migrant agricultural workers' pursuit of collective bargaining rights in British Columbia, Canada
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Nov 20, 2015
ABSTRACT This article illustrates how blacklisting can function as a modality of deportability am... more ABSTRACT 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 Columbia's Labour Relations Board to represent a group of circular migrants engaged under Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme. Yet less than a year later, the union complained of unfair labour practices on the part of not only the host state employer and certain employees but sending state officials who select and assign workers to Canadian employers, contending that they blocked the visa reapplications of union members eligible for recall and improperly interfered in a decertification application. On account of the unique empirics available through this case, its analysis offers a window into practices which are routinely obscured but nevertheless central to how deportability operates.
Temporary Work
University of Toronto Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2000
The first in-depth analysis of temporary work in Canada, Leah F. Vosko's important new book e... more The first in-depth analysis of temporary work in Canada, Leah F. Vosko's important new book examines a number of important trends, including the commodification of labour power; the decline of the full-time, full-year job as a norm; and the gendered character of prevailing employment relationships. Spanning the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Temporary Work traces the evolution of the temporary employment relationship in Canada and places it in an international context. It explores how, and to what extent, 'temporary work' is becoming a norm for a diverse group of workers in the labour market, taking gender as a central lens of analysis. Recent scholarship emphasizes that the nature of work is changing, citing the spread of non-standard forms of employment and the rise in women's participation in the labour force. Vosko confirms that important changes are indeed taking place in the labour market, but argues that these changes are best understood in historical, economic and political contexts. This book will be invaluable to academics in a variety of disciplines as well as to policy analysts and practitioners.
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Peer-reviewed Articles (co-authored) by Leah Vosko
Papers by Leah Vosko