Public Sector Unions in the Age of Austerity PDF Download

Author: Stephanie Ross
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781552665848
Category : Labor unions
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
For decades, public sector unions in Canada have been plagued by austerity, privatization, taxpayer backlash and restrictions on union rights. In recent years, the intensity of state-led attacks against public sector workers has reached a fevered pitch, raising the question of the role of public sector unions in protecting their members and the broader public interest. Public Sector Unions in the Age of Austerity examines the unique characteristics of public sector unionism in a Canadian context. Contributors to this multi-disciplinary collection explore both the strategic possibilities and challenges facing public sector unions that are intent on resisting austerity, enhancing their power and connecting their interests as workers with those of citizens who desire a more just and equitable public sphere.

Author: Bryan M. Evans
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077355419X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Following the 2008 global financial crisis, Canada appeared to escape the austerity implemented elsewhere, but this was spin hiding the reality. A closer look reveals that the provinces – responsible for delivering essential public and social services such as education and healthcare – shouldered the burden. The Public Sector in an Age of Austerity examines public-sector austerity in the provinces and territories, specifically addressing how austerity was implemented, what forms austerity agendas took (from regressive taxes and new user fees to public-sector layoffs and privatization schemes), and what, if any, political responses resulted. Contributors focus on the period from 2007 to 2015, the global financial crisis and the period of fiscal consolidation that followed, while also providing a longer historical context – austerity is not a new phenomenon. A granular examination of each jurisdiction identifies how changing fiscal conditions have affected the delivery of public services and restructured public finances, highlighting the consequences such changes have had for public-sector workers and users of public services. The first book of its kind in Canada, The Public Sector in an Age of Austerity challenges conventional wisdom by showing that Canada did not escape post-crisis austerity, and that its recovery has been vastly overstated.

Author: Baines, Donna
Publisher: Bristol University Press
ISBN: 152920867X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Austerity was presented as the antidote to sluggish economies, but it has had far-reaching effects on jobs and employment conditions. With an international team of editors and authors from Europe, North America and Australia, this illuminating collection goes beyond a sole focus on public sector work and uniquely covers the impact of austerity on work across the private, public and voluntary spheres. Drawing on a range of perspectives, the book engages with the major debates surrounding austerity and neoliberalism, providing grounded analysis of the everyday experience of work and employment.

Author: Sylvia Walby
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150950320X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.

Author: Thomas Byrne Edsall
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385535201
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles. In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners. Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.

Author: Stephanie Ross
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
ISBN: 1773633317
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This third edition of Building a Better World offers a comprehensive introductory overview of Canada’s labour movement. The book includes an analysis of why workers form unions; assesses their organization and democratic potential; examines issues related to collective bargaining, grievances and strike activity; charts the historical development of labour unions; and describes the gains unions have achieved for their members and all working people.

Author: Stephanie Ross
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
ISBN: 1773636049
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This fourth edition of Building a Better World offers a comprehensive introductory overview of Canada’s labour movement. The book explores why workers form unions; assesses their organization and democratic potential; examines issues related to collective bargaining, grievances and strike activity; charts the historical development of labour unions; and describes the gains unions have achieved for their members and all working people. This new and expanded edition also analyzes the challenges facing today’s labour movement as a result of COVID-19 and the strategies being developed to overcome them.

Author: Micah Uetricht
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781683255
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
The Chicago Teachers Union strike was the most important domestic labor struggle so far this century—and perhaps for the last forty years—and the strongest challenge to the conservative agenda for restructuring education, which advocates for more charter schools and tying teacher salaries to standardized testing, among other changes. In 2012, Chicago teachers built a grassroots movement through education and engagement of an entire union membership, taking militant action in the face of enormous structural barriers and a hostile Democratic Party leadership. The teachers won massive concessions from the city and have become a new model for school reform led by teachers themselves, rather than by billionaires. Strike for America is the story of this movement, and how it has become the defining struggle for the labor movement today.

Author: Stephanie Ross
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
ISBN: 1773635042
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to re-establish the labour movement’s political capacity to exert collective power in ways that foster greater opportunity and equality for working-class people has taken on a greater sense of urgency. Understanding the strategic political possibilities and challenges facing the Canadian labour movement at this important moment in history is the central concern of this second edition of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada. With new and revised essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of Canadian labour politics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their potential impact on the future of labour in Canada.

Author: Aidan Harper
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509539662
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
Not so long ago, people thought that a ten-hour, six-day week was normal; now, it’s the eight-hour, five-day week. Will that soon be history too? In this book, three leading experts argue why it should be. They map out a pragmatic pathway to a shorter working week that safeguards earnings for the lower-paid and keeps the economy flourishing. They argue that this radical vision will give workers time to be better parents and carers, allow men and women to share paid and unpaid work more equally, and help to save jobs – and create new ones – in the post-pandemic era. Not only that, but it will combat stress and illness caused by overwork and help to protect the environment. This is essential reading for anyone who has ever felt they could live and work a lot better if all weekends were three days long.