From Consent to Coercion: The Continuing Assault on Labour

From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living.

The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination.

From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

Bryan Evans is a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Carlo Fanelli is an assistant professor and coordinator of the Work and Labour Studies Program in the Department of Social Science at York University.
Leo Panitch was a distinguished research professor of political science and a Canada Research Chair in comparative political economy at York University.
Donald Swartz is a professor emeritus in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University.