Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment

Are unions still relevant in digitized workplaces? Could basic income be the solution to both poverty and technology-driven job loss? What are the benefits and drawbacks of a guaranteed jobs policy? Are multinational firms better regulators of global work than States? What are the tensions between immigration and employment relations? What are the regional impacts of national living wage movements? Do employment laws work for non-standard work? What would emancipation in transnational labor law look like? Are European social partnerships dead? Which decades-old policy ideas should be revived to help us navigate the changing nature of work and economies?

This edited research volume explores classic approaches to the regulation of employment that solidified in the period following the world wars. Unions and collective bargaining, labor and employment laws, and social partnerships are, and will continue to be, important institutions in many countries. However, the volume also reimagines old and new ideas for the governance of work and employment in global, digital, post-industrial, and rapidly changing economies and societies. Contributing authors consist of leading expert scholars and practitioners from around the world.

Dionne Pohler is an associate professor, the CIBC Chair in Youth Employment, and Associate Director at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto. Her research, which has received several international awards, covers a broad range of topics on work and employment, unions and labour relations, co-operative governance and development, and public policy implementation. Dionne developed a model of rural co-operative development alongside settler and indigenous communities in western Canada as one of the co-investigators on the Co-operative Innovation Project. She was also a founding board member of Co-operatives First, a non-profit organization dedicated to working with rural communities to address their needs.