期刊名称：Just Labour : A Canadian Journal of Work and Society
电子版ISSN：1705-1436
出版年度：2003
卷号：3
出版社：York University
摘要：A growing segment of the Canadianworkforce is precariously employed.One week they could be hiredthrough a temporary employmentagency, the next week on a contract,and then the next they may be out ofwork. When they do have work,they earn low wages and labour inconditions where employmentstandards are not enforced or do notapply. The instability of workresults in more people living inpoverty. Growing precariousness inthe Canadian labour marketdisproportionately affects recentimmigrants and women workers.Workers are increasingly told toadapt to a "new" world of work ¨C todevelop entrepreneurial skills, toopen their own business, to get"Canadian experience" in order tocompete for the elusive permanent,full-time job. This climate now morethan ever requires collectivesolutions. Yet the laws that regulatecollective bargaining do not fullycover these precariously employedworkers. In this context, communityunionism has (re)emerged.In this article, we focus oncommunity unionism in Canada. Insection I, we give a brief overview ofthe growth of precariousemployment in Canada, which isprompting the need for communityunionism. Many different practicesof community unionism are evidentin Canada as both community-basedgroups and recognised trade unionsexperiment with tactics to organisenon-union workers. We give severalcontemporary examples ofcommunity unionism in section II.In section III, we conceptualisecommunity unionism as a range ofpractices that fall along a continuumwith community organising at oneend and trade union organising atthe other. We examine one"community union"2more closely,Toronto Organising for FairEmployment (TOFFE), in section IV.We conclude by arguing thatcommunity unionism, broadlydefined, can contribute to building astronger labour movement.
