This year for Labour Day, we invited two GLRC Graduate Associates to contribute to our COVID-19 and the World of Work Blog. If you are interested in submitting your work to the blog, contact us at glrc@yorku.ca.
Labour strikes back: A new hope awakens in grassroots organizing in the arts and culture industry
By Howard Steinberg (PhD Candidate, Social and Political Thought, York University)
"Workers in the entertainment industry were already experiencing challenges related to precarious gig work when they were forced out of the labour market as we tried to figure out how to slow the spread of the virus. This multi billion-dollar industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people across the country was brought to a stand still."
Yes, we can win: Strategic labour lessons in the customer discourses of public transit organizations
By Kritee Ahmed (PhD Candidate, Sociology, York University)
"In studying public transit organizations, I explore their hyper-focus on customers and customer service and the work that workers do. I had initially thought that the emphasis on serving the customer in public services was a rather recent trend invoking the neoliberalization of public assets through changing the nature of who was being served. There is of course some truth in this, but my research had come to reveal there was more to the story."