The experience of employment strain and activation among temporary agency workers in Canada

This article integrates the employment strain model with the social stress model in order to reveal the mechanisms that explain the relation between precarious employment and mental well-being. This model is applied to the case of temporary agency employment by analysing 41 in-depth interviews with temporary agency workers from Canada. The results show how temporary agency workers perceive employment-related uncertainties and efforts mainly as negative and to a lesser extent as positive experiences, respectively evoking strain or activation. Further, it is revealed how uncertainties and efforts mutually reinforce each other, which increases strain, and how support can serve as a buffer.This work is supported by a research grant [FWO1.1.B13.12N] and a travel grant [V4.018.14N] assigned to the first author by the Research Foundation Flanders. The data collection is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by funds made available by McMaster University and United Way Toronto.Peer Reviewe

Democracy in trade unions, democracy through trade unions?

Since the Webbs published Industrial Democracy at the end of the nineteenth century, the principle that workers have a legitimate voice in decision-making in the world of work – in some versions through trade unions, in others at least formally through separate representative structures – has become widely accepted in most west European countries. There is now a vast literature on the strengths and weaknesses of such mechanisms, and we review briefly some of the key interpretations of the rise (and fall) of policies and structures for workplace and board-level representation. We also discuss the mainly failed attempts to establish broader processes of economic democracy, which the eclipse of nationally specific mechanisms of class compromise makes again a salient demand. Economic globalization also highlights the need for transnational mechanisms to achieve worker voice (or more radically, control) in the dynamics of capital-labour relations. We therefore examine the role of trade unions in coordinating pressure for a countervailing force at European and global levels, and in the construction of (emergent?) supranational industrial relations. However, many would argue that unions cannot win legitimacy as democratizing force unless manifestly democratic internally. We therefore revisit debates on and dilemmas of democracy within trade unions, and examine recent initiatives to enhance democratization