Conference Agenda

For the past 40 years, the combined effects of fast-evolving technologies, flexibilization, globalization, privatization on work arrangements and working conditions have been widely documented (Countouris, 2018). Significant changes have ensued, causing major disruptions the world of work such as the increased use of technology in the professional sphere, the breakdown of corporate boundaries and the reshaping of global supply chains. While facing these disruptions, actors in the world of work are engaging in various forms of experimentation, which are leading to a re-regulation of work (Ferreras et al, 2020). The results of these different experiments are sometimes beneficial to workers and their communities but can also leave some behind. Thus, institutional experimentation in the regulation of work can lead to worse or better work, some amalgam between the two or status quo (Murray et al., 2020). We postulate that better work encompasses three constitutive dimensions: (1) risk, whether economic, health or social; (2) control or autonomy, namely the capacity to exercise discretion and control over work itself and over the boundaries of this work in relation to other aspects of life beyond work; (3) and expressiveness, which includes the capacity to express oneself individually and collectively and the achievement of individual and collective self-realization.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has strongly contributed to the better work objective through its decent work agenda. Based on four pillars, decent work seeks to promote jobs and enterprise, guarantee rights at work, extend social protection and foster social dialogue, with gender equality as a crosscutting concern. The ILO has developed statistical indicators to measure decent work “with an acceptable degree of consistency, accuracy and cross-country comparability” (Anker et al., 2003: 147)

Context is essential to a dynamic understanding of better and worse work because of variations between individuals, occupations, labour market segments, societies and historical periods (Cooke et al, 2013). The global pandemic of COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted the world of work. In addition to the important public health issues, the economic and social turbulence caused by the pandemic threatened the livelihoods and long-term well-being of millions of people around the world. On the one hand, the pandemic has caused a slowdown in economic activities in most sectors, resulting in temporary or permanent layoffs of many workers. Social protection systems were challenged as several workers had inadequate coverage (ILO, 2021). On the other hand, the organization of work for those still employed has undergone upheavals. Many workers providing essential services faced important health risks as they were in direct contact with sick or potentially sick people and often dealt with extended working hours. Others were quickly shifted to telework. For most, the pandemic led to an increased blurring of the boundaries between work time and non-work time, as many have found themselves reconciling their work and family obligations (Gesualdi-Fecteau et al, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted, and at times accentuated, many pre-existing issues. The pandemic has also led several to question the meaning of work while evidently displaying how it fundamentally structures everyday lives (Meda, 2022).

The COVID-19 pandemic led the State, employers, unions and employees to resort to various means, sometimes unprecedented, sometimes traditional, to face the challenges it brought forward (e.g., telework, massive layoffs and shutdowns, public health issues, etc.). By fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue (industrial relations, HR and labour law), this session will map different initiatives put forward by a multiplicity of actors in France and in Canada during the height of the COVID crisis but also in its aftermath. Are these initiatives likely to lead to sustainable changes and ultimately, to better…or worse work?

This session will build on the CRIMT International Partnership Project on Institutional Experimentation for Better or Worse Work, which is an interuniversity, inter-disciplinary and international collaborative research network bringing together researchers from around the world to look at the theoretical and practical challenges of institutional experimentation and renewal for work and employment.

Labour law and social protection are like the two faces of Janus. In Canada, the new markers of equity in relation to social protection are more and more at distance – if not at odd - with work, the labour contract and the worker’s status (Dirringer, 2018). In Canada, the measures laid out to answer the challenged posed by COVID-19 accelerated the process. If some categories of workers can still rely on labour laws’ protection and the benefit of contributory regimes, significant cohorts of workers, especially those with family responsibilities, rely more and more on fiscal welfare (Provencher et al, 2022; Sinfield, 2020). By taking Canada as an example, this paper seeks to illustrate how the worker’s status influenced the reconfiguration of social protection schemes. It will also address the crucial issue of voice and representation in the process of transforming social protection schemes.

The COVID crisis led to job losses due to social distancing measures in sectors where women are strongly represented (Alon et al. 2020). If, even before the crisis, many women had difficulty meeting the demands of caring for their loved ones at the same time as the demands of their employers (Blair-Loy, 2003), the situation is likely to worsen. The socio-economic consequences of the pandemic raises concerns that progress on gender equality will be significantly undermined (UN, 2020). Will the crisis make certain occupations, particularly women's jobs, more visible and contribute to reducing the wage inequalities that affect women in the long term? In order to better understand the effects of the pandemic on women employment and working conditions, this paper will present the results of an online survey (approx. 2,000 workers). Questions dwell on working conditions and career perspectives before March 2020 and now.

COVID-19 provided an opportunity to observe in a very large number of workplaces how parties at the local level reacted and adapted to the same unequivocal exogenous shock, and to identify the factors that fostered the reaction and adaptation. In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, we know that the crisis was not experienced in the same way depending on the industry, the “essential’ nature of the activities or even the professions (ILO, 2020). Through the analysis of a large sample of letters of agreement and collective agreements in Quebec (Canada), we will attempt to identify the nature and diversity of the changes that have occurred (compensation, work organization, etc.) and that seeked to adapt to the special circumstances brought by the pandemic.