Interrogating the New Economy: Restructuring Work in the 21st Century (review)

This stimulating collection of essays emerged out of a multi-year research project through the Centre for Research on Work and Society at York University. Benefitting from two differently situated yet complementary institutional collaborators, the academic and trade-union intersection from which this book arises provides a rich complementary stance from which to begin to make sense of "the new economy" in the Canadian context. It begins with an accessible overview of how the new economy came about, tracing the basic premises and language surrounding capitalist development in the West. It then hones in on the recent and complex changes that have occurred in the structures of Canadian labour markets, accomplished through highlighting the implications that these processes have had for workplaces and labour markets. It also focuses on the effects that these shifts have produced on the lives of workers, as well as how workers have responded to these new economic conditions.

One of the great strengths of this book is that it denotes very convincingly how the economic paradigm shapes many facets that extend well beyond the economic sphere. As the authors show, this new paradigm has created the structural conditions which inform relations which are different in character from previous eras at the level of the personal, the community, the national, and the global. Changes in the economic structures have also created new market conditions that inform how actors experience labour markets, and which then create and rely on workers adopting a work ethic which assumes the rationality of neoliberalism. In other words, in stark contrast to the Keynesian era, workers expect (and have come to believe that they should expect) to carry the costs of insecurity brought about by the market, rather than expecting capital to bear some part of this burden. These chapters also do an effective job of showing how experiences within situated spaces that workers experience as isolated realities are indeed related to processes of economic globalization.

A wide breadth of problematics (ranging in both scale and scope) are covered within the chapters of this edited edition. For instance, in Chapter 1 Gregory Albo provides a very good introduction into how capitalism works, including the terminology best employed to discuss capitalism, the processes and discourses involved within its functioning, and the tensions that this economic system produces as well as the challenges recent economic shifts have induced (such as straining the ability of unions to engage in collective bargaining). Chapter 3 provides a conceptual and analytical toolkit by which to make sense of recent changes in both the new economy and labour markets. It explores how labour markets are experienced by different actors as a result of technological developments, structural inequalities including differential access to human capital, and intersections (namely class, gender, and 'race') which function as key axes. Also covered in this book are the specificities of what constitute patterns of precarious work in the Canadian public sector, including employment practices such as seasonal employment, contracting out, and part-time employment relations. Similarly discussed are how the embrace of technological changes — in an attempt to "stay competitive" — has instigated shifts in the labour process which have effectively reoriented insecurities and burdens onto workers as opposed to capital.

While there is a wide range of issues covered in this book (such as a focus on the state's role in producing precarious segments in the labour market, and gendered, racialized, and sectoral shifts in the new economy that have impacted unions and their levels of perceived militancy), one of the most significant strengths of this book is the current and grounded issues that are engaged. Perhaps most obvious in this regard is Mark Thomas's chapter titled "Labour Migration and Temporary Work: Canada's Foreign-Worker Programs in the 'New Economy.'" In this piece, Thomas does an excellent job of thoroughly accounting for recent policy changes to Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program which has solidified a shift towards a low-wage, flexible workforce...