Glossary

Acculturation: The process of modifying the assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and values of individuals and groups.

Active labour-market policies: Government policies that encourage or require action by unemployed individuals, employers, and communities (such as participation in training programs or job-search activities) to address unemployment.

Adult basic education: Training aimed at adults and intended to develop literacy, numeracy, and other knowledge and skills to the high-school level.

Antigonish movement: An early twentieth-century movement that combined adult education with economic literacy to empower rural Maritime Canadians to resist exploitation by moneylenders and product marketers.

Apprenticeship: A multi-year form of labour-market training that relies heavily on workplace training, supplemented by four to eight weeks of annual classroom instruction, entailing a fixed-term contract between an employer and an apprentice, wherein the employer provides wages and training in exchange for the apprentice’s labour.

Association: Two phenomena that typically happen at the same time or in proximity to one another.

Basic skills: Skills such as literacy, numeracy, and the ability to learn that form the foundation of workplace skills.

Bicameral governance: A system of post-secondary governance wherein decision-making is shared between a Board of Governors and General Faculties Council.

Blame the worker: Attributing responsibility for negative outcomes (usually incorrectly) to action or inaction by workers, while ignoring the contribution of other factors and actors.

Canada Job Grant: A federal labour-market training program, introduced in 2013, providing grants to employers who fund workplace training.

Canadian labour-market training system: A system that provides labour-market training to Canadians, compromising four main components: post-secondary education, government training and immigration policy, workplace training, and community-based education.

Capital: Resources such as money, land, equipment, and tools that can be deployed in order to produce goods and services. Also, sometimes a term used to refer to the group of people who own these resources.

Capitalist economy: A system of production and exchange characterized by the private ownership of capital.

Cartel: A group of independent producers who co-operate to increase their profits, such as by restricting the supply of labour.

Causation: A relationship between two phenomena wherein one causes the other.

Central paradox of trade unionism: The tendency of union power over its members to be appropriated by management to serve management’s goals.

Class structure: A hierarchy of classes based upon their relationship to the production process.

Collective agreement: An employment contract negotiated by a union between an employer and a group of workers.

Colonialism: The process by which European countries exerted political control over the rest of the world between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. In Canada, this process has subjected Indigenous people to forced assimilation and systemic racism.

Commodification of labour: The process of rendering workers’ labour as a commodity that can be bought and sold in a labour market.

Competency: A collection of knowledge, skills, and abilities that, when used together, allow a worker to perform a complex task or a job.

Compulsory trades or occupations: Occupations where employment is restricted to registered apprentices and journeypersons.

Demand: The number of hours of work that employers want to purchase at a certain wage rate.

Demand-side measures: Efforts (usually by the state) to alleviate unemployment by increasing the demand for workers by such means as job-creation and economic-development activities.

Emotional labour: An occupational requirement to manage one’s feelings and to make occupationally appropriate emotional displays, regardless of one’s internal feelings; emotional labour is most often performed by women.

Employment Insurance: A federal program providing income support and labour-market training to formerly employed Canadians.

Employment relationship: A relationship in which workers trade their time and skills to their employer in exchange for wages, whereby the employer is allowed to direct the work of employees.

Employment-related geographic mobility: Travel by workers related to employment, such as commuting between municipalities, provinces and territories, or countries.

English as a Second Language (ESL): Education designed to develop oral and written communication skills in English. Sometimes also called English as an Additional Language.

Equilibrium point: The wage rate at which the supply of workers equals the demand for workers.

Essential skills: Nine essential skills that the federal government asserts provide a foundation for learning all other skills and enable people to better prepare for, get, and keep a job; and to adapt and succeed at work.

Explicit knowledge: Fact-based knowledge that is relatively easy to transfer to learners.

Feedback loop: A dynamic wherein one phenomenon causes another which then reinforces or intensifies the first phenomenon. Often called a virtuous or vicious cycle.

Fly-in-fly-out workers: Workers who periodically commute significant distances (often by plane) to work for significant stretches of time before returning home for a period of rest.

Foreign credential recognition: The process of having educational qualifications above the high-school level that have been achieved in another country evaluated and granted a Canadian equivalency.

Fordist production: Industrialized mass production processes based upon scientific management, most often associated with standardized components assembled by workers on a mechanized production line.

Formal learning: Learning that entails stated objectives, an organized curriculum, and set requirements to demonstrate that skills and knowledge have been acquired.

Framing: The process of shaping public discourse through the selection, interpretation, and presentation of information.

Functional literacy: The ability to complete day-to-day tasks requiring literacy.

Generalize: To draw broad inferences from specific observations.

Hidden curriculum: Widely held assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and values that are inculcated into the recipients of education and training.

Human capital: The cumulative stock of KSAs, intelligence, experience, and judgment of an individual or a population.

Human capital theory: A theory asserting a direct relationship between the levels of labour-market training and national economic performance.

Immigrant settlement services: Programming providing immigrants with information about and assistance in (1) accessing health, education, housing, and transportation resources, (2) interacting with the state (e.g., assistance filling out forms), and (3) document translation and job searches.

Incorporation thesis: A theory asserting that management and unions have a symbiotic relationship in the workplace and that this relationship moderates the behaviour of unions.

Informal learning: Uncredentialed learning that often occurs in the course of doing something (or observing it being done).

Intergenerational transfer of (dis)advantage: A process by which socio-economic status is carried forward from one generation to the next, often through inequitable access to education, labour-market training, and jobs based upon resources available to an individual’s family of origin.

International mobility programs (IMP): Programs negotiated in free-trade agreements that permit various degrees of worker labour mobility between countries.

Intersectionality: The interaction of identity factors that can cause overlapping and interdependent systems of (dis)advantage for individual workers.

Journeyperson: A worker who has successfully completed an apprenticeship program and met the requirements to hold a trade qualification.

Knowledge: Information (i.e., facts) combined with experience and values that workers apply to situations and problems on the job or in everyday life.

Knowledge appropriation: Employer efforts to identify and codify worker knowledge about the process of work, usually in an effort to increase employer control and profitability.

Labour: A term referring to the group of people who must trade their effort for wages in order to purchase the necessities of life.

Labour market: The place where employers and workers negotiate the terms and conditions of employment.

Labour Market Agreements: Agreements between the federal government and provinces and territories whereby the federal government funded labour-market training offered by the provinces and territories and aimed at workers ineligible for training funded through Employment Insurance.

Labour Market Development Agreements: Agreements between the federal government and provinces and territories that devolve the delivery of Employment Insurance–funded training to the provinces and territories.

Labour-market power: A form of power for employers and workers derived from the relative scarcity of workers in an economy.

Labour-market training: Policies, programs, and activities intended to result in an adequate number of appropriately trained workers.

Labour schools: Intensive residential experiences designed to provide additional training to union activists.

Learning organization: An organization focused on increasing the capacity of its employees through ongoing learning as a means by which to improve organizational performance.

Literacy: The ability to understand, evaluate, use, and engage with written texts.

Mechanical metaphor: A way of viewing an organization, in this case as a machine comprising interlinked parts that work together towards a common purpose.

Monetize: Process by which unions convert member demands for power into demands for money, often under pressure from employers.

Neoliberalism: A set of political and economic prescriptions that centre on minimizing government regulations, programs, and expenditures.

Non-formal learning: Learning where explicit objectives, set curriculum, and requirements to demonstrate skills and knowledge are modest or absent.

Occupational segregation: The tendency of occupations to be populated by particular kinds of workers, such as the tendency of construction workers to be male and child-care workers to be female.

Organizational learning: The way in which organizations acquire, share, and use knowledge to succeed.

Pluralism: A view of employment that asserts employers and workers have both converging and diverging interests in the workplace.

Political costs: Consequences that one actor can impose upon another when their interests are being ignored or harmed, such as passive forms of resistance.

Political metaphor: Viewing an organization as a political system wherein the components of the system reflect the interplay of actors, who use power to advance their interests.

Post-secondary education: A system of colleges, universities, and technical institutes as well as various specialized institutes, which provide formal training that usually leads to credentials.

Precarious legal status: A condition affecting workers whose right to reside in Canada is contingent upon their continued employment, which makes these workers vulnerable to employer exploitation.

Precarious work: Paid work characterized by limited social benefits and statutory entitlements, job insecurity, low wages, and high risks of ill health.

Prior learning assessment: An effort to evaluate informal and non-formal learning in order to grant credit for such learning towards a formal educational credential.

Professionals: Workers who possess specialized knowledge that gives them significant discretion over how they do their work.

Professional development: Periodic training required of members of regulated professions. Also a common synonym for ongoing training in white-collar occupations.

Professional regulatory organization: A government-appointed body that regulates the right of workers to practise in certain occupations.

Professional self-regulation: The regulation of an occupation by members of that occupation, generally operationalized through a professional regulatory organization.

Profit imperative: The pressure that capitalists face to realize a profit from their businesses and that helps shape their decision-making.

Psychological contract: A set of worker expectations, which sits alongside formal employment contracts, about workload and treatment by the employer.

Public legal education: Training focused on assisting individuals to develop legal knowledge and skills to manage and/or improve their lives.

Red Seal program: A program of interprovincial recognition of trade qualifications designed to increase labour mobility among workers.

Regulated career colleges: Private vocational colleges regulated by governments to protect the financial interests of students.

Reproduction of labour power: The various tasks that must be accomplished in order to maintain a class of workers.

Return on investment: The (usually) economic gain caused by the expenditures of money.

Scientific management: An approach to workplace management that analyzes work processes and reorders them to maximize efficiency.

Skill: An ability to perform a task.

Skills shortage: The situation that exists when there is an inadequate number of workers who possess the knowledge, skills, or abilities that employers require and who are willing to make themselves available to work given the prevailing wage and working conditions.

Social reproduction: The process of perpetuating the social arrangements necessary for economic production, including ensuring that there is an adequate number of appropriately trained workers who accept being subordinate to employers in the production process.

Socio-economic status: An individual’s position within a social hierarchy based upon their education, occupation, income and wealth, and place of residence.

State: The supreme civil power within a country or subnational region.

Steward training: Union-sponsored training that develops members’ collective bargaining and grievance-handling skills, sometimes also called “tools” courses.

Supply: The number of hours of work that workers are prepared to provide at a given wage rate.

Supply-side measures: Efforts (usually by the state) to alleviate unemployment by providing training to workers to help them attach to the labour market.

Systemic racism: Racism embedded in social institutions, structures, and social relations within our society that is often most visible in the inequitable outcomes faced by specific ethnic and cultural groups.

Tacit knowledge: Knowledge that is often learned through experience and is very difficult to codify.

Temporary foreign workers (TFWs): Non-citizens who are permitted to work in Canada for a fixed period of time and whose residency is contingent upon their employment.

Trade qualification: A formal educational credential denoting that the holder (often called a journeyperson) is qualified to practise a trade or occupation.

Training: The process of intentionally acquiring, modifying, or reinforcing knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as values and references.

Training levy: A compulsory level of training expenditures required of employers by the state and intended to increase workplace training.

Underemployment: A situation where a worker’s KSAs are underutilized in a job.

Unitarism: A view of employment that asserts that common (and employer-determined) objectives unite the efforts of employers and workers in the workplace.

Workplace skills: Generic technical skills, problem-solving skills, and interpersonal skills that form the foundation of firm- or job-specific skill.