Bryan Evans – författare

Canada has one of the highest rates of low-wage work among advanced industrial economies. In a labour market characterized by the ongoing fallout from COVID-19, deepening income inequality, job instability, and diluted union representation, the living wage movement offers a response. Rising Up traces the history and international context of living wage movements across Canada. In the 1970s, the balance of political and economic power began to shift in favour of business, as trade unions weakened and governments failed to check corporate power. By the 2000s, austerity measures had dismantled social spending, facilitating the growth of low-waged employment. Contributors to this astute collection of essays examine union- and community-based approaches to labour organizing, migrant labour, and media (mis)representations, among other key topics. Offering stimulating debate about living wages and social inequality, Rising Up promotes alternatives to a neoliberalized labour market.

Canada has one of the highest rates of low-wage work among advanced industrial economies. In a labour market characterized by the ongoing fallout from COVID-19, deepening income inequality, job instability, and diluted union representation, the living wage movement offers a response. Rising Up traces the history and international context of living wage movements across Canada. In the 1970s, the balance of political and economic power began to shift in favour of business, as trade unions weakened and governments failed to check corporate power. By the 2000s, austerity measures had dismantled social spending, facilitating the growth of low-waged employment. Contributors to this astute collection of essays examine union- and community-based approaches to labour organizing, migrant labour, and media (mis)representations, among other key topics. Offering stimulating debate about living wages and social inequality, Rising Up promotes alternatives to a neoliberalized labour market.

Over the past thirty-five years, Canada’s provinces and territories have undergone significant political changes. Abandoning mid-century Keynesian policies, governments of all political persuasions have turned to deregulation, tax reduction, and government downsizing as policy solutions for a wide range of social and economic issues. Transforming Provincial Politics is the first province-by-province analysis of politics and political economy in more than a decade, and the first to directly examine the turn to neoliberal policies at the provincial and territorial level.Featuring chapters written by experts in the politics of each province and territory, Transforming Provincial Politics examines how neoliberal policies have affected politics in each jurisdiction. A comprehensive and accessible analysis of the issues involved, this collection will be welcomed by scholars, instructors, and anyone interested in the state of provincial politics today.

This collection of original essays explores the myriad expressions of austerity since the 2008 financial crisis. Case studies drawn from Canada, Australia and the European Union provide extensive comparative analysis of fiscal consolidation and the varied political responses against austerity. Contributions examine such themes as privatization, class mobilization and resistance, the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of the far right. The potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in shaping future austerity and alternatives is signalled. Given the rapidly shifting terrain, this comprehensive handbook provides important insights into a complex and fast-changing period of politics and policy.

The fall-out from the economic and financial crisis of 2008 had profound implications for countries across the world, leading different states to determine the best approach to mitigating its effects. In The Austerity State, a group of established and emerging scholars tackles the question of why states continue to rely on policies that, on many levels, have failed.After 2008, austerity policies were implemented in various countries, a fact the contributors link to the persistence of neoliberalism and its accepted wisdoms about crisis management. In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 collapse, governments and central banks appeared to adopt a Keynesian approach to salvaging the global economy. This perception is mistaken, the authors argue. The "austerian" analysis of the crisis is ahistorical and shifts the blame from the under-regulated private sector to public, or sovereign, debt for which public authorities are responsible.The Austerity State provides a critical examination of the accepted discourse around austerity measures and explores the reasons behind its continued prevalence in the world.

Bryan M. Evans, Stephen McBride, and their contributors delve further into the more practical, ground-level side of the austerity equation in Austerity: The Lived Experience.Economically, austerity policies cannot be seen to work in the way elite interests claim that they do. Rather than soften the blow of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 for ordinary citizens, policies of austerity slow growth and lead to increased inequality. While political consent for such policies may have been achieved, it was reached amidst significant levels of disaffection and strong opposition to the extremes of austerity. The authors build their analysis in three sections, looking alternatively at theoretical and ideological dimensions of the lived experience of austerity; how austerity plays out in various public sector occupations and policy domains; and the class dimensions of austerity. The result is a ground-breaking contribution to the study of austerity politics and policies.

From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living.The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination.From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

The fall-out from the economic and financial crisis of 2008 had profound implications for countries across the world, leading different states to determine the best approach to mitigating its effects. In The Austerity State, a group of established and emerging scholars tackles the question of why states continue to rely on policies that, on many levels, have failed.After 2008, austerity policies were implemented in various countries, a fact the contributors link to the persistence of neoliberalism and its accepted wisdoms about crisis management. In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 collapse, governments and central banks appeared to adopt a Keynesian approach to salvaging the global economy. This perception is mistaken, the authors argue. The "austerian" analysis of the crisis is ahistorical and shifts the blame from the under-regulated private sector to public, or sovereign, debt for which public authorities are responsible.The Austerity State provides a critical examination of the accepted discourse around austerity measures and explores the reasons behind its continued prevalence in the world.

Bryan M. Evans, Stephen McBride, and their contributors delve further into the more practical, ground-level side of the austerity equation in Austerity: The Lived Experience.Economically, austerity policies cannot be seen to work in the way elite interests claim that they do. Rather than soften the blow of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 for ordinary citizens, policies of austerity slow growth and lead to increased inequality. While political consent for such policies may have been achieved, it was reached amidst significant levels of disaffection and strong opposition to the extremes of austerity. The authors build their analysis in three sections, looking alternatively at theoretical and ideological dimensions of the lived experience of austerity; how austerity plays out in various public sector occupations and policy domains; and the class dimensions of austerity. The result is a ground-breaking contribution to the study of austerity politics and policies.

From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living.The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination.From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

Austerity is not always one-size-fits-all; it can be a flexible, class-based strategy taking several forms depending on the political-economic forces and institutional characteristics present.This important book identifies continuity and variety in crisis-driven austerity restructuring across Canada, Denmark, Ireland and Spain. In their analysis, the authors focus on several components of austerity, including fiscal and monetary policy, budget narratives, public sector reform, labor market flexibilization, and resistance. In so doing, they uncover how austerity can be categorized into different dynamic types, and expose the economic, social, and political implications of the varieties of austerity.

The election of the Doug Ford–led Progressive Conservatives unleashed an aggressive and undisguised market fundamentalism. Ford’s government has taken the assault against the social welfare state, labour and environmental protections to new and unprecedented heights. Maintaining a permanent era of austerity has not only steadily reduced the public sector as a proportion of the provincial economy but has also reduced the social protections available to Ontarians.Ford’s deregulatory agenda has explicitly degraded the quality of social provisioning and eroded labour rights to the benefit of business. From undermining the fiscal capacity to fund program expenditures adequately to reducing public sector employment and service levels, Ford Nation has reordered an array of ministries and agencies to boost business and development in general and the resource-extraction and investment sectors in particular. Tens of billions have been put back into the pockets of the business community, often directly out of public coffers. Few ministries and programs have been left unscathed. Most people have not benefited. Against the People is the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth look into the devastating policies of the Ford government across a wide range of public policy issues: from health care, municipal, education and judicial restructuring, to economics, arts, labour, environmental, housing and Indigenous lands. Written by on-the-ground experts and focused on the Progressive Conservatives since coming to power in 2018, this book showcases the politics of dismantling a province.