This study is among the first in Canada to document the transformation of municipal governance and public services from Keynesian to neoliberal public policy at the urban scale. Focusing on the neoliberal transformation of cites in Ontario from 1954 to 2014, with special attention to Toronto, it begins with a theoretical analysis of the remaking of municipal public finances and intergovernmental transfers, exposing the social and political causes of urban fiscal crises. This study makes the case that cities have been underfinanced, which has led to a deterioration of public services based on the contention that they are unaffordable. Reductions to employee compensation have been a stated aim of municipal austerity. Megacity Malaise analyzes the interactions and strategies used by civic workers and community groups as they struggle to understand and respond to demands for concessions. Focusing on two major Toronto strikes (by CUPE locals 79 and 416), it puts forward a range of evidence-based social policy alternatives to austerity, drawing attention to labour-community coalitions as the most effective strategy for building resistance against neoliberalism. As headquarters to Canada s largest financial institutions, local government, employment centre and municipal unions, Toronto provides a vivid setting for studying municipal restructuring. Fanelli s analysis is grounded in critical political economy and informed by his decade-long experiences as a Toronto civic worker and municipal unionist. Rigorous intellectual analysis is combined with municipal employee interviews and participant observation, providing a unique methodological approach to examining the socio-political struggles in Toronto and connecting them to municipalities across Ontario and beyond."

Rising Up traces the history and international context of living wage movements across Canada. This compassionate and astute collection of essays shines a light on alternatives to a neoliberalized labour market, examining union- and community-based approaches to labour organizing, migrant labour, and media (mis)representations, among other key topics. 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 and solutions.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in Marxian political economy and especially Marx's great work Capital. 150 years after the book's original publication, are there readings of Capital that can help us find new pathways to progressive or revolutionary change? In this wide-ranging new volume, leading thinkers reflect on Capital's legacy, its limitations and its continuing relevance for today, highlighting issues including ecology, gender, race, labour, communism, the 'Third World' and imperialism. The contributors also aim to identify the connections between Capital and various socialist projects of the past, and draw lessons from those experiences that might contribute to the reinvention of socialist politics today. Contributors include: Ingo Schmidt, Carlo Fanelli, William Pelz, Anej Korsika, Prabhat Patnaik, Silvia Federici, Paul Thompson, Chris Smith, Peter Gose, Justin Paulson, Jeff Noonan, Hannah Holleman and Peter Hudis.

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 articles and interviews collected here problematize prevailing characterizations of recession and recovery. Rather than focusing on narrowly economistic measures, the contributors challenge standard explanations of the Great Recession drawing attention to the classed, ethno-racial and gendered dimensions of austerity and retrenchment. Collectively, the book debunks the myth of Canadian exceptionalism by demonstrating that the aftershocks of the recession are far from over.

What began as an unprecedented housing meltdown centered in the United States in the summer of 2007, quickly turned into a global insolvency crisis throughout 2008, and later the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression. Despite monumental bailouts and extraordinary coordination by all major capitalist countries led by the U.S. Treasury, the public purse that salvaged the making of global capitalism is now being undermined by the very financial markets that were rescued. A new wave of austerity is sweeping the globe.With a further slide into recession possible in 2011, a social crisis is brewing as the working class continues to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis. The articles in this issue scrutinize the austerity responses of governments around the world designed to kick-start capital accumulation and recreate a suitable environment for business investment. The contributors to this collection provide a vivid portrait of working class discontent in an era of increasing capitalist militancy.

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.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in Marxian political economy and especially Marx's great work Capital. 150 years after the book's original publication, are there readings of Capital that can help us find new pathways to progressive or revolutionary change? In this wide-ranging new volume, leading thinkers reflect on Capital's legacy, its limitations and its continuing relevance for today, highlighting issues including ecology, gender, race, labour, communism, the 'Third World' and imperialism. The contributors also aim to identify the connections between Capital and various socialist projects of the past, and draw lessons from those experiences that might contribute to the reinvention of socialist politics today. Contributors include: Ingo Schmidt, Carlo Fanelli, William Pelz, Anej Korsika, Prabhat Patnaik, Silvia Federici, Paul Thompson, Chris Smith, Peter Gose, Justin Paulson, Jeff Noonan, Hannah Holleman and Peter Hudis.

Rising Up traces the history and international context of living wage movements across Canada. This compassionate and astute collection of essays shines a light on alternatives to a neoliberalized labour market, examining union- and community-based approaches to labour organizing, migrant labour, and media (mis)representations, among other key topics. 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 and solutions.

Following the 2008 global financial crisis, Canada appeared to escape the austerity implemented elsewhere, but this was spin hiding the reality. A closer look reveals that the provinces - responsible for delivering essential public and social services such as education and healthcare - shouldered the burden. The Public Sector in an Age of Austerity examines public-sector austerity in the provinces and territories, specifically addressing how austerity was implemented, what forms austerity agendas took (from regressive taxes and new user fees to public-sector layoffs and privatization schemes), and what, if any, political responses resulted. Contributors focus on the period from 2007 to 2015, the global financial crisis and the period of fiscal consolidation that followed, while also providing a longer historical context - austerity is not a new phenomenon. A granular examination of each jurisdiction identifies how changing fiscal conditions have affected the delivery of public services and restructured public finances, highlighting the consequences such changes have had for public-sector workers and users of public services. The first book of its kind in Canada, The Public Sector in an Age of Austerity challenges conventional wisdom by showing that Canada did not escape post-crisis austerity, and that its recovery has been vastly overstated.