Jobs with Inequality: Financialization, Post-Democracy, and Labour Market Deregulation in Canada | CIRHR Research Seminar with John Peters

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John Peters of the Université de Montréal will be visiting us in-person to speak about his new book, Jobs with Inequality: Financialization, Post-Democracy, and Labour Market Deregulation in Canada.

Income inequality has skyrocketed in Canada over the past few decades. The rich have become richer, while the average household income has deteriorated and job quality has plummeted. Common explanations for these trends point to globalization, technology, or other forces largely beyond our control. But, as Jobs with Inequality shows, there is nothing inevitable about inequality. Rather, runaway inequality is the result of politics and policies - what governments have done to aid the rich and boost finance and what they have not done to uphold the interests of workers.

Drawing on new tax and income data, John Peters tells the story of how inequality is unfolding in Canada today by examining post-democracy, financialization, and labour market deregulation. Timely and novel, Jobs with Inequality explains how and why business and government have rewritten the rules of the economy to the advantage of the few, and considers why progressive efforts to reverse these trends have so regularly run aground.

John Peters is an Associated Professor and Research Fellow at the Inter-University Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT) Université de Montréal. He conducts research in Labour Sociology, Canadian and Comparative Political Economy, Union Renewal, and Green New Deals. He is one of the co-editors of ‘Canadian Labour Policy and Politics (University of British Columbia Press, 2022), and is currently working on “Just Transition and Climate Change in Canada’ and ‘Unions and the Politics of Green New Deals.

The CIRHR Research Seminar series invites industry leaders and researchers to present their findings. Future guest speakers include:

• Feb. 8, Aaron Sojourner, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research 
• March 22, Lauren Rivera, Northwestern University
• April 12, Simon Pek, University of Victoria