John Shields

Structuring Neoliberal Governance: The Nonprofit Sector, Emerging New Modes of Control and the Marketisation of Service Delivery

Abstract Governments in the Anglo-American democracies have restructured their relationships with nonprofit organisations (NPOs). New modes of control have emerged which represent the paradox of centralised decentralisation. We examine the impacts on NPO financing, accountability and human resources. While the experience of Canadian NPOs is used to illustrate the impact of neoliberal induced restructuring, comparative evidence suggests that the Canadian experience is broadly representative. The imposition of neoliberal governance structures on nonprofit service providers serves to compromise their autonomy and advocacy function, while commercialising nonprofit operations and imposing burdens that have strained organisational capacity. The neoliberal model of market-based regulation has moved many nonprofit service organisations away from their community oriented focus and towards a “business model”. In various forms, the state has introduced quasi-markets or, at a minimum, required NPOs to engage in more competitive practices with negative consequences for nonprofit mission, culture and labour-management practices. The result is a growing level of instability within the sector.

Restructuring and resistance : Canadian public policy in an age of global capitalism

nuclear generation. This may be true, but as the last two years have demonstrated in North America, electricity markets can be quite volatile. Changing conditions in fuel markets, changing environmental policies, to name but two issues, have important impacts on the relative economics of different generation technologies. Similarly, decisions on Bruce and Darlington in Ontario will affect investments in other resources. The chapter provides much useful information, but not enough to convince this reader that nuclear power is necessarily going to benefit restructured electricity markets.

Why do Unions form Peak Bodies? The Case of the Barrier Industrial Council

Despite the long history and continuing importance of peak union bodies in Australian industrial relations, there have been very few attempts to analyze, let alone theorize about, their development. This omission in the literature is particu larly striking in relation to the origins of such bodies. Those rare treatments that do examine the formation of peak union bodies are unsatisfactory; most either assume that such forms of unity are inevitable or point to external causes in a rather mechanistic way. We propose a model of peak union formation that com bines internal and external processes, emphasizing the connection between them. We argue that for any group of unions to form a peak body, a state of internal equilibrium must exist between the unions concerned, and that these unions must also be presented with a clear external threat or opportunity. The model is used here to explain the origins of one of the oldest continuous local peak bodies in Australia, the Barrier Industrial Council, but we suggest that the model has a general applicability.

Placing Peak Union Purpose and Power: The Origins, Dominance and Decline of the Barrier Industrial Council

This article examines the power and purpose of union peak bodies, focussing on one particularly powerful organisation, the Barrier Industrial Council in Broken Hill. We argue that the power and purpose of all such bodies is multi-dimensional, historically contingent and spatially specific. The most illuminating studies conceptualise peak bodies as agents of mobilisation, with power delegated by affiliates, and of economic and political exchange, with power derived from a ‘structural coupling’ with the state and capital. However, there is a third possible peak body purpose: social regulation and, specifically, the regulation of labour and commodity markets. This was a conspicuous activity of the Barrier Industrial Council, underpinned by success in mobilisation and exchange and by ‘place consciousness’. Understanding the variety of potential power sources holds the key to explaining not only why some peak bodies command more power than others but also why there is so much variation in peak union focus and behaviour.

Nonprofit engagement with provincial policy officials: The case of NGO policy voice in Canadian immigrant settlement services

Abstract This paper explores the role of nonprofit organizations in the immigrant settlement and integration sector in the public policy process in three Canadian provinces. Drawing on thirty one (31) semi-structured interviews with nonprofit and mid-level policy officials (working for a provincial government) in three provinces (Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan), the place of nonprofit agencies in providing input and voice to policy issues in the area of settlement and integration services is presented. Issues regarding the willingness to use advocacy/voice with government funders, the usefulness of government consultations, strategies used in approaching government, the role of research in making evidence-based cases regarding policy and program change, among other considerations are examined. The assessments provided by key nonprofit actors and government policy officials are used to bring better understanding of the perceived roles of nonprofit organizations in the daily work of policy.

Making the 'Gibraltar of Unionism': Union Organising and Peak Union Agency in Broken Hill, 1886-1930

Broken Hills reputation as a bastion of union organising and influence warrants close reconsideration since even here the pattern of union growth and development was anything but unilinear. During its first half century, the town experienced four distinct cycles of union growth, decline and renewal. Each phase of growth saw the local unions learn from organising experience, but each also involved new contexts, constraints and opportunities along with new ideological and spatial agendas of mobilisation. Each phase also involved the emergence and active agency of a local peak union body. Union development in Broken Hill was shaped by four key factors: firstly, the globalised scale and cyclical nature of the metal mining industry; secondly, the importance of labour migration and worker itinerancy; thirdly, the paradoxical agency of the state; fourthly, the occupational and spatial divisions between local workers themselves.

The Excluded, the Vulnerable and the Reintegrated in a Neoliberal Era: Qualitative Dimensions of the Unemployment Experience.

In this qualitative study, we examine the pathways to vulnerability created by structural unemployment. We focus on a sample of workers often neglected in unemployment studies, namely full-time workers who have held steady employment before job loss. Our sample consists of 29 Canadian workers, restructured from full-time employment and followed for two years. By investigating what happens to these workers we are able to gain valuable insight into the “lived experience” of structural job loss. Their stories describe pathways that lead to re-integration, but also expose pathways that result in heightened states of vulnerability and exclusion from the labour market. The paper concludes with a number of policy suggestions aimed at redressing some of the most negative effects of neoliberal labour market restructuring.

Austerity policies, ‘precarity’ and the nonprofit workforce: A comparative study of UK and Canada

Drawing on qualitative interview data from case studies in Scotland and Canada in the post 2008 era, this article explores the impact of austerity policies on the conditions and experience of employment in two nonprofit social service agencies and their shifting labour process. Despite differences in context, the article finds a similarity of experience of austerity-compelled precarity at several levels in the agency. This precarity increased management control and evoked little resistance from employees. These findings contribute to our understanding of austerity as articulated differently in different contexts, but experienced similarly at the front lines of care work.

Filling the gaps: Unpaid (and precarious) work in the nonprofit social services

Unpaid work has long been used in nonprofit/voluntary social services to extend paid work. Drawing on three case studies of nonprofit social services in Canada, this article argues that due to austerity policies, the conditions for ‘pure’ gift relationships in unpaid social service work are increasingly rare. Instead, employers have found various ways to ‘fill the gaps’ in funding through the extraction of unpaid work in various forms. Precarious workers are highly vulnerable to expectations that they will ‘volunteer’ at their places of employment, while expectations that students will undertake unpaid internships is increasing the norm for degree completion and procurement of employment, and full-time workers often use unpaid work as a form of resistance. This article contributes to theory by advancing a spectrum of unpaid nonprofit social service work as compelled and coerced to varying degrees in the context of austerity policies and funding cutbacks.

Reflections on Resistance to Neoliberalism: Looking Back on Solidarity in 1983 British Columbia

This article critically examines the 1983 British Columbia (BC) Solidarity experience, a period that marked the first comprehensive neoliberal policy revolution in Canada. It also marked the launch of an extensive movement of extra-parliamentary resistance to neoliberal attempts to undo social and economic gains achieved during the period of Keynesian consensus. The character of this progressive movement of trade unions, social groups and civil society was however limited to “defensive defiance”. A number of questions are posed such as: What was the nature of the resistance to neoliberalism in BC in 1983, and to what extent did it succeed? Leftist analysts hotly debated these questions at the time, and a review in hindsight of their views is instructive. And to what degree have the neoliberal agenda and strategy and tactics changed in the ensuing years? Our review in this article suggests both a remarkable continuity and some fundamental changes. Analysis of these events therefore remains historically relevant to those concerned with pan-Canadian political trends. Cet article fait une analyse critique de l’experience du mouvement de Solidarity en 1983 en Colombie Britannique, a une periode qui a marque la premiere revolution neoliberale complete au Canada. Ce moment a egalement signale le debut d’un mouvement important de resistance extra-parlementaire aux efforts neoliberaux de deconstruction des acquis sociaux et economiques qui ont ete gagnes pendant la periode du consensus keynesien. Le caractere de ce mouvement rassemblant des syndicats, certains groupes sociaux et des membres de la societe civile etait cependant limite a une ‘defiance defensive’. Plusieurs questions sont posees, parmi lesquelles: Quelle est la nature de la resistance au neoliberalisme en Colombie Britannique en 1983 et a quel point a-t-elle reussi? Des analystes de gauche ont vivement debattu de ces questions a l’epoque et une revue retrospective de leurs debats est utile. Dans quelle mesure le programme et la strategie/tactique neoliberale ont-ils change dans les annees qui ont suivi? Notre retrospective dans cet article suggere a la fois une continuite remarquable et quelques changements fondamentaux. Une analyse de ces evenements reste historiquement pertinente pour ceux et celles qui s’interessent aux developpements politiques au Canada.