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Research
Domain: Group Five - Informal Learning in Different Workplaces
Title
of Project: Labour Adjustment and Job Training Programs:
Implications for Immigrant Women Workers
Start
Date: April 1, 1997
Academic Investigator: Dr. Roxana Ng (OISE/UT)
Student Researcher: Renita Wong (OISE/UT)
In
the late 1970s and the 1980s, especially since the forging of
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the garment
industry, once the mainstay of Toronto's manufacturing sector,
has witnessed steady decline. This decline was partly the
result of globalization, facilitated by trade agreements such
as NAFTA, whereby manufacturers could move their production
sites to places with cheaper labour costs, and partly the
shifting locus of control from the manufacturers to large
retail chains such as The Bay (which owns Zellers and K-Mart
among its conglomerates). One of the responses of
manufacturers to their slipping control was to downsize their
production plants (thereby displacing large number of workers)
to cut production costs, and contracting out the sewing of
garments to sewers who now work from their own home. According
to the Ontario Labour Code, home workers are self-employed,
and are thus unable to bargain collectively. In this way,
UNITE!, the garment workers' union, found its membership
dwindling, while workers faced deteriorating working
conditions including isolation. In response to this plight,
UNITE! established the Home Workers' Association (HWA), in
1992, to organize garment workers, many of them Chinese
immigrant women, outside of the collective bargaining process.
Part of the organizing involves accessing labour adjustment
funding to develop training programs that meet the special
needs of home workers.
This
project examines the nature and availability of job training
programs for immigrant women who are garment workers. It
documents the programs developed by the HWA as a site of
informal learning, where immigrant women learning language and
job skills through formal instructions (as in ESL classes) and
through 'mutual aid' (where skilled workers teach less skilled
ones). This project links up with another project ('New Forms
of Social Learning for Those Outside the Mainstream Labour
Market' led by Eric Shragge), which compares different forms
of community and labour initiatives and training. Whereas the
Shragge project compares the provincial and municipal contexts
in which marginalized groups' learning is situated, this
project emphasizes the detailed nature of HWA programs. The
key questions asked are:
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How
is the labour market of homeworkers organized?
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How
does UNITE!, via the HWA, respond to the needs of
displaced workers?
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How
do immigrant women who are home workers strategize around
their employment situation through personal (informal
networks) and organizational (via the HWA) means?
To
answer these questions, this study focusses on the programs
provided by the HWA for its members. By means of in-depth
interviews and participant observation, the objective is to
explore how home workers make use of language and training
programs to facilitate their re-entry into the labour market,
and the networks they develop by participating in these
programs for personal and employment-related goals.
The
primary research strategy is institutional ethnography (IE) a
method of inquiry developed by eminent sociologist Dorothy E.
Smith (1987). IE seeks to interrogate people's experiences,
policies and programs in the institutional contexts within
which they arise and are given shape and meaning. This study
extends IE to include how individuals innovate around labour
market and policy constraints.
The
information gathered includes:
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Examination
and analysis of relevant documents (newspaper clippings,
newsletters of UNITE! and the HWA);
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In-depth
interviews with key informants (government and union
officials and home workers);
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Participant
observation of programs organized by the HWA.
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