John Peters
Associate Professor
School of Northern and Community Studies
Arts
Biography
Dr. John Peters is an associate professor of Workplace and Labour Studies at Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on economic globalization, inequality, and labour market deregulation.
His forthcoming book, Jobs With Inequality: Financialization, Post-Democracy, and Labour Market Deregulation in Canada, will be published with University of Toronto Press in late 2021/early 2022.
His new edited collection, Confronting Inequality: Canadian Labour Policy and Politics with UBC Press (co-edited with Dr. Don Wells, McMaster University) is currently under review.
As a co-investigator on the SSHRC Partnerhip Grant "Institutional Experimentation for Better Work," he is conducting research on how unions and new social movements can work together to win Green New Deals.
Dr. Peters is a founding editor of the Labour in Canada series with Fernwood Publishing, and is also active in the Sudbury community, formerly serving as Vice-President of the Sudbury and District Labour Council.
His teaching interests span comparative employment relations, labour and global climate change, and union organizing and advocacy.
Education
- PhD York University
Academic Appointments
Associate Professor
On The Web
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_gLFoAoAAAAJ&hl=en
Research
I am currently involved in 3 new research projects, while continuing to work on issues relating to labour market deregulation and financialization.
1. In "Renewing Unions as Social Movements," a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017-2020), I am working with Dr. Lorenzo Frangi (University of Quebec - Montreal) and Dr. Robert Hebdon (McGill University) to explore the conditions under which civil society organizations have worked effectively with unions and elicted positive outcomes for unions and civil society actors.
2. In "Institutional Experimentation for Better Work," an international SSHRC Partnership Grant (2017-2024), I work with Principle Investigators Drs. Gregor Murray, Christian Levesque, and Catherine Le Capitaine of the University of Montreal examining how unions and environmental social movements are working together - or failing to ally - in addressing climate change and advocating for Green New Deals.
3. In "Low-wage Work in Canada" (Laurentian University Research Fund), I am working Dr. Sean O'Brady of McMaster University to explore the causes and variations of low-wage work across Canada.
Teaching
My current courses include:
LBST/SOCI 2246 "What Do Unions Do"
LBST/SOCI 3246 "Workplace Rights Advocacy"
LBST 3326 "Policies for Economic and Social Justice"
LBST 3306 "Labour and Environmental Policy"
LBST 3316 "Provincial Labour and Employment Policy"
LBST 4206 "The Political Economy of Inequality"
LBST 4216 "Comparative Employment Relations"
Publications
Jobs with Inequality: Financialization, Post-Democracy, and Labour Market Deregulation in Canada (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).
John Peters and Don Wells. eds. Confronting Inequality: Canadian Labour Policy and Politics (University of British Columbia Press, under review).
John Peters, Phillipe Scrimger, and Mathieu Dupuis, "Financialization and Union Decline in Canada: the influence of sectors and core industries" Competition and Change Vol. 24, no. 3-4 (2020): 268-90.
"Inequality" in Heather Whiteside ed. Canadian Political Economy Today. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020).
Christopher Kollmeyer and John Peters, “Financialization and the Decline of Organized Labor: A Study of 18 Advanced Capitalist Countries, 1970-2012” Social Forces Vol. 98 (1): 1-30.
“The Ontario Growth Model: The ‘End of the Road’ Or the Rise of a “New Economy”? in Greg Albo and Bryan Evans (eds). Divided Province: Ontario Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2019.
"Post-Democracy and the Politics of Inequality: Explaining Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession" in The Austerity State, Stephen McBride and Bryan Evans (eds). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.
“Neoliberalism, Inequality, and Austerity in Rich World Democracies” in Orchestrating Austerity, Stephen McBride and Donna Baines (eds). Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2014.
John Peters, Angela Carter, and Sean Cadigan, "The Political Economy of the Labour Market in Newfoundland" in Alex Marland and Matthew Kerby (eds). Politics and Public Policy in Newfoundland and Labrador. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Editor, Boom, Bust, and Crisis: Labour, Corporate Power, and Politics in Canada, Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2012.
Neoliberal Convergence in North America and Western Europe: Fiscal Austerity, Privatization, and Public Sector Reform,(2012) Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 208-235.
The Rise of Finance and the Decline of Organised Labour in Advanced Capitalist Countries, New Political Economy, (2011) Vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 73-99.
Down in the Vale: Corporate Globalization, Unions on the Defensive, and the USW Local Strike in Sudbury, 2009-2010, (2010), Labour/Le Travail, Vol. 66, Fall, pp. 73-105
Labour Market Deregulation and the Decline of Labour Power in North America and Western Europe, (2008), Policy and Society, Vol. 27. no. 1, pp. 83-98.