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32 Int'l J. Comp. Lab. L. & Indus. Rel. 301 (2016)
Just-in-Time Labour: The Case of Networks Providing Home Support Services in Quebec

handle is hein.kluwer/cllir0032 and id is 319 raw text is: 
















  'Just-in-Time' Labour: The Case of Networks

  Providing Home Support Services in Quebec



                                      Louise BOIVIN*


      This article aims to analyse how the obligation to be available to work when requested by one's
      employer manifests itself in the context of network organizations and under a legal regulation
      of working hours which was forged on the basis of the industrial production model. We
      conducted two case studies examining the situation of workers in the private externalized
      segments of home support services networks in Quebec, a Canadian province. We will
      demonstrate that for these atypical workers, mostly women, the obligation to be available to
      work without any accompanying compensation in wages is implicit and manifests itself in two
      ways: through time that is considered to be personal but which is not because it is squeezed into
      the gaps in fragmented, variable and unpredictable working schedules and through the
      exclusion, from paid work time, of time spent carrying out work-related tasks. The impact
      of this obligation is significant in terms of wages and precariousness. Its man ifestations derive
      from both the network-based organization of work - which allows for the imposition of a just-
      in-time' model of labour management and a reiujorcement of the sexual division of labour -
      and the inadequacy of the legal regulation of working hours with regard to this organizational
      model.


I INTRODUCTION

Studies examining the manifestations of the new post-Fordist temporal regime often
focus on non-standard employment such as part-time1 or fixed-term employment.2
These    studies   rarely  examine    non-standard3     triangular   or   even   multilateral


    Professor, Departement de relations industrielles, Universit& du Quebec en Outaouais, email: louise.
    boivinguqo.ca; member, Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work. The case
    studies presented in this article were conducted as part of the research for the author's doctoral thesis
    and as part of another research supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
    Standard Research Grant L'obligation de disponibilite du salarie: une nouvelle source de precarite ou de
    flexibilite. The author would like to thank her thesis supervisor, Guylaine Vallee, professor, Ecole de
    relations industrielles, Universit& de Montreal. She would also like to thank the anonymous evaluators
    of this article as well as Guylaine Vall&e and Emilie Genin, professors, Ecole de relations industrielles,
    Universite de Montreal, for their judicious comments on the article, and, finally, Ellen Murray and
    Chau Nguyen for their rigorous translation.
    C. Nicole-Drancourt, Un impense des resistances a legalite entre les sexes: le regime temporel, 9 Temporalit&s
    (2009), 1, http://temporalites.revues.org/1067.
2   P. Bouffartigue &J. Bouteiller, L'erosion de la norme du temps de travail, 92 Travail et emploi 43 (2002).
3   S. Bernstein, U. Coiquaud, M.-J. Dupuis, L. La Fontaine, L. Morissette, E. Paquet & G. Vallee, Les
    transformations des relations d'emploi: une s&urite compromise?, 6(l) Regards sur le travail 19 (2009).

Boivin, Louise. Just-in-Time' Labour: The Case of Networks Providing Home Support Services in
Quebec'. International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations 32, no. 3 (2016): 301 321.
© 2016 Kluwer Law International BV, The Netherlands

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