CAWLS Prizes and Awards Terms of Reference
A number of awards prizes are awarded annually by CAWLS. The aim of these prizes is to showcase and celebrate the research and service achievements of labour studies researchers and scholars in Canada.
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Leo Panitch Book Prize
This award honours the best book in Canadian work and labour studies. Formerly known as the CAWLS Book Prize, in 2021 it was renamed the Leo Panitch Book Prize in honour of Panitch, a distinguished research professor of political science at York University.
2021
– Karen Messing (Université du Québec à Montréal), Bent out of Shape: Shame, Solidarity, and Women’s Bodies at Work (Between the Lines)
– Margaret M. Keith and James T. Brophy, Code White: Sounding the Alarm on Violence against Health Care Workers (Between the Lines)
2020
– Leah Vosko (York University) and the Closing the Enforcement Gap Research Group, Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Employment Standards Protections for People in Precarious Jobs (University of Toronto Press)
– Honourable mention: Simon Black (Brock University), Social Reproduction and the City: Welfare Reform, Child Care, and Resistance in Neoliberal New York (University of Georgia Press)
2019
– Leah Vosko (York University), Disrupting Deportability: Transnational Workers Organize (Cornell University Press)
– Graphic History Collective and David Lester, 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike (Between the Lines)
2018 – Enda Brophy, (Simon Fraser University), Language Put to Work: The Making of the Global Call Centre Workforce (Palgrave Macmillan)
2017 – Bryan D. Palmer and Gaétan Héroux, Toronto’s Poor. A Rebellious History (Between the Lines)
2016 – Craig Heron (York University), Lunch-Bucket Lives: Remaking the Workers’ City (Between the Lines)
2015 – Kendra Coulter (Brock University), Revolutionizing Retail: Workers, Political Action, and Social Change (Palgrave Macmillan)
2014 – Wayne Lewchuk, Marlea Clarke and Alice de Wolff, Working Without Commitments: The Health Effects of Precarious Work (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
CAWLS Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Scholarship
This prize recognizes outstanding scholarship completed by an undergraduate student on work and social change.
2021 – Not awarded
2020 – Not awarded
2019 – Not awarded
2018 – Jerik Brown (Simon Fraser University), “Affect at Work”
2017 – Seamus Grayer (Simon Fraser University), “The Young and the Cultural: Worker Co-operatives as an Alternative Form of Labour Organizing for Young Cultural Workers”
– Amélie Poirier (Université du Québec à Montréal), “Femmes migrantes, travail domestique et organisation politique”
2016 – Lauren Serianni (Brock University), “Women-Friendly Unions: Today and Tomorrow”
2015 – Nick Ruhloff-Queruga (Brock University), “A Tale of Two Cities: Niagara Falls, Las Vegas, and the Politics of Union Organizing in the Casino Gaming Sector”
2014 – Craig Mazerolle, “Taking (Judicial) Notice of Workplace Precarity: Single Mothers and the Right to Childcare Accommodation”
New Voices in Labour Studies Best Paper Prize
This award is given to the author of the best paper by a new scholar (graduate student, post-doctoral fellow, or faculty/researcher in the first five years of their appointment) presented at the CAWLS annual conference.
2021 – Not awarded
2020 – Not awarded
2019 – Kathryne Gravestock (Simon Fraser University), “Gendered Sites of Consumption and Work: A Commodity Chain Approach to the Second-Hand Clothing Industry in Victoria, BC”
2018 – Not awarded (transition to new criteria for the Prize)
2017 – Émilie Aunis (Université Laval), “Solidarités et mobilisations des chauffeurs Uber : Entraves et conditions propices à l’action collective de travailleurs indépendants en France et au Québec”
2016 – Lacey Croft (York University), “Pathologizing Job Loss: ‘Critical Incident Stress Debriefing’ Discourse as Case Study”
2015
– Lisa Pasolli and Julia Smith (Trent University), “Workers, Social Services, and the State: Child-Care Worker Organizing in 1970s Vancouver, British Columbia”
– Mathieu Hocquelet, “Ethnographie du travail d’organisation des employé-e-s de Walmart aux États-Unis: avantages et risques d’une campagne ‘tous azimuts’”
2014 – Alison Braley-Rattai, “Why the Supreme Court of Canada should Recognize a Right to Strike”