Prizes
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.
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.
2022
Jordan House (Ontario Tech University) and Asaf Rashid, Solidarity Beyond Bars: Unionizing Prison Labour (Fernwood)
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)
Kendra Coulter with Stephanie Ross
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 Undergraduate Excellence Award
This prize is awarded to the top undergraduate student in each labour studies program in Canada. In 2021, it replaced the CAWLS Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Scholarship, which recognized outstanding scholarship completed by an undergraduate student on work and social change.
2023
Brock University:
McMaster University:
Simon Fraser University:
University of Manitoba:
York University:
2022
Brock University: Lindsay Adoranti
McMaster University: Aya Younis
Simon Fraser University: Draeven McGowan
University of Manitoba: Fareedah Sulaiman-Olokodana
York University: Lauren Chiarelli
2021
Not awarded
2020
Not awarded
2019
Not awarded
Donna Baines and Nick Ruhloff-Queruga
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.
2023
2022
2021
Reena Shadaan (Institute for Work & Health), “On Toxic Trespasses: Mapping the Nail Salon”
Lisa Pasolli, Julia Smith and Donna Baines
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”
Thomas Collombat and Mathieu Hocquelet
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”
CAWLS Best Article Prize
Awarded to the best article published in Labour/Le Travail during the previous year.
2022
Ian MacDonald and Manek Kolhatkar, “An Experimental Organization of Precarious Professionals: The Two-Step Unionization of Québec Archaeologists,” Labour/Le Travail 88 (2021): 27-51.
