Reviewed by: Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards Chris Minns Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards by Mark P. Thomas. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009. Employment standards have been part of the Canadian labour market for well over a century. In [End Page 131] Regulating Flexibility, Mark. Thomas constructs a case study of legislated standards in Ontario, tracing the long-run evolution of employment regulations and their ability to contribute to workplace conditions. The analysis begins with a political economy framework of the dynamics of employment standards. Much of the focus is on employer-oriented flexibility—the extent to which legislated standards allow for workers to be employed under conditions of interest mainly to the firm. Flexibility is an outcome that depends on the orientation of government policy-makers, and on the relative influence of employers and organized labour. Women and ethnic minorities are identified as suffering disproportionate exposure to flexibility, as these groups are more likely to be employed in sectors that feature rapid turnover, weaker regulation, and greater informal employment. The core chapters of the book trace the evolution of employment standards in Ontario from the 1880s to 2004. As in other industrialized regions, standards initially targeted women and children in industry. These early interventions, Thomas argues, reflect the inherently gendered process through which employment regulations have been established. A general 48-hour work week was introduced in 1944, and the post-war years saw a continued focus on wage and work-time legislation targeted toward both male and female workers. Thomas argues, however, that standards have remained overly friendly toward the interest of capital, allowing “pockets of exploitation” to persist. These pockets have expanded since the 1970s, with a rise in precarious employment and increasing polarization in work time. Legislation passed between 1995 and 2000 is presented as an explicit attempt to roll back standards introduced beginning in the 1940s. Thomas concludes with a set of proposed reforms to existing policy. One recommendation is to redesign standards in recognition of the prevalence of non-standard employment relationships. In part, this would involve extending regulations to workers currently defined as self-employed, and introducing regulation into the informal sector through provisions for joint liability for outsourced work. Thomas also endorses increasing the minimum wage, reducing work time, and providing greater supplementary benefits and time reductions for family and emergency-related leaves. Regulating Flexibility is at its best in the three chapters that document the evolution of standards from 1880 to today. These provide detailed evidence on the evolution of standards from, the Factories Act onward. The wealth of material drawn from the Archives of Ontario offers insight into the decision-making process that cannot be gleaned from statistical reports and other readily available material. Many of the legislative changes documented provide a useful starting point for detailed case studies by future students and scholars. Even if one does not share Thomas’s interpretation of these developments, these chapters offer an important contribution to scholarship on the history of public policy in Canada. Some of the arguments made about flexibility would be more convincing if more carefully matched to evidence from the labour market. The rhetoric of flexibility in the 1990s is strikingly pro-business in tone, but no evidence is provided to demonstrate that the resulting legislation actually led to increased work time. The polarization of work time presented as evidence in favour of weak and failing standards likely has much to do with changes in technology and human capital formation that have raised worker productivity and reduced the disamenities many face in employment. These changes may motivate workers in non-production, employment to choose a longer work week, and women to enter the labour market on a part-time basis. Increasing heterogeneity in the nature of work clearly poses a challenge for potential regulators, but it is unclear that the identified changes in employment patterns have [End Page 132] made those employed at either pole worse off. I also have trouble with the conclusion that “processes of neoliberal labour market restructuring have intensified racialized labour market inequalities” (p. 25). That recent immigrants and minorities often have low status in...