Drawing upon case studies of three organisations operating six call centres in Australia, this thesis explores the manifestations and interplay of employee resistance and accommodation in response to five facets of employer control: electronic monitoring; repetitious work; emotional control; the built environment; and workplace flexibility. Accommodation refers to the ways workers protect themselves from and adapt to the pressures that make up their day-to-day experiences of work. Accommodation, unlike resistance, which implies opposition to control, may superficially resemble consent to control. I argue that resistance and accommodation are not polar opposites; rather they are both reflections of the conflict and tensions that lie at the heart of the employment relationship. At the study sites, employees utilised resistance and accommodation both separately and concurrently. An explanation of these seemingly contradictory responses and of the links among accommodation individual resistance and collective resistance lies in the concept of ???self???. In this thesis, ???self??? refers to workers??? perceptions of fairness, dignity and autonomy. I examine how these notions frame worker discontent and promote employee solidarity. ???Everyday resistance???, a concept first developed by Scott (1985) in relation to peasant struggles, is employed to highlight the existence of subterranean struggles in workplaces that otherwise appear to be harmonious. At the study sites, everyday resistance was a multi-faceted, widely employed strategy whose strength lay primarily in its immediate impact. There was, however, no necessary sequential development from accommodation, through everyday resistance to overt, formal forms of conflict. What was evident was that multiple responses to employer control could co-exist and inhibit or promote one another. But it was through organised collective resistance that more formalised gains were made and widely held grievances addressed. I suggest that, although everyday resistance may lay the groundwork for more formal struggles, one should not conclude that traditional collective resistance is ???genuine??? resistance and everyday resistance is simply a second-best prelude to it. Although conflict is always present, its intensity differs. If we are to understand the complexity of worker responses to managerial control, we need to expand the theoretical frameworks within which we analyse and interpret conflict.

This dissertation compares the work and life of secondary public-school teachers in Ontario with different labour contracts during a time of crisis. The COVID public health crisis along with neoliberalism, the defunding of public education, and a climate crisis have all influenced governmental policies and the labour process of public secondary teachers in Ontario. The influences that different contracts can have on the labour process of teachers, how they feel towards their union, and the impacts on their individual health and household wellbeing before and during the first year of the COVID pandemic is the focus of this dissertation. To help explore these contexts and the influences on the life and labour of public secondary teachers in Ontario with different contracts, I have used research from studies in Labour Process Theory, precarious work, and educational labour to inform my analysis. Along with those areas of discourse, I have also used insights from research into Critical Realism and Thematic Analysis to think through and discuss the differences between the teachers I interviewed and connect their experiences with work, their union, and their individual health and household well-being to larger systems, structures, and histories. The interviews conducted revealed three points of interest: that precarious labour contracts can function as a disciplinary device, that larger contexts outside the contract shaped how the contract was experienced, and that teachers’ unions can act as a source of solidarity and security during a crisis and when there are certain associations with its purpose. This exploratory research aims to open up future areas of research into educational labour and differences between the experiences of educators with different contracts. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project explored the differences between public secondary teachers with different contracts in Ontario before and during the COVID pandemic. It involved an online survey to help recruit participants and interviews with 36 teachers who were recruited from the online survey. Of the 36 teachers, 13 had permanent contracts, 16 had long term occasional (LTO) contracts, and 7 had occasional teaching (OT) contracts. The interviews and analysis revealed three points of interest: that precarious labour contracts in a tiered relationship with secure contracts can function as a disciplinary device, that larger contexts outside the contract shaped how the contract was experienced, and that teachers’ unions can act as a source of solidarity and security during a crisis and when there are certain associations with its purpose. Teachers with different contracts had uniquely different experiences with their work, their union, and their individual health and household wellbeing before and during COVID.