Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Liaison Librarian for Labour Studies by email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.

Essay  

Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process, or in other words how to find materials for your essay.

Selected reference works

It is useful to start by obtaining an overview of a topic by consulting scholarly encyclopedias, handbooks or even textbooks.  These assist with identifying key authors, debates and resources.

• Handbook of the Politics of Labour, Work and Employment
• Handbook of research on cyberbullying and online harassment in the workplace
• Handbook of unethical work behavior : implications for individual well-being 
• New Forms of Employment: Current Problems and Future Challenges
• Palgrave handbook of disability at work
• Palgrave handbook of workplace well-being
• Research handbook on leave policy : parenting and social inequalities in a global perspective 
• Routledge companion to wellbeing at work 
• Sociology of work : an encyclopedia 
• Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of occupational safety and workplace health

Find journal articles

Finding articles: Advanced search techniques [video]  - This three-minute video introduces some advanced search techniques, demonstrated in Academic Search Premier. 

Use the databases below for find scholarly articles on labour topics. Each database indexes several hundred journals  so searching them provides you with relevant articles for those disciplines.  For articles not available in full-text within the database, use the "Get@SFU" icon to search for a copy.

Limit your search to "academic", "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed."

• CBCA Complete  - Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) - indexes trade & scholarly journals;management, accounting, finance, marketing, industries, country profiles, labour
• Business Source Complete
• Sociological Abstracts : Sociological aspects of twenty-nine broad topics, including anthropology, business, collective behaviour, community development, disaster studies, education, environmental studies, gender studies, etc.
• Social Sciences Full Text  - Multi-disciplinary, social sciences database
• Women's Studies International -- Main database for GSWS topics.  
• Canadian Newsstream -- Full text access to major Canadian daily newspapers (such as the Globe and Mail, National Post, The Gazette (Montreal), and Vancouver Sun) as well as small market newspapers and weeklies published in Canada.
• Canada Commons (formerly, Canadian Electronic Library from desLibris) - for public policy documents from Canadian institutes, think-tanks and research groups.

Find books in the Library

Library Catalogue search guide 

The Library Catalogue provides access to books, journal articles, videos, government documents and much more.  To limit the search results to "books", use the filter (left-hand column in search results) to "resource type" of "books."

Search the SFU Library Catalogue, either the Basic or the Advanced search

Note: In the searches below, search results can be limited by "Resource type" such as "books or by "Subject"

• (work* OR employ* OR job*) AND (health* OR safety OR wellness OR illness)
  • (work* OR employ* OR job*) AND (health* OR safety OR wellness OR illness)
    • above search limited by selected "subjects" and resource types (books and book chapters)
• (work* OR employ* OR job*) AND (tech* OR digitiz*) AND (health* OR safety OR well-being OR wellness OR illness)
  • above search limited by selected "subjects" and resource types (books and book chapters)
• (work* OR employ* OR job*) AND (wage* OR benefits OR salar* OR pension* OR parental leave* OR vacation OR sick leave*) AND (canad* OR bc or British columbia)
  • limited by selected subjects 
• precarious AND (work OR labor OR labour) AND (canad* OR bc OR british columbia)
• (gender OR sexual OR racial OR femini*) AND (norms OR equality OR parity OR disparity OR inequality OR "pay gap*" OR "gender gap*") AND (work OR workplace* OR "service industr*")
• (work* OR employ* OR job*) AND (wage* OR benefits OR salar*) AND (canad* OR bc or British columbia)
• (labor OR labour) AND (policy OR policies) AND canad*
  • Combine different concepts using AND
  • Combine same concepts using OR
  • Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
  • Use brackets for synonyms
  • Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words
  • Use pulldown menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"
  • Note:  For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")

Selected books

• Ageism at Work: Deconstructing Age and Gender in the Discriminating Labour Market
• Design, implementation, and audit of occupational health and safety management systems 
• Earnings Inequality and the Gender Pay Gap in Canada : The Role of Women’s Under-Representation Among
• Ergonomic Workplace Design for Health, Wellness, and Productivity
• Gender norms and intersectionality : connecting race, class & gender
• Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces
• Health at work : critical perspectives 
• Inclusion on purpose: an intersectional approach to creating a culture of belonging at work
• Internet and workplace transformation
• Promoting worker health : a new approach to employee benefits in the twenty-first century 
• Rising Up: The Fight for Living Wage Work in Canada
• Speaking up in a culture of silence : how to change organizational systems of bullying and incivility to safety and responsibility
• Topologies of digital work : how digitalisation and virtualisation shape working spaces and places 
• Total worker health 

Selected "subject headings"

Browse by subject ("Browse" tab is at the top, when using "Catalogue Search"]
Limit by subject" (in search results, check the left-hand column)

• Diversity in the workplace
• Employee health promotion
• Labor unions -- Canada
• Occupational exposure
• Occupational health
• Wages  -- Canada
• Work environment
• Work environment -- British Columbia

Government information

Canada

Labour

• Employment and Social Development
  • Labour Program 
    • Canada Labour Code  Consolidates federal statues that relate to labour, facilitating production by controlling strikes & lockouts, occupational safety and health, and some employment standards. The Code only applies to the industries which are under federal legislation.
      • Laws and regulations
        • List of Acts
        • List of Regulations
        • Employment equity
    • Federal labour standards
      • Canada Labour Standards Regulation  Federally consolidated regulations related to respecting hours of work, wages, annual vacations, general holidays, reassignment, maternity leave and parental leave, bereavement leave, group and individual termination of employment and severance pay, work-related illness and injury in federal works, undertakings and businesses.

British Columbia

• British Columbia Employment Standards Act  The provincial legislation that ensures that employees in British Columbia receive at least basic standards of compensation and conditions of employment. The British Columbia Employment Standards Act and Regulation sets out minimum working conditions for all employees covered under provincial labour laws. A number of sectors or industries in British Columbia are subject to specific regulations that only apply to them. Click here to see the regulations for specific industries.
   
• British Columbia Labour Relations Code  The provincial legislation that protects the right of employees in British Columbia to be a member of a trade union and to participate in its lawful activities. The Code further delineates the rights of employees and employers.
   
• Human Rights Protection  "British Columbia has a law to protect and promote human rights. It is called the B.C. Human Rights Code or the Code. The Code helps to protect you from discrimination and harassment." [from the website]  [BC] Human Rights Code

Library guides

• Findind and evaluating resources on the web
• Avoiding plagiarism
• What is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal?
• How to write an annotated bibliography
• More Tutorials (interactive)
• Citation or reference management tools collect your journal article, book, or other document citations together in one place, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies in almost any style — in seconds.
• For help with writing essays, visit the Student Learning Commons resources on Writing for university.
• Guides for Labour Studies,  Political Science

Writing help

For undergraduate students, the Student Learning Commons provides assistance and numerous, helpful guides.

• Academic writing resources
• Library Catalogue search: Academic writing
  • E.g. Writing effective course assignments : a guide to non-degree and undergraduate students
• Book a consultation