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This article examines the concept of labour convergence in the context of two significant labour struggles in the Canadian communication industry: the 2005 lockouts at Canada’s national public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and at Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, the Telus Corporation. It begins with a brief analysis of convergence as a technological and institutional process, specifically as it applies to communication technology, the communication arena, and communication companies, and as a myth that contains utopian visions of universal connectedness. The article then describes how labour is deploying its own form of convergence, a form that conflicts with and sometimes “bites back” at the communication industry and its dream of friction-free capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovations in information and communication technology have deepened the problem of workplace surveillance by expanding the capacity to measure and monitor worker activity. This article assesses the extent to which trade unions in Canada have made privacy a sufficiently serious concern to see that privacy protections are incorporated into collective agreements. It assesses the progress made since Bryant's 1995 study, published in this Journal, which found practically no reference to electronic privacy protection in Canadian agreements. Specifically, the article reports on a content analysis of existing Canadian collective agreements to determine the extent to which privacy has been recognized by trade unions; to examine which sectors, industries, or individual unions have incorporated surveillance protection into their collective agreements; and to identify specific models of surveillance protection clauses in collective agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]