From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living.

The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada – an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada’s capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion – on force and on fear – to secure that subordination.

From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics – of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

Bryan Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University. In addition to a PhD in Political Science from York University, he holds a Bachelor of Arts from Laurentian University and a Master of Arts from York University . His doctoral dissertation, defended in January 2008 at York University, explores the links between managerialism, neoliberalism and the restructuring of the Ontario public sector. His advisor, Gregory Albo, is an internationally respected Marxist analyst.

His teaching and research interests focus on public sector restructuring, public policy and public management as well as the politics of labour and work Currently he is a member of a university and community based team investigating Ontario ‘s workers’ compensation system. His publications reflect this research agenda and most notably, Shrinking the State , co-authored with Dr. John Shields , is regarded as a path-breaking contribution toward a critical understanding of the new public management and public sector restructuring.

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Carlo Fanelli is assistant professor and coordinator of work and labour studies in the Department of Social Science, York University, and co-editor, with Bryan M. Evans, of The Public Sector in an Age of Austerity: Perspectives from Canada's Provinces and Territories.

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Leo Panitch is a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984. He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

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Donald Swartz is a professor emeritus in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University.

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