Professor Charlottle Yates

Director of Labour Studies and Professor of Political Science McMaster University, Hamilton ON L8S 1S7 Charlotte Yates was raised in rural Manitoba, one of seven daughters. She started her University studies at the University of Winnipeg where she was active in the anti-apartheid movement in Winnipeg. Upon completing her undergraduate degree, and with no 'good' jobs available, Charlotte Yates moved from one 'bad' job to another, until she returned to do graduate work in politics at Queen's University. Here she got heavily involved in the NDP and a failed unionization drive of teaching assistants. Upon completing this degree she moved to Ottawa to take up her doctoral studies. During five years in Ottawa, Charlotte Yates studied unions and politics, while involving herself actively in student politics, her local union, and the local chapter of "Organizing Working Women" an organization committed to increasing unionization amongst women. Charlotte Yates worked as an instructor for the CLC's Labour College for three years. Her dissertation, which led to the publication of a book entitled From Plant to Politics (1993), was a political history of the Canadian Autoworkers' union from 1939 to 1991. In 1987 Charlotte Yates was hired by the Labour Studies Programme at McMaster University where she is currently a faculty member. 

Charlotte Yates has continued to combine research into unions with union education and activism. She has published articles on a range of topics including public policy and work organization in the automobile industry, women and unions, union mergers and most recently union organizing and the integration of immigrants into rural labour markets. Her research into union organizing is ongoing and involves collaboration with the Ontario and British Columbia Federations of Labour as well as individual unions in studying how union and employer strategies affect the success or failure of a union organizing campaign. This work has resulted in several scholarly articles, an edited volume entitled Trade Unions in Renewal (2003) with Peter Fairbrother, several reports to unions in Canada and abroad, and dozens of public talks. Most recently, Charlotte Yates has received seed money to begin a comparative study of women and union organizing campaigns 

Alongside her research, Charlotte Yates regularly makes speeches and is involved in labour education on a range of subjects. She is now Director of the Labour Studies Programme at McMaster University. Charlotte Yates lives in Hamilton with her two children, husband and Boston Terrier.