"An injury to one is an injury to all." - Motto of the Industrial Workers of the World

The animating force in Robert Storey's academic and community work is finding the reasons for, and solutions to, social, economic and political inequalities. Born to working-class parents in Hamilton, Ontario, Robert learned first-hand how capitalist democracies provide different opportunities to people based on the jobs they do and where they live. In university, where he studied work and political sociology and became involved in various social movements, he learned how these same societies also structured lives along the axes of gender and race.

Since earning a PhD in sociology at the University of Toronto, Robert has been a part of the Labour Studies Program and the Sociology Department at McMaster University. Over the years, his research interests have evolved from workers and unionism to occupational health and safety and, most recently, to the history of injured workers and their struggles for justice within Ontario's workers' compensation system. His studies into occupational health and safety and workers' compensation highlight, to varying degrees, that all workers are obliged to trade their health for profits. When injured, too many confront a system that treats their access to benefits and care as contingent, like an insurance system, rather than as a right, which is what it was meant to be when it was first established in the early years of the 20th century.

Robert is the Academic Lead of RAACWI's History and Social/Political Movements Theme. His research into the historical struggles of injured workers in Ontario has been fundamentally enriched by - and, in fact, could not be accomplished without - the members of the Injured Workers' History Project.